Summertime and the living's greasy

So turns out summer hasn't brought the skin relief I'd hoped it would. Not that I'm all that surprised, a seasonal shift would require there to be seasons, and my town's usually pretty mild all year-round. Winter dryness is the bane of all eczema sufferers, though I sure could use a little more vitamin D in this foggy July.

January felt like a revelation -- no bathing! No products -- but 6 months and another failed elimination diet later, I'm back to needing to leave work to come home and bathe and medicate my skin, dressing it like a salad with apple cider vinegar (oh it BURNS so good) before soothing it with petroleum jelly. While being the only substance seemingly inert enough to not provoke a reaction, I've decided Vaseline just isn't an acceptable alternative to avocado, olive oil, grape seed oil and vitamin E. The cancer risk seems too great with the sheer amount of the stuff I slather. But all the natural alternatives cause eruptions. 

And it really did feel like an eruption today when the new polyester shirt I was wearing adhered to the ClearSkin-E Cream I'd put on my stomach this morning and I broke out in little red itchy goosebumps all over my torso. On a conference call. So maybe nerves had some role in the outbreak too.

I've been tracking all the possible variables in a diagnostic spreadsheet again -- indicators like mood, allergies/asthma, skin, all on a scale of 1-10 on the same axis as likely food allergies, water consumption, exercise, stress (at home and work), hormones, clothing. The idea is I gather enough data and I'll be able to plot it all on a graph and see some correlations. 

Trouble is that the variables aren't isolated since I went back to a normal diet after 3 weeks on the Whole Living 2012 detox(TM). My skin didn't fully clear up during that period, and it was pretty rough. I dropped 10 pounds in a matter of days on raw fruits and veggies (I quickly added meat since beans, nuts and other veggie proteins are off-limits), and felt sunken and exhausted. I was constantly in the kitchen, juicing, smoothie-ing or roasting veggies, and I spent a fortune on produce. And I didn't see the results I wanted. Skin was still patchy and dry (though I suppose that's better than the hair-trigger high alert it's on now).

So I fell off the bandwagon -- ate a salmon banh-mi after a particularly weak, light-headed day of physical exertion and seasickness. Decided I didn't react to the gluten (and who knows what the typical reaction time is anyway? Could be 20 min, could be 5 hours, so I'm never confident about pinpointing the cause). Then I went back to dairy, caffeine and booze over the weekend. All at once (stupidly). Felt like I'd been shot in the gut after a sugary vodka drink, so sugar was persona non grata in Heather land. Felt it after brownies too, and fried green beans, so pulses and oil were suspect.

The cure of the moment -- that salve or superfood that I research and shell out loads of dough on and pin my hopes to -- is raw milk. While controversial (to big agribiz), proponents have hailed it as a miracle non-drug for allergies, asthma and eczema, all things steroidally treated.  I figure I'll take my chances, give that overactive immune system something to do other than attack me.


If I go MIA, I'm either cured or dead.