Eczema Diet Ideas for Better Skin

Searching for the Right Eczema Diet

The right eczema diet requires that you take a look at what you are putting into your stomach. What you eat has an impact on the health and appearance of your skin.

Eczema, like many skin conditions, is aggravated by bad eating habits.

The good news is that replacing those unhealthy foods with skin-friendly foods will help reduce, and for some people, eliminate those itchy, red, swollen eczema patches that pop up all over your skin and impact your quality of life.

Who wants to go around feeling itchy and scratchy day and night? Right, nobody!

Your skin is the largest organ of your body, and when things go wrong with it, you can end up being quite miserable.

Click How to Beat Eczema for a concise and highly effective approach to getting rid of eczema (including tips on what and what not to eat).  

Eczema Diet Tips

Here are a few eczema diet tips to help you begin to get a handle on your condition.

First of all, become more keenly aware of what you eat and how your body responds to different types of foods. If your eczema flares up after drinking milk (say, anywhere between 1 to 24 hours later), don’t drink milk for a couple of days.

You can drink it again a couple of days later and see if your skin again reacts negatively. If it does, then you know to avoid milk. Common sense, right?

The tricky thing about skin disorders is that everyone’s skin is different and reacts in different ways to different foods or environmental factors like pollen, sun, smoke, and so on.

Some people may react by experiencing swelling and redness of the skin, or they may start to sneeze or get itchy, watery eyes. Others may feel digestive discomfort, with stomach pain, or even diarrhea and vomiting.

Those who are the most vulnerable or have the most extreme reactions, might experience all of these symptoms.

Click Eczema Diet for a more detailed look at what foods help beat eczema and what foods can trigger eczema outbreaks.

What Is Making Your Eczema Worse?

Be alert for what may be making your eczema or skin condition worse. Any food that causes an extreme reaction in your body will probably have a negative impact on your skin as well and should be excluded from your eczema diet.

Some people find it helpful to record how their body reacts to given foods by keeping a food diary that includes the time of the meal, what the meal consisted of, and when and how your body or skin reacted to that combination of foods.

Using a process of elimination, you can easily determine what specific foods are causing your eczema or skin condition to worsen. Again, these exacerbations of the skin ailment are often accompanied by some type of abdominal discomfort. So be aware of what’s going on inside you after you eat any meal.

Common foods that have been found to trigger eczema flare-ups in lots of persons, in addition to milk, are wheat (gluten), peanuts, eggs, shellfish, soy products, food preservatives like MSG, citrus fruits, and tomatoes.

These are common culprits that you should be aware of, though your skin may tolerate these well and react to other food products. That’s why you have to be alert and understand that you are the best person to figure out what foods are good for you and which are not.

To ensure you give your skin a fighting chance to get healthier and more attractive, avoid foods that are just plain bad for you. I am referring to any foods that are universally known to be bad for anyone.

Foods that your digestive system has a hard time with should be left out of your eczema diet. Sugars, refined foods, fried foods, salty foods, rich creamy sauces, high saturated fat foods – these are foods we all should try to avoid as much as possible.

Certain Foods Can Damage Your Skin

Remember, foods that treat your insides bad and are hard to digest are going to treat your outside (i.e., skin) bad.

Little by little, try incorporating whole, healthy foods into your daily diet. Foods high in antioxidants and Vitamins C are great for your skin and help repair and rejuvenate damaged skin. Blueberries and blackberries are easy to eat throughout the day.

Adding high fiber content foods like apples and plums is a great idea. They are also high in antioxidants and help your digestive system operate more efficiently, which is good news for your skin.

Sweet potatoes, squashes and pumpkins are also wonderful additions to your diet. They are high in fiber, calcium, iron, and Vitamins A, B, and C, forming a super powerful combination of antioxidants, vitamins and fiber that are good for your stomach and for improving skin conditions such as eczema.

Flaxseed Oil and Eczema

There has been growing sentiment, based on a few studies, that flaxseed oil helps fight eczema by helping reduce inflammation of the skin.

Apparently, the essential fats in flaxseed oil are skin-friendly. You might want to try flaxseed oil as part of your eczema diet. A tablespoon a day of the oil is the recommended amount. Some prefer the powdered form of flaxseed oil because it can be sprinkled on any number of foods,   

Evening primrose oil, which has a high level of the Omega-6 fatty acid, gamma linolenic acid, or GLA, taken daily with meals over a period of several months, has been shown to relieve eczema in sufferers of this skin condition.

It may not be possible to change our eating habits overnight. Do a little at a time. Gradually eliminate the foods that are keeping your skin and stomach from feeling great, and slowly build your eczema diet so that what you eat will improve your skin’s health and appearance over time.