AllHisBlessings

If you counted up all the words spoken in my house for the past week and determined which one was uttered the most often, I think "skin" might be the grand prize winner. That, and maybe the word "eat" would rival each other for sure. It's starting to get me a little stir crazy, but in the end, I must admit I brought it all upon us.
What are these random mutterings, you ask? Oh where to begin? Where to begin. The owner of this "skin" would be my husband. And let's just face it, his skin not well off right now. Ever since we met, in fact, he has suffered from a terrible roller coaster of eczema, or atopic dermatitis.
"Ohhh, eczema," you say. "I've got some of that on my hands. It's a little itchy and dry. Gets red in the winter."
Let me put things this way. Every time Seth goes to see a doctor or a dermatologist, they take one good look at him and say, "Stay right there! I've gotta show my friends this, because you're the worse case I've ever seen in my 25 year career!" Then they hand him a vat of steroid cream the size of Rhode Island and wish him luck.
He suffers from sleeplessness, hives, swelling, redness, uncontrollable itchy rashes that bleed from so much scratching... All of these things and more have been attacking him since he was a teenager with an erratic flow of worsening and bettering.
Lately, he's been on the downswing. The vat of steroid cream is having less and less effect. Yet I had been stewing on an idea for a few months that I wanted him to try. It wasn't like we hadn't tried everything else. I had seen some information about an "Anti-Inflammation Diet" on a nutrition website that got me thinking. The idea was that the foods we eat either help to reduce inflammation in our bodies, or they increase it. Some foods, like flax seed, are full of omega-3 and other properties which reduce inflammation. Other foods, like buttermilk biscuits, are full of simple sugars and "bad" fats that increase the inflammation load. These are easy enough concepts, but wasn't sure how to apply it to Seth's situation in a practical diet.
That's when I came across a book called The Skin Cure Diet. It was written by a woman who, after reading her life story I found, was exactly like Seth in her eczema sufferings. She had been working on an answer to this puzzling condition for 3o some odd years and had finally stumbled upon the right combination of things to cure herself. And, she was now itch free for several years.
Could it work? Maybe. Could it be too good to be true? Maybe. But that's where we are...trying out this skin cure diet in hopes that Seth will no longer have to suffer through an itchy, sleepless night.
I've been doing it with him so that we're eating together (and hey, maybe I'll benefit from it too?) and I can be a better support. Today was Day 3. You'd think it was Day 56. He's miserable. Seth's skin has reacted so violently to the diet that he had to take off from work because he can hardly bend his arms or turn his head.
The surprising part is, all he's eating is chicken, turkey, salmon, olive oil, and green vegetables! The comforting part is (maybe only for me, since I'm not in pain), the book said that this would happen and that he would need to just stick it out. She explains that the condition is being caused by an overgrowth of candida (a yeast infection) throughout the whole body, and that, when you stop feeding the candida, it begins to die. That die-off is like a giant poison bomb going off. It makes the eczema even worse until, well...until it gets better.
So that's where we are. A no-fun diet with less-fun consequences. I really think it will work if Seth can stick with it for the recommended 6 weeks. Obviously his skin problems are linked to his diet since it reacted this way after just a few days of eating simply. But I really don't know if he will make it. Pray for that. And pray for me too, because I'm getting a little stir crazy over constantly having to ponder "Chicken? Or Fish?"

And that's just for breakfast.

But as I said, I started it.