have an amazing story to tell. We’re excited to share some of the
health issues we have experienced and how we miraculously found healing.
In this post we’re going to be talking about the irritating and
troublesome rash called eczema.
My
eczema vanished completely two months after moving to Cuenca Ecuador!
Now understand, nothing has been changed in my diet or eating habits
since moving to Cuenca Ecuador, meaning I eat the same type of foods and
not much new has been introduced into my diet.
The
irritating rash on my fingers started when I was a child. When I got
married and moved to Portland Oregon, where it is rainy and damp I still
had eczema on my hands; it didn’t stop there, when we moved clear
across the continent to the southeast, where it is humid and hot, I
still had eczema. I’ve lived in several different types of climates and
amazingly I have had eczema in every single one, except for one, and
we’ll get to that in a moment.
What Is Eczema?
The
term eczema is broadly applied to a range of persistent skin
conditions. These include dryness and recurring skin rashes that are
characterized by one or more of these symptoms: redness, skin swelling,
itching and dryness, crusting, flaking, blistering, cracking, oozing, or
bleeding. Areas of temporary skin discoloration may appear and are
sometimes due to healed injuries. Scratching open a healing lesion may
result in scarring and may enlarge the rash.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dermatitis
I do know that detergents and other household cleaning supplies can worsen the condition but it does not cause it. Luckily
for me, I only had the rash between my fingers and boy did it itch and
blister, and ooze, and bleed, etc. It was annoying and uncomfortable and
unsightly.
At
first it starts out as really dry, flaky skin and then something
irritates it and it begins to itch. Once you start scratching the itch
the blisters form and eventually the pustules begin to sweat and ooze.
Funny thing is scratching the blisters makes it feel better. In times
past, I used to scratch until my fingers were swollen and bloody; it
was very unpleasant; anyone who has had eczema knows just how unpleasant this skin condition can really be.
Incorrect Information on the Internet
There’s
a lot of incorrect information about eczema on the Internet. Most
doctors and websites that talk about this skin condition do not even
know the cause of eczema, and it is because so many people are afflicted
with it or its cousins, hay fever, asthma and food allergies. The conflicting information on the Internet makes it very confusing.
FACT:
I have lived in North American with eczema all my life and then moved
to South America and it suddenly disappeared, tells me without a doubt
it is caused by something existing in the food supply, simply because my
diet or eating habits have not changed; the only thing that has changed
is how the food is grown.
Same Foods, Two Different Kinds of Growing Techniques
The
food I was eating in North America was grown in chemically laden soil,
sprayed with noxious pesticides, and the feed animals given antibiotics
and hormones and cooped up and force fed, while food grown in South
America is grown in very little, if any pesticides, and the feed animals
are allowed to graze freely on the grassland.
FACT: When we moved to Cuenca in June 2011 I had eczema on my hands, but after only a few months of living here, eczema simply vanished without a trace!!
Not only that, but Frank and I both lost about 12 to 15 pounds and we
can’t gain it back if we tried!! But that’s a whole other story, we’ll
talk about in another post.
FACT:
In April of 2014 I went back to the states to visit my mom for exactly
one month and by the second week the eczema came back on my hands and
this time on the back of my elbows too. I couldn’t believe I got eczema
again after I was relieved of it for almost three years while living in
Cuenca Ecuador! One month later, I returned back home to Cuenca Ecuador
and in within a couples of weeks, the eczema disappeared again! And, it doesn’t come back!! So what is going on?
What Causes Eczema?
Firstly,
how can you know if something is true or not? There is so much
conflicting information about this skin condition on the Internet that
it will make your head spin. And it is not just this health condition
that is misdiagnosed but most every health issue you can think of. This
is why we must learn how to “listen to our bodies” and be our own
doctor, when it comes to health of our body.
However,
there are situations where you might need a doctor. If you have an
emergency, such as falling off your roof, or needing to get a blood
transfusion, or if your appendix burst, etc. It would be wise to go to
the doctor for emergency cases that are out of our control.
There are three ways a person can get started to facilitate this blissful state and be in more control of their health.
1) You have to experience something over and over again before it becomes a fact for you and your health problem.
2) You have to do your own deductions. You know your own body better than anyone, so what is it telling you?
3) You must listen to your body and feel and observe changes and know when it is reacting to something unhealthy in your diet.
That would be a good start. There’s more to it however, but let's get back to the eczema problem.
One
website says wheat, and or nuts might be the cause of eczema. However, I
eat just as much if not more whole wheat and nuts in Ecuador as I did
in the states, and we were buying organic wheat berries in the states
and the nuts were from the health food stores, so we’re quite sure that
eczema is NOT caused from organic wheat or nuts (at least in my case)
but, if someone includes non organic wheat or nuts in
their diet and has eczema, they might want to stop eating those two
foods just to make sure and start eating organic wheat and nuts.
You see, fresh, wholesomely grown foods will not cause an allergic reaction in most people.
So then the only explanation for having a reaction after eating whole
wheat and or nuts is that they were grown using harsh chemicals and
sprays!
Here’s How I KNOW “My Eczema Was Something
Unhealthy in/on the food I Was Eating
Firstly:
1)
I experienced the rash all my life UNTIL I moved to Cuenca, then I go
back to the states for one month and the rash comes back but worse; then
I come back to Cuenca and the rash once again vanishes without a trace!
FACT:
It is something in the US causing my eczema. What could that something
be? In the states I used a dishwasher and rarely had to wash a dish.
Here I wash dishes twice a day and do not have dishwasher; my hands are in harsh colored detergents
every single day and I only have a bit of dry skin on my hands that pure
coconut oil seems to fix, and still no eczema.
2) Nothing has changed in my diet and I eat the same kinds of foods
in both countries, so the deduction in this case is “how the food is
grown”. Or, should we say, “What the food is grown in and sprayed with
and injected with”.
3)
In this case I didn’t have to change anything in my diet or take out a
certain food because the eczema vanished on its own after coming back to
Cuenca even when eating the same types of foods.
Now
all we need to do is deduce which noxious chemical is the cause of my
eczema; is it the pesticides sprayed on the plants, hormones and
antibiotics injected into the steers and fowl, herbicides treating the
bugs’, or is it all four? It doesn't matter to us since I do not live in
the u.s anymore, however, other people that do may want to know these
miraculous healing testimonies.
Food Sensitivity to Pesticides, Hormones,
Chemicals, Antibiotics...
Finally,
we can deduce (from the 3 ways above) that “my experience with eczema” and only having it when
in the US and eating food grown in the US is a food allergy but not from the food itself, but from what the food is grown in and sprayed with and or injected with.
To be more clear I have a allergy to things that are harmful to my body such as pesticides,
hormones, antibiotics and other chemicals that are put into the food supply in the US!
But so does everyone else on this planet, it just shows up in different ways because everyone’s body is different. Not everyone’s body will react with symptoms in the same way.
This is important to know:
When we understand that a food allergy or a reaction to certain foods
and/or behaviors is perfect feedback for us to learn from, as in being able to deduce certain health issues on our own without the need for a doctor, then it
follows that we can learn to understand what the proper response should
be.
Unfortunately organically grown food in the u.s is quite expensive and not everyone can afford to buy it...and that is one of the major reasons why we moved to Ecuador. We feel happy and very blessed to be able to eat better, cleaner food for our health.
And that, my friends, is a blissful state to be in! With Better Health we Can Begin to Live a Better Life!
We're an Expat Family of Five Living Frugal, Healthy and Happy in Cuenca Ecuador! Enjoy the Discover Cuenca Ecuador blog!