My doctor has prescribed Desonide for my daughter's ezcema. Before I use it, I want to know what people have heard about it. What are the side effects? Any other recommedations?
I do believe that excema is systemic. When I started solids, she would eat a full four ounces of puree plus two ounces of cereal a meal. Now at ten months, she is eating maybe one ounce of a puree, some finger foods, and about two ounces of milk, if I am lucky. I am extremely concerned about the connection between what she is eating / or not eating and her excema. She has not gain weight in quite a while, infact she lost four ounces in two weeks. I can't get the doctor to look beyond putting 'bandaids' on the excema. I want to solve the root of the problem.
Yesterday, I had an extremely unsatifying doctor's appointment to the point that when I went home, I change pediatricians. Hopefully, this next one will look at the whole child instead of pieces of this puzzle.
Thank you for your answers, they give me the courage to seek a solution.
We use eucerin cream and 1% hydrocroticone cream(when it's really bad). Also I put baby oil on him when he is in the tub. This seems to control the ezcema w/o having to pay for a prescription. My son also takes fish oil tablets and he takes an kids probiotic. I heard this helps also.
Desonide definitely works but you want to reserve it for when the eczema is particularly bad. It's a steroid which means it thins out the skin over time. If you use it once in awhile its not a big deal but if you use it alot, that's not good. Instead, my pediatrician told us to put aquaphor lotion (you can find in any babiesrus, target, etc.) on the area regularly to treat and more importantly, prevent, eczema. So even when the rash is gone, you want to keep putting it on areas that are prone to the rash. For my son, it was his cheeks and chin. So we started getting into the habit of putting aquaphor on those areas after every meal (since we wipe his face down with water) and then right before bed. Pretty soon, all the eczema disappeared and now he doesn't even really get it. I notice that if I skip it for about a week though, it starts to creep back. Once in awhile you need something stronger b/c something will make his eczema flare up. Then I use the Desonide that we have and usually after 1 application at bedtime, he wakes up in teh morning with it significantly reduced so that we can go back to the Aquaphor to clear the rest up.
Hi C.,
Rebecca's not crazy. She's right on the money. Eczema is systemic. That means it's caused from the inside. She is either not getting her nutrition or the nutrition she IS getting is not absorbing. Pharmaceuticals mask the problem and they don't heal it. Nutrition will absolutely heal it. I have helped moms get this under control quickly, simply and a lot cheaper than meds.
Go to a pharmaceutical grade store if you are going to shop. GNC, Walmart, etc have very low quality and some of their supplements are dangerous. If you want to go this route, I'd be glad to suggest some things.
God bless,
I do believe you have to treat it or else it will only get worse then you will need stronger ointment. My 2 kids (3 years old and 16 months) both have eczema. My 3 year old had it worst. It got better for him when he was 2 year old. Depending where the eczema is (my son had it around his mouth and body), I would always lather him up with lotion twice a day and it got better. When it got worse, then I started putting desonide (we had all kinds of prescribed ointment) and in 2-3 days, it would clear up.
I used Desonide on my sons severe eczema from about 3 months old to last year. It had no side effects and was the only thing that cleared it. When I voiced my concern about side efeects to my doctor he said that it was unlikely unless my son literally swallowed the cream-and even then, it'd have to be in large doses. I feel your pain with the dillema. I rationalized that it was better to use it then to have him so uncomfortable that he made himself bleed. I also found success in lukewarm baths with Mustella products and (believe it or not) Trader Joe's unscented moisturizing cream.
I had the same concerns but as my ped said, you want to get control of the ezcema - you should be more concerned about that now than the side effects. Hopefully, like in our case, we only had to use *very little* of it to see rapid and immediate changes.
This may sound crazy but is your daughter getting enough of the omegas? My child had eczema as a baby and I read a book called Super Immunity for Kids and it was all about the essential fatty acids and the lack thereof in our diets...and how it leads to chronic childhood illnesses, eczema being one of them. I started giving her flaxseed and evening primrose oils and her ezcema disappeared and she NEVER GETS SICK. So easy to do and it has made a huge difference for us. Now I do the same for daughter #2 and she doesn't even have eczema. All natural, no drugs/chemicals and easy to find (GNC stores, even grocery/drug stores carry them)...can't hurt to try. And get the book...it can change your lives.
I did use it to, the one with blue line and yellow numbers. It was one of the ones that work for us. However you should ONLY apply it in small amounts to small wounds.
To be honest, I was a little anxious too about using all this kind of medicine in my baby.
What worked for me better believe it or not (and I hope it can work for you too) is fist, bring her to an allergist. We found out that she was allergic to many things and once we stop giving her those things, we saw a big change.
Some of the things she was allergic were: Eggs, protein in milk, feathers (from our pillows) mushrooms from some of my face creams.
The second thing we did is stop all medicines and go for a more natural approach.
We start using Aquaphor healing ointment, Aveeno soothing baby bath.
We did use the medication too, but only when we saw ooze rash.
We give her showers only every 2 or 3 days, with warm water (hot water is not good at all).
She is 2 now and we barely see any break out and she out grow her allergy to milk, yay!!
PS: The doctor told us that vaseline was the same but for some reason Aquapor seem to work best, other good ones are Eucedrin and Lubriderm.
You should try which works best for you.
Hope this help
Eczema doesn't need a cream or an ointment, it needs to be treated from the inside out. Its probably a food issue, the most common are dairy and soy. My oldest had eczema and psoriasis, and his eczema will break open, bleed, crust over and cause him serious pain if he has too much dairy. It took us years to figure out how to treat it ,but once I stopped listening to doctors who wanted to only put bandaids on the problem instead of solving it, we got it right.
We cut out most dairy from his diet, he takes fish oil supplements and acidophilus probiotic daily. We do'nt treat the broken skin, it needs to dry out on its own. Since we started this treatment he's not had any broken open skin in 3yrs.
Eczema is a fungus that lives in the colon and presents on teh skin, and its allergy/sensitivity related. Figure out the problem, kee pa food journal, cut out her dairy (or yours if you are nursing). Get her some good acidophilus caplets you can break open for her, and some liquid fish oil supplements.
Do NOT use hydrocortizone! Its connected to cataracts in the eyes and it also weakens skin so its more susceptible to breakouts. It may work short term but its not worth the long term griefi t can cause.
I haven't used that but webmd.com is a great place to find out everything about any medicine. I used to have ezcema and I used cortizone cream intensive healing formula and it worked wonders.
We havve used it for my son for over 2 years, and never had a problem. We apply cetaphil lotion 2x daily...which helps keep him rash free. But also apply the medication for 5 days after the rash or spots are gone..
