How can I treat eczema?
If you got mild eczema, a good way of treating it is to use a very mild half percent or one percent Hydrocortisone cream. Get a bath oil so that you don't dry the skin out. Use a good moisturizing lotion that you find that you can tolerate, and you may need to try several before you can actually go with one. Anything like that will help, if it's still itching at night you can take a non prescription anti-histamine at night to help stop your itching when you're asleep. Those are things you can do yourself. If it is still troubling you, get an appointment with your doctor, and if your doctor isn't comfortable treating you get him to refer you to your dermatologist. What your dermatologist will do is to diagnose the type of eczema that you have and will prescribe the appropriate type of cream. They usually contain various strengths of cortisone, from weak strengths to high strengths. Generally we keep the weak strengths for children and certain parts of the skin, like the face or the skin folds, and we restrict the strongest strengths to other parts of the body and also for short time periods. There's a new group of prescription non cortisone creams and ointments that are very useful now, and we have better oral anti histamines. Sometimes the other thing that can help is when you feel your eczema getting worse, start yourself on primary seed oil capsules. There is a debate on how effective these are but they are certainly not going to do you any harm, and my impression is that they help some people.
