See I don’t, sometimes when it comes, flares up, I wonder whether it’s something I’ve eaten. But it’s one of those things that I literally have to, I’d have to have a diary and a food diary, and I’d have to monitor everything I did and the extent that is just on my hands and the fact that I know when it flares up I can put creams and stuff on it. For me personally, I’m not going to bother, at the moment anyway. It’s not worth it to spend all that time like recording everything I do and thinking about everything and, cos otherwise your life you’d be like, ‘Oh should I do this, should I do that,’ and you just go, like get on with it. So, I think more recently, probably there are things that might still be a problem but not that big a problem that I, it affects me too much.

I think my other piece of a-, my other piece of advice would be to consider like maybe things that might be causing your eczema that you’d never think of before. So things like hairspray, spray deodorant, shampoo. You don’t even think of them as coming into contact with where you have eczema. So you don’t even think they’re gonna cause it. But then actually once you take them out you might see a change. So think a bit more what-, what could this be other than what I think it is?’ And if your eczema’s really bad, I think have a real like, go through everything that you’re using and your whole routine and what you’re doing day to day. And you might just have to strip it completely back and, and start from really like the basics and then build up again until you can work out which products to use. Cos sometimes you might feel like you’re doing everything, but there’s something that you, that you’re doing that you haven’t even clicked. Or there’s something that you haven’t realised you’re doing all the time that could be making it worse. So I think you have to like look at it from a step back if you really wanna control it and manage it.

Oh that’s the other thing it’s massively affected by stress so A-level’s actually because that’s when it got really bad because I was so stressed with academic work then my eczema got really, really bad and it’s, I’ve kind of not managed to get it back to the level it was at pre A-level because since then obviously I went straight to Uni and then I didn’t come home after University I went straight into the working environment so I’ve sort of got bills to pay, I’ve got rent, l’ve got all this living by myself and 300 miles away from my family. So it’s the stress kind of, stress levels haven’t really dropped so I think because it became so much more painful in those when I went into A-level’s I think that’s when it kind of took over from the cosmetic thing.

Stress is really bad for it.

OK

But not every kind of stress because stress at work, it doesn’t affect it. Friends not really, only family, and I just, I just told you about, I just thought about it with my mother when I was home a couple of weeks ago that I’m kinda like-, I like to dictate and I like to be the ruler. I like to tell people what to do and I don’t really like when they tell me. And at work when they try to push me down.

I always go like, Yeah OK, I just let them. I smile at them and I ask like, Yeah OK, it’s alright, and when they calm down and then I give everything back.

[Laughs]

But I cannot do this one with my parents because I love my family and they stress me a lot and my brother as well. And my brother is like the closest person for me in the world but he can stress me in such a bad way [laughs]. No-one can make me feel as stressed as him.

If I’m sad it doesn’t trigger the eczema, if I’m only sad. Only the stress and only this kind of emotional stress everyday, driving a car; someone comes in front of me; I get angry, I push the horn it doesn’t change my skin. Work or other stuff. It’s mostly emotional, only my ex-girlfriends could trigger it, and then my family. Yeah.

Because those are the kind of relationships that I cannot push down in how I would like to. Because at work it’s easy because if, even if it’s my boss and tells me something really bad, I can still punch him. They’re going to fire me who cares, I’ll find another job, but I cannot do this with my father or my mother [laughs], so that’s kind of really bad because I have all this pressure inside me and I just think can’t get it out. And then my mother comes to me and, Hey, talk about it. I don’t want to talk about it because I talk about it and then I get angry again [laughs] and it makes no sense. For me.

Yeh, yeh stress definitely sorry. it would definitely flare my skin up cos I’m at that point where I’m panicking I guess and I can’t control myself so I don’t know what to do so then my skin will get bad and that will lead to me itching even more and then you’re getting even more frustrated and putting more stress on me basically so it’s not a good time to be honest when I’m stressed. But I do, I’m trying to control it better now but I could still do with improvement if that makes sense so yeh.

So is that some of the techniques that your drama teacher taught you?

Yeh definitely like I think one of them was to like breath in and out until ten, slowly like cross your fingers and just like tense your whole body so you feel calm afterwards once you’ve tensed it for a couple of seconds and stuff like that so yeh. I do try to do that more often now if I get stressed but I haven’t been stressed lately so yeh.

Do you get sort of a sense that a flare up is on its way or does it just come out of the blue?

Well now I can tell like, when like seasons change and weather changes I can tell that my skins going to be bad but I can control it now cos I’m at that age where I can understand how to control it. So it’ll probably flare up for a week or just go bad for a week because of the weather change or season change then after that it’s alright, so yeh.

What kind of weather or season change?

Oh all sorts like if it went from really cold to really hot all of a sudden my skin would have to adjust to an extent so it would have to flare up, not too much anymore, but you would still change and go bad for around a week and then once its controlled it will be alright, back to normal if that makes sense, so yeh.

So, why are people with eczema not always given allergy tests?

Because most people with eczema aren’t actually allergic to anything. So mostly children with eczema, young people with eczema, have – they do have a higher risk of allergy because their skin is leaky. And we’re looking at more ways of improving their- reducing their risk of getting allergies, by really directing skin- you know, sort of skin-targeted measures. So, increasing the barrier function by emollients, and reducing inflammation. Because those are the two things which happen first of all. In the most part, allergies develop on the background of bad eczema. So, I mean, we now know a little bit more about that, that actually what probably happens is that if their skin- because we know their skin barrier is, is sort of leaky, they’re more prone to allergens entering the skin and developing allergies. It’s very common for people with eczema to develop things like hay fever, and occasionally asthma. And really, the only reason for allergy tests is if you’re going to change your management, if it’s going to affect what someone does. So we know that they have a quite high risk of being sensitised to normal things in the environment such as grasses, pollens, trees. But really, that information is not going to change what you do because you can’t avoid grasses, pollens and trees. So allergy testing to those is not that useful. The only time that we actually do allergy testing is when it’s going to change what we do. And that’s probably in the context of food allergy.

People would love to have a test that said why they got eczema, and have one particular thing that they can avoid or change in their lifestyle. Unfortunately it’s such a complex process, and they’re probably over-reacting to lots of different things, and that’s only part of the reason why they got eczema. So it’s not that we can do a test and say, Okay, you can avoid tomatoes, and you’re not going to have eczema again. That’s not really going to be the case. So actually the only time we really do allergy testing is if they’ve had a, what we call an immediate response to food. And in that case, you know, they’re almost- it’s almost, they almost know that they’ve got this allergy anyway. But for very young children, allergy testing can be useful. Generally for older children, unless they, you know, they’ve got an immediate reaction to food, then just doing a lot of allergy tests is not very useful. There are two different types of allergy testing. So there’s the one that you look the kind of immediate type response, which is something called IgE. And that would be, so food allergies can cause that, and you would be able to test that either by a prick test on the skin or a blood test, which is called a RAST test, IgE. The other type of allergy is the contact eczema that we talked about briefly. And that would be looking at doing something called patch testing, to see if there’s anything that they’re reacting to on the skin, left on the skin. So it’s a different type of reaction that tends to take longer to come up, and it’ll come up as a form of eczema. And that again is only really indicated if you’ve got an in depth suspicion that they might be reacting to something that’s going on the skin, such as a topical treatment or something like that. It’s a very complex area. And it’s certainly not, you know, it’s not advisable just to do lots of allergy tests if you can’t use the information usefully and it’s not going to change how you manage your skin and your other conditions.

One of my other medical things is I have like a, I think it’s called allergic rhinitis where my nose is permanently blocked basically and dust and mould and stuff trigger that off so if I’m in like a kind of damp house or something, like my house in second year was really, really damp and it made that worse but I think in my mind eczema and those like the dust and mould allergies are kind of related because when I’m sneezing I get itchy as well.

So yeh so I’d consider allergies to be more of an impact on me because they’re something that I can’t deal with so much.

So like, basically I avoid a lot of things like just, just like basic things like, you know, if people are stroking horses or animals or cats or dogs, I just don’t do that because I just know it’s not really worth it cos I’ll get asthmatic or I’ll get really bad bumpy skin. So, like when it’s, generally day to day with the eczema, it’s either dry or if it’s infected it will be like red and broken skin. But then, when it gets allergies it comes like bumps, like kind of like it yeh just bumpy and like kind of white or sort of lighter skin of bumps and really itchy, yeh really itchy. And so I just avoid situations like that and actually to the point where lots of people, lots of my friends, sometimes when I’ve known them for a few years, they actually don’t know that I’ve got asthma or too many allergies because I don’t make a big thing of it, you just avoid those situations, like you just don’t touch animals. Or, for example, food types, I just don’t eat apples or unless they’re cooked. It’s a very strange, like plums, apples, peaches, nectarines loads of fruit I can eat it when it’s cooked. Cherries, I can eat them when they’re cooked but not when they’re raw.

And so it just comes up in a, and also I get like asthmatic and, yeh. And the mouth I looked it up recently what it is; it’s to do with pollen and it’s very much around the mouth, like the mouth becomes really inflamed and like really tight here [gestures to throat]. And so it’s just, that’s not worth it. And also, sometimes the thing that, as I was growing up, that was quite something that I sort of always had to be prepared for, was taking the antihistamines and inhaler with me to all my friends’ houses because they, if they had dogs, cats or even if a cat or a dog had been in the house, I would become, especially at sleepovers there would I’ve had quite a lot of sleepovers where I haven’t slept cos I’ve been wheezing all night and not being able to and being itchy and things like that. So, you just have to always sort of be prepared for an outbreak.

I am also allergic to grass and dust mites. But for the trees and grass I had something called immunotherapy, which is quite a new sort of treatment that I was fortunately able to get off the NHS, because it does cost a lot. And it’s sort of helped me deal with tree and grass allergies a lot easier, so I don’t I don’t feel breathless easier, because I used to notice when I used to do cross country running that by the end of it I would find it really hard to breathe. So even playing sports in the field, I would find it really hard to breathe. But since the immunotherapy, which took which took four years, which is very long for it took a lot of dedication. Since the immunotherapy I have been a lot better. And hay fever hasn’t been a severe issue of mine anymore, which is good, because I do really enjoy the outdoors.

Well there were two options. There was the injection option, which would mean coming into hospital and having an injection every two weeks. But me being afraid of needles, [laughs] I obviously didn’t go for that option. The alternative was, these sort of mouth drops which I am guessing have like a condensed part of a tree or grass inside [laughs] or the parts that actually were I guess the allergens. So, that involved spraying or putting droplets of the substance in your mouth, once a day. The first time I tried it, I had an allergic reaction. So then, they had to give me a starter pack, which is more or less concentrated, so I was able to sort of get myself used to it a lot quicker. But yeah it was, it was very, it was hard, especially when you would forget. And then, sometimes, the underneath of my tongue where you are supposed to place the droplets and leave them for about two minutes, that part would swell up and go really numb. So, yeah, it was a very long process. It did mean I had to miss like certain amounts at school.

I got into quite a bad cycle for quite a few years actually, of when it was really itching me. I’d go to the toilet, or go to the sink in the kitchen and run it under hot water cos it like soothes it and relieves it. But obviously it’s not very good cos that’s like taking any moisture out of it really. And then I’d moisturise it again. Because basically I think that if it, sometimes when it’s really itchy or irritated I think it’s because it’s just like got something irritated, that’s irritated on it. So I’ve touched something or, you know, food or anything. So I just like ran it under hot water and everything which, sometimes relieved and stuff and it would help cos it would dry it out completely and take anything off and then you’d put the moisturiser on.

But it’s probably not the best thing. And also like if it had been a food thing, putting hot water would continue cooking the thing on your skin rather than, cold water would probably be better. But, because it was just like, you want instant relief so, that’s what I used to do which is probably not good practice.

At first it was such a chore because you don’t realise how much it’s in everything and it literally is in everything and actually really, really luckily so the first year it was kind of just finding the products that didn’t have it and then now I’ve just got, I know what shampoos I can buy and what shower gels I can buy and what not. And so and kind of like 12 months after we found out about parabens, it kind of came trendy not to have parabens in because I think everyone should avoid them apparently but me especially [laughs] so that’s been really lucky and that like now brands will advertise This is paraben free’ which kind of has broadened what I can use. So now it has like so little effect but for a long time it was really frustrating like taking my whole make-up bag and like chuck, chuck, chuck [laughs] and now, but now I know what to buy so it’s fine.

And then like kind of with products, like one of the biggest things that I never realised is that like you can have eczema on your body from using products on your hair. So I, like when I was researching it online I found someone had discovered that they were allergic to shampoo. And this was kind of like one of those like oh, my goodness. Like that’s probably what I’m allergic to. Because when you wash your hair with shampoo and then it runs all down your body. And then that’s why I think I was getting it on my back. So then like begins the process of trying to find a shampoo that you’re like not allergic to or doesn’t have sulphates in or like other like ingredients that can be quite-, what, what’s the word? Like that can cause a reaction. That’s quite difficult. There’s not many shampoos that you can buy, and when you do buy them they don’t work at all. So [laughs] that’s really annoying. And conditioners. And then mascara, definitely like eye make-up remover I think is really bad. And I always tell people who have like bad eczema on their face like, Just stop using it. So you can use mascara that you can take off with hot water and then you don’t even have to use eye, eye m-, make-up remover at all. I stopped using soaps and face washes for a while cos the doctors just said, You don’t even need it. But now I like use special ones that I don’t think cause a reaction. I think one of the other things as well people don’t think about that could be causing them eczema is hairspray and spray deodorant. So spray deodorant was giving me eczema on my eyes. I had really bad eczema on my eyes. I couldn’t think what it was. Like I hadn’t changed anything. And then I realised I’d changed my deodorant. And I think like when you spray something it can go all over and you don’t realise like that it’s settling on your skin. So then I stopped using a spray deodorant and I only use those weird roll-on ones [laughs] that don’t smell as good.