This coming week is Eczema Awareness Week – which is especially apt for Australia which has the highest incidence of eczema in the world!  According to the Eczema Association 30% of Australian children live with eczema.  Before this one I didn’t know there was an Eczema Awareness Week and I’m not sure what you do in an Eczema Awareness Week but I do know about living in a family that suffers from eczema.  If there was ever something you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy it’s eczema. Sure it’s not the ebola virus and there are worse diseases/afflictions going around but eczema makes up for its lack of a killer punch with sheer persistence, absolute discomfort and a cruel knack for emerging at stressful and inconvenient times.  And it doesn’t help things when breakouts are so visible.  The search for relief can be desperate and incredibly frustrating (we have a depressing collection of creams at our house. I’m sure snake oil was originally formulated for eczema sufferers).

Like other inflammatory illnesses links with eczema are beginning to be made with poor gut health (a favourite topic at Fair Food you may have noticed). So if, like me, the expression Leaky Gut Syndrome gives you the heebees then a good gut flora promoting diet with whole foods, lots of veggies, ferments like yoghurt, sauerkraut, kimchi, kefir and kombucha and keeping off the bad gut flora promoting foods like white sugar and other refined carbs is probably not a bad idea and it doesn’t have the side effects of steroid creams and tablets. 

Anyway, this is a very long road to go down with lots of dead ends it seems, so if you’ve got eczema in your family my heart goes out to you and if you know someone with eczema spare them a thought this Eczema Awareness Week (which BTW is perfectly timed to match with all those spring pollen eczema triggers, not sure if that’s great marketing or a bit on the mean side).  

I asked Alex, Fair Food’s grocery procurer, for a list of all the fragrance free and unscented products we have – apparently more are on the way.  And if you’re after any of the fermented foods mentioned above – they’re available too. Read more …