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Eczema isn’t life-threatening, but it can be life-altering because of how it recurs and affects your everyday life as a chronic condition — not to mention its potential to leave marks or scars. It’s bad enough when you can hide it under clothing, but so much worse when it appears on your face.
Facial eczema is particularly frustrating. Like acne, it can damage your confidence, leaving you self-conscious. You never know when a flare-up will strike, so you can’t fully plan for anything. One day your skin looks fine, and the next — at the worst time — it’s cracked, red, and sore.
At The Independent Pharmacy, we understand how difficult it is to deal with eczema, and we want to help as much as we can. That’s why (in addition to our main piece about how to deal with eczema) we put together this piece specifically about dealing with face eczema: how you can get rid of it, how you can stop it from coming back, and what your treatment options (and alternatives) are.
There are various types of eczema, but the most common is the type we’re discussing here known as atopic dermatitis or atopic eczema. It often affects children (1 in every 5) before clearing up by adulthood, but it also affects a lot of adults (1 in every 12, in fact) — though, contact dermatitis is the type of eczema that most commonly affects adults.
Atopic dermatitis usually appears as a dry, flaky and itchy rash of thick, bumpy skin. If scratched or damaged in some other way, it may become infected and ooze a substance that will subsequently crust over. It commonly appears in skin creases but can affect almost any area of skin.
If you notice that a patch of skin on your face is getting itchy and starting to flake, you haven’t come into contact with an irritant, damaged that skin, or been exposed to any extreme conditions, and there are no other symptoms suggestive of a broader problem, then it could be that you’re dealing with eczema.
Before you reach any conclusions about how to proceed, consult a medical professional for some advice. They’ll be able to diagnose any new skin condition and confirm if you have atopic skin. You can always start a free consultation with one of our doctors online, by going to one of our treatment pages like Hydrocortisone and starting a free assessment with our medical team.
If you do indeed have eczema on your face, you’ll want to reduce or eliminate it as quickly as possible so you can go back to living your normal life. There are two ways that you can directly treat eczema: with regular moisturisers (emollients), and with topical steroid creams.
Moisturising with an emollient is a safe option for sensitive skin. It should be done regularly as a preventative measure and will help relieve some symptoms of mild eczema on your face, rather than curing a flare-up. However, it is still important to use an emollient during a flare-up to prevent the skin from becoming even more dry, cracked and broken.
Topical steroids are stronger. They will reliably make an impact when a flare-up is present and you have more severe symptoms. Topical steroids should be used sparingly, only for courses of 7-14 days when your eczema flares, as they can carry risks including skin thinning or damage and even topical steroid withdrawal if used excessively. When an infection is also present, a combination product will be more appropriate. Click the link to find out more about Fucidin H cream and its uses for severe facial eczema.
In the event that eczema has spread to your scalp (a condition known as seborrheic dermatitis), the Betnovate Scalp Application will help in relieving discomfort.
Remember that eczema can be hugely variable, ranging from very mild dryness to extremely-sore patches of weeping, sore or dry skin. You need to choose your treatment accordingly. Very mild eczema can clear up with some good skincare, while a more serious case may require the application of steroids.
In addition to using these treatments, you can take action to address the root causes through your general habits — adjusting what you eat, what types of clothes you wear, and how you approach life, can all play a part. We’ll look at this in more detail next.
Whether you’re currently suffering from eczema on your face, or you’re eager to reduce the chances of developing it because you’ve dealt with it before, there are various things you can do to keep it at bay. Here are some eczema triggers and suggestions for avoiding them:
This guide to clearing your skin has even more tips that will help you to prevent eczema from developing on your face.
Babies often develop eczema, and it can cause them a lot of discomfort and distress, so it’s understandable to want to do everything you can to treat it. That said, babies have thinner skin than adults, so you need to be even more careful.
Typical treatment of a baby’s eczema will involve consistent moisturising and, only at the direction of a doctor, limited use of weak corticosteroid treatment. If you’ve been prescribed treatment for your eczema, do not use it on a baby’s eczema — the strongest eczema steroids, in particular, can cause a lot of harm when used inappropriately.
Some people strongly recommend natural remedies instead of the treatments usually prescribed by medical professionals, with examples including aloe vera gel and coconut oil. Most of these substances are harmless, and some do possess antibacterial and/or antimicrobial properties, but be warned: much of what they’re claimed to do has never been verified.
Prescribed treatments don’t sound exotic or fancy, but that’s because they’ve been purpose-developed to achieve specific goals safely and effectively. If you’re sure that it will be safe to try a natural remedy, then you’re welcome to try — but don’t expect to get results similar to those you’d get from prescribed medication.
Let’s recap what we’ve looked at in this article:
In this section, we answer some of your common questions about facial eczema.
Discoid eczema is a chronic skin condition that causes your skin to become swollen, cracked and itchy. It’s also known as discoid dermatitis and it’s noticeable for causing coin-shaped and sized patches of eczema to appear on your skin. If you don’t get treatment for discoid eczema then it can last for weeks, months or years.
Eczema can appear on and affect any part of the body with skin on it. This means it is possible to get eczema on the eyelids and around the eyes. Seborrhoeic dermatitis is another skin condition that can affect your eyelids. It appears on eyelid margins and is more common among adults than children.
People can get eczema in their ears, however, the most common types (atopic eczema and otitis externa) both occur on and around your ears. It’s not uncommon for people to get eczema in their ears or around them. If you think you have eczema in or around your ears then speak to a doctor or pharmacist.
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