Beyond Eczema Cream: Root Cause Healing for Rashes

There are countless options for eczema cream on the market, and you’ve probably tried them all. Furthermore, if you or your little one has struggled with eczema for any period of time, you’ve also probably tried all kinds of prescription eczema cream options, too. From topical steroids to over-the-counter Aveeno, Eucerin, and herbal remedies, is there really an option that can get to the root cause? The good news is yes–eczema cream really can be part of the root cause solution for eczema. In this post, we will dive deep into the details of how eczema develops and how it can be intercepted naturally, whether using eczema cream or not.

What is Eczema?

Eczema is more than just a rash. While rashes can pop up for many reasons, ranging from viruses to allergies to toxins, eczema is an immune system reaction that involves inflammation of the skin barrier. While eczema may be (and often is) triggered by allergic pathways including food and contact allergies, it also may be triggered by other factors that provoke an immune response. Getting sick, excess stress, lack of sleep, topical irritation, growth patterns (in kids), or anything else that shifts the immune response may also provoke eczema.

But one of the important missing pieces in the eczema conversation (and which is especially important when it comes to topical eczema cream or related products) is what happens after the initial reaction starts in the skin. The eczema pathway goes like this:

1. Trigger
2. Immune response
3. Skin inflammation
4. Microbiome shifts
5. Triggering of the inflammatory cascade

Points 4 and 5 are especially important. While eczema may be triggered by many different things, the next steps are all the same. First, the immune system starts mounting a reaction at the level of the skin, which creates significant inflammation. These inflammatory shifts change the chemical environment of the skin, which impacts the microbiome.

Remember that the human microbiome refers to all the microbes (viruses, bacteria, yeast) that live in and on the human body without (typically) causing problems. Most of these are beneficial organisms which play an important role in maintaining human health and helping the immune system learn how to tolerate the surrounding environment. However, some of them can become pro-inflammatory, especially certain strains of Staphylococcus and Streptococcus that live in the gut and on the skin. When the skin environment shifts after an eczema trigger, this favors the overgrowth of those staph and strep species, which grow exponentially at the level of the skin barrier. The immune system (understandably) is provoked to become even more reactive, and all of a sudden a cascade of inflammation, infection and immune reactivity is triggered.

Eczema Cream that Truly Heals

Most eczema cream available over the counter works by moisturizing and calming down the itching to prevent further damage to the skin barrier. While this activity of the cream is helpful and arguably important (it’s hard to heal skin that is constantly being scratched), it’s not addressing the reason for the itching. In many cases, eczema-prone skin is not necessarily dry or itchy of its own right. (Remember the role of the microbiome, here!)

Eczema cream that contains steroids utilizes another pathway, by suppressing the immune response to halt the inflammatory cascade. Unfortunately, however, this also impedes healing because the inflammatory response plays a role in stimulating the regeneration of inflamed skin. (Note: this is also the pathway involved in biologic medications for eczema, such as dupilumab/DUPIXENT.) From the standpoint of functional medicine, immunosuppression is not root-cause healing when it comes to eczema.

On the flip side, eczema cream that can effectively interrupt the inflammatory provocation cycle is how to calm down flares and promote healing when eczema gets out of control. This is where ozonated olive oil comes in to play.

Ozonated olive oil is a topical eczema cream prepared by infusing olive oil with ozone. Ozone is a naturally occurring gas found in the air we breathe and Earth’s atmosphere. It’s formed from three atoms of pure oxygen, essential for life. However, it can be highly disruptive to bacteria which consist of only a single cell. When exposed to ozone, bacteria quickly die, which means they stop provoking the immune response.

Ozonated olive oil therefore serves as a topical antibiotic without bringing the risks of other kinds of antibiotics. It powerfully kills bacteria and removes the trigger for the immune system’s role in an eczema flare. As an eczema cream, it addresses one of the most important mechanisms involved in the eczema response. However, ozonated olive oil also has an additional benefit as an eczema cream. Like other natural oils, it naturally soothes and regenerates skin, but it also directly calms down the inflammatory response, including the initial eczema-triggered responses. So, not only does ozonated olive oil interrupt the bacterial provocation of the immune system, it interrupts the original eczema-triggered inflammation, too. Topical application of ozonated oils quickly reduce itching, redness and inflammation associated with a variety of skin conditions including atopic dermatitis (eczema), one of the most common childhood ailments.

Is Ozonated Olive Oil an Effective Eczema Cream?

As a functional medicine doctor who recommends ozonated olive oil to my patients on a daily basis, the answer is yes! Even more, because it directly kills bacteria (instead of just preventing them from multiplying) it is one of the fastest acting options for eczema cream available.

Check out these results:

Gut Health and Eczema

Of course, eczema is triggered by something, so simply calming down inflammation when it’s triggered isn’t the whole story, either. In these cases, we still need to pay attention to the whole microbiome at large.

In patients with eczema, strong bodies of research show that imbalances in the gut microbiome and intestinal barrier (i.e. “leaky gut) strongly influence the onset of eczema. It also has a strong correlation to allergies, which are similarly connected to gut health. Research shows that patients with eczema have a few key imbalances that predispose them to this condition:

1. Reduced levels of Bifidobacteria, Bacteroides and Streptococcus salivarius
2. Increased pathogenic bacteria
3. Increased intestinal permeability and disruption of the intestinal barrier

This all leads to immune dysregulation (and emphasis on the Th2 immune response), altered production of short chain fatty acids as well as full-body inflammation.

Treatment for Eczema

Because there are so many types of bacteria that grow in and on humans, and because so many different types of eczema exist, and because each patient is different, there truly is no one-size-fits-all solution for eczema. However, there are a few universal steps that are recommended in the field of functional medicine that are a great place for getting started:

1. Identify allergies. As a functional medicine doctor, I recommend IgE panels for all the major allergens, as well as for any foods consumed daily (i.e. blueberries every day for breakfast). In resistant or complex cases, I may also recommend IgG/IgA food sensitivity testing. I ask my patients to abstain from all triggers for a minimum of 3 months before reintroducing, depending on skin status.
   • Over the counter options: Equal Dx Food Allergy Test, EverlyWell Food Sensitivity Test
2. Test the gut microbiome. In order to fix gut microbiome and intestinal permeability problems, you need to know what’s in there. As a functional medicine doctor, I don’t always test for “leaky gut” in all patients at the first appointment, as certain patterns of dysbiosis plus the fact of eczema itself is a sure sign of intestinal permeability.
   • Over the counter options: TinyHealth
3. Supplement strategically: Of course, an essential part of healing involves correcting deficiency of good bacteria and correcting the presence of overgrowth. However, spore-forming strains are an essential piece of healing the gut, and research strongly supports the use of Bifidobacterium and Lactobacillus. Healing the histamine response to calm IgE-mediated eczema pathways, and taking steps to rebuild the skin and gut barrier (with glutamine, histidine and proline) are also essential for healing the root cause.
   • Bifidobacteria
   • Lactobacillus
   • DAO
   • Spore-forming Probiotics
   • Histidine
4. Eczema cream: Ozonated olive oil is a quick way to calm down existing flares. In between, and to support the skin barrier, I recommend that my patients use vitamin C serum and postbiotic saccharomyces ferment medium, followed by a thick barrier cream at night.

The results sound sensational from a plan like this, but it’s a miracle I see every day in my practice. From eczema cream that actually works, to treating the root cause by digging deep into the microbiome, functional medicine has the answers for eczema, psoriasis and other skin conditions that are often mistreated in the standard medical community. That doesn’t have to be the case for you or your family anymore!

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