As suggested previously, it is generally agreed that one of the most common causes of eczema is an allergic reaction or the fact that a particular person is especially susceptible to particular allergens such as tree pollen, pet hair etc.
Furthermore, we established in the previous chapter that many eczema sufferers are prone to allergic reactions to certain foodstuffs which can prompt a flare-up of the condition at any time.
I have mentioned that one way of discovering what particular foodstuffs or beverages cause you eczema problems is to keep a journal of your elimination diet.
Doing things this way has the advantage that you can do everything in the comfort of your own home and there is no need to spend money for anything other than the diary that you use.
There is another way of establishing exactly what it is that causes you to break out in eczema, which is to take an allergy test under medical supervision. This test should show you exactly what it is that you are allergic to, although it might take some time to see positive results, because the allergist with whom you are working might have identified many different allergens which you could be reacting to, meaning that their testing might be a slow process.
On the other hand, taking an allergy test is not only effective for highlighting those foodstuffs or chemicals in food that you react against. It will also highlight any non-dietary factors that might be causing your eczema, such as an allergy to dust mites, tobacco smoke or even to the chemicals in strong soap and detergents.
In short, allergy testing is a far more comprehensive way of isolating exactly what is causing your eczema problem, because in addition to establishing allergies, an allergy test will also establish an individual’s personal reactions to various allergens such as tree pollen, molds or medications.
On the other hand, because allergy testing only establishes that the tested individual has a specific allergic antibody to the particular substance being tested, it does not necessarily mean that an allergic reaction is the inevitable result of the presence of these antibodies.
For example, while an allergy test might establish that a particular individual has antibodies that are likely to react against substances like pet hair or dust mites, it does not necessarily follow that they will automatically be allergic or react to these particular allergens.
Consequently, if you are going to use allergy testing to establish what causes your eczema problem, you need to have a test that can be analyzed and interpreted by a qualified board certified allergist (in the USA – qualified UK allergists are listed here).
When you first start working with an allergist, it is likely that they will ask you many questions about your lifestyle in efforts to establish the most likely causes of your adverse reactions to allergens, foodstuffs that you are allergic to and so on. For example, they will ask about your family background - because as we have already established, problems like eczema are generally believed to have an inherent hereditary element.
In general, there are only two types of allergy testing that are commonly accepted as being scientifically valid for anything other than experimental research purposes.
The first of these is the skin test, which has been in use for 100 years and is still the preferred method of allergy testing even today. In this situation, the qualified practitioner places a small drop of a commercially prepared solution containing the allergen to which the patient is thought to be allergic on the skin before scratching the skin so that the allergen enters the body.
When they do this, the allergist will be looking for a certain degree or level of reaction from the patient to prove that they are sensitive to a particular allergen. However, because the initial allergen solution is very weak, it is quite common for the allergist to runs several skin tests using slightly stronger allergen solutions to establish the degree of adverse reaction the patient will suffer.
The allergist is artificially inducing an allergic disease in miniature. If the initial test on the outside of the skin is not effective for establishing exactly what it is that is causing some kind of negative reaction, a similar test will be run by injecting the allergen solution under the skin.
The alternative form of allergy testing is known as Radioallergosorbent testing (RAST), which is a test for specific allergic antibodies in the blood, a test which is gradually improving in scope and accuracy. However, because RAST is considerably more expensive than skin testing and because the results often take days or even weeks to arrive, it is still skin testing that is by far the most popular form of allergy test.
With an allergy test, you may be able to create a far clearer picture of why you suffer eczema or other complaints that are more common in those who seem to be more prone to allergic reactions. Armed with this information, it becomes considerably easier to establish the changes that you need to make in your life in order to reduce your susceptibility (or that of your children) to eczema.
Learn how you can beat eczema once and for all here!