31.6 million people in the United States suffer from some form of eczema, a skin condition that can significantly affect your quality of life. If you want to find relief from eczema, schedule an appointment with Suburban Allergy Consultants, with locations in Narberth, Havertown, West Chester, West Grove, and Coatesville, Pennsylvania. The team of allergy, asthma, and immunology experts, led by Corinna Bowser MD, FAAAAI, FACAAI, and Andrew Murphy MD, FAAAAI, can work with you to determine the cause of your eczema and help reduce your flare-ups. Call the office nearest you or use the online tool to request your appointment.
Eczema, or atopic dermatitis, is a condition that causes itchiness and inflammation in patches on your skin. It can happen on nearly any part of your skin and tends to be chronic with periodic flare-ups. It’s more common in children, runs in families, and tends to happen in people who also have asthma or hay fever.
The exact cause of eczema is unclear. Some believe that it’s the result of an overactive immune system that has difficulty differentiating between foreign proteins and proteins that are part of the human body. Your immune system is supposed to attack foreign proteins, like those in bacteria and viruses, and ignore native proteins, but some believe that people with eczema have immune systems that accidentally attack their proteins, which triggers inflammation.
A number of irritants and substances can trigger an eczema flare-up, including:
For many people, certain chemicals, like those found in detergents and cleaners, can also cause a flare-up.
Eczema mainly makes your skin dry, rough, inflamed, itchy, and irritated. It can also produce:
These flare-ups can happen anywhere on your body, but they’re more common on your scalp, cheeks, back of your knees, inner elbows, and arms.
There isn’t a particular test to determine whether you have eczema. Your doctor can typically recognize it with a visual inspection.
The benefit of diagnosing and treating your eczema with an allergy specialist, like the team at Suburban Allergy Consultants, is that they can perform allergy tests to determine the specific triggers that are causing your eczema.
Your allergist can administer a patch test to determine what allergens might be causing your eczema. They put a patch on your skin that contains a concentrated sample of a particular allergen, and then observe the reaction on your skin.
Once you know the underlying cause that’s producing your eczema flare-ups, you can treat that or eliminate it from your system to reduce your eczema flare-ups.
Schedule a visit today with Suburban Allergy Consultants over the phone or request an appointment online to start your eczema treatment today.
