Eczema: Solved on a Budget

Since I was a teenager dealing with typical teenage skin problems, I’ve known I had very oily skin. So I used cleansers that were clarifying (aka drying). That worked well for my oil problems, but then I found I had a new problem: dry skin. Very dry skin. And now, as an adult, I’ve noticed that my skin shows excessive dryness and is even wrinkling (gasp!).

In a moment of desperation, when my skin felt like it was going to crack in two, I had a thought. Could olive oil possibly help my skin? See, I didn’t want to go out and buy products that may make me break out or would break the bank, so I was hoping for a more economically friendly alternative that would also be healthy for my skin. So I got online and googled “Olive oil skin care”. This probably is old news to you, but I found that many people use olive oil as their moisturizer and many lotions contain olive oil. It has a lot of nutritional properties and is all natural. I like that.

I started using it and within seconds, my poor, dried out face felt fresh. Sure, at first, it felt oily. But after a minute or two, it felt amazing. And no, I haven’t had any breakouts because of it. I put it on after showering or swimming and instantly feel amazing. Just be careful not to get it on your hair or clothes (making the Terry Top a great asset when applying after showering!)

What I didn’t expect from my google search was when I read that olive oil might help eczema. My wonderful four year old has had terrible eczema since birth. We’ve tried all sorts of things to help with her breakouts: Aquafor, Eucerin, steroids, Vasoline, baby lotions, Avon lotions. (Janae posted about a great lotion she is using with her daughter here.) Some helped control it, but inevitably, if I forgot for a few days, it would be back with a vengeance.

I figured we had nothing to lose by trying good old fashioned olive oil on her skin. First, it was natural. Second, it was cheap. And third, it didn’t have additives in it that would make her skin burn. So I lathered it on.

I’d love to say that instantly her eczema cleared, but it didn’t. However, within a couple hours, I could tell a difference. And a couple days later, it was as though she had never had it. I wish I could adequately describe to you the extent of her eczema. If you have a child with eczema, you can envision it because you’ve probably seen it. Scratching until she bleeds, sores everywhere, redness all over her body, crying because of the pain, itching uncontrollably even though it hurts so badly to do so. Whereas many people have eczema in their crevices (backs of knees, inside elbows and armpits, etc), her’s covered literally every inch of her body from the neck down.

So to say that after just two days of using olive oil truly cleared up her eczema completely is a miracle to me. I feel her skin now and it is lusciously soft. She’s still super stubborn so getting her to let me put anything on her skin is a battle, but she’s much more willing with the olive oil because it goes on so easily and smoothly, and doesn’t burn. Still, a week may go by without application and the eczema may rear its ugly head again, but only a tiny bit, instead of a full fledged outbreak like we used to have.

Because pouring it out of the bottle was messy, I bought a bottle of hand soap for less than a buck, emptied the soap into another of our bottles, and refilled it with the olive oil.

Now I can just pump a little out at a time. It works great!

If you’ve tried everything and still have an eczema problem, or even just suffer from dry skin yourself, give it a shot. The likelihood of you having some in your house at this moment is high, so try it out! I hope it works for you as well as it works for us!