“If you don’t take care of this the most magnificent machine that you will ever be given…where are you going to live?” ― Karyn Calabrese
An effective hand eczema treatment involves a holistic body cleansing process that can be broken down into the following steps:
- removing inflammation-causing agents from one’s home and diet
- alkalizing/hydrating the body with nutritious, organic raw foods (especially astringent fruit)
- healing the body with food and herbs, gentle exercise, balanced emotions (no stress), and rest
- hydrating the skin with antifungal and anti-inflammatory natural moisturizers, such as coconut oil, shea butter, and cocoa butter
The skin membrane is the largest organ in our body. It is the barrier between our internal ecosystem and the external world – literally, the boundary between us and our outside world. Its function is to help us perspire to help the body push out acidic and metabolic waste through sweat.
It is a permeable organ that, with the help of its pores, breathes in oxygen and breathes out toxic gases that need to be detoxed from the body – just like the lungs.
That is why it absolutely matters what type of environment we surround ourselves in, what material of clothes we wear (including the detergents/chemicals we use to wash them) as well as what we put on our skin.
If we treat our skin like a dead, non-living entity that can withstand the chemical cocktail we bombard it with on daily basis in the form of makeup, skin lotions, perfumes, and other cosmetics, depending on our genetics, the skin itself may not show the resulting short-term degeneration, but our internal cells and tissues will be impacted adversely over time.
Likewise, the regular burden of detoxifying these chemicals on our elimination organs will weaken their function and their ability to detoxify our bodies over time.
If you wouldn’t eat it, you shouldn’t place it on the skin!
The Root Cause of Eczema and Other Chronic Skin Diseases
Eczema, psoriasis, dermatitis, acne, and other skin issues are simply the composite effects of a weak skin membrane, weakened elimination organs (kidneys and the lymphatic system), and intracellular metabolic waste that is pushed out by the body through oozing, congregating in pockets and/or burning from the inside out.
Undoubtedly, an effective hand eczema treatment starts with alkalizing the body’s lymphatic fluid and strengthening kidney function, so that the kidneys can better purge water-soluble waste and acids from the body – relieving the skin from the compensatory burden of doing so.
The Importance of Kidney Filtration in Detoxification
The lymphatic system is one of the most unknown and mysterious systems of the body, whose function is systemic (head to toe) and which is composed of a vast network of interstitial channels that carry cellular waste from tissues and organs to the kidneys, skin, and bowels to be expelled from the body! It is the sewer system of the body that helps to keep it clean from acids and waste.
Just like we go to the bathroom, so do our cells – and this waste must be expelled out of the body so that our cells and tissues do not bathe in their own toxic waste.
A properly functioning lymphatic system can clean, carry and expel cell waste from the body efficiently through a healthy lifestyle and the optimal functioning of all the elimination organs, especially the kidneys, which excrete cellular waste (the lymph fluid) out of the body.
Although the liver is one of the major detoxification organs in the body that works like an alchemical lab – converting non-water-soluble toxins from the blood into water-soluble byproducts that can safely be purged from the body – it is not an elimination organ. The byproducts it converts are purged through the colon and out of our body.
The kidneys, on the other hand, work with the cellular waste system – the lymph system – to purge toxins out of the body through urine production and elimination. If the lymphatic system is unable to do its job and carry waste out of the body through the kidneys, the acidic waste becomes “stuck” in and around tissues and causes degeneration over time.
Optimal kidney filtration ensures that the cellular waste that accumulates daily is eliminated right away before it leads to chronic inflammation. Overall, focusing on strengthening the liver and kidneys is essential during the detox and healing process so that environmental toxins and intracellular metabolic waste can be properly eliminated before they cause health issues.
Consequently, we can see disease formation in those areas of the body that are often the weakest or the most genetically compromised.
How to Improve the Lymphatic System Function
By being aware of our bodily weaknesses, especially through the multiple diagnostics available in naturopathy, and helping our lymphatic system function optimally, we can ensure that our weaker bodily areas are not further compromised and have a chance to regenerate.
Ways to improve the flow of the lymphatic system:
- Consuming an alkaline diet
- Eating less or no complex protein (which is hard to break down for the kidneys)
- Dry skin brushing, which promotes circulation of the lymph
- Light physical activity (which preferably involves sweating)
- Lymphatic massage and dry brushing
- Fasting
Skin conditions, allergies, colds, and flu are simply symptoms of a backed-up lymphatic/immune system…and the solution is detoxification!
Understanding The Body’s Energy Flow
Understanding that we are energetic beings that run on energy as fuel is the essential precept of knowing how our reality and how the concepts of wellness work.
If we spend more energy digesting and healing the body because of our poor lifestyle, we will have less energy available to lead energetic, optimal, and vital lives. Because our food, thoughts, and lifestyle fuel our body with energy or extract from it, everything we do either provides us with energy or depletes it.
When it comes down to it, we are walking energy units and the amount of energy we have depends on what we eat, the state of our emotions, our thoughts, and how we choose to spend energy daily.
Optimal wellness is predicated on the premise that we have more energy reserves than our body spends daily on digestion, the thinking process, activity, healing, and regeneration.
If we eat poorly, not only do we lower our energetic state with the low consciousness of the food, but we also use extra energy that the body has to rob from our cells and compensate for to digest and process the chemistry of this food.
Have you ever had to take a long nap after a complex meal? That was exactly your body’s way of saying “I don’t have the energy to digest this food and have you keep active using more of my stored energy, so I will shut you down for the time being and once I’m done with digesting this meal, I will turn you back on.” This shows you exactly how the body’s intelligence kicks in to inform us how our choices impact our state of being.
Food is one of the main fuels that the body uses for generating energy, making new cells, and healing. It converts its chemistry to keep us alive by nourishing and healing tissues and organs. Its role is further supported by other healers we have at our disposal – our thoughts and emotions:
- Thoughts and emotions do the same thing that food does – either bring positive energy resonance to our bodies or create acids through our body’s chemical response to the negative state of being, the perceived or real threats, and low vibrational mindset.
- Our body is not aware that what we think, absorb and experience may not actually be real (it may just be our thought perceptions of what is happening or emotional upheaval experienced because of the horror movie we just watched), so it will react to how our mind perceives the external world and will prepare to meet the demands of that world accordingly.
This is exactly why it is essential to be mindful of our emotions, thoughts, and lifestyle – of everything we engage with and consume energetically. This includes what we read, watch, think and experience, since the energetic imprint of all these experiences has a sum effect on our holistic state of awareness and wellness.
When What We Eat Becomes Energetically Costly
Our bodies are designed to act as biological machines that break down and convert chemistry to energy. Our digestive and elimination organs simplify, transform and assimilate food chemistry into cellular fuel that provides nourishment to our bodies – giving us the optimal vitality to have the ability to manifest our life’s desires (transforming cellular energy into kinetic energy through the thought/action alchemy).
By ensuring the health and longevity of our bodies and our minds, we truly invest in ourselves and the manifestation of the vision we want to bring into this world.
Most of today’s food we eat comes from supermarkets and is packaged, preserved, and formulated to have a long shelf-life; even the fruits and veggies produce section is seldom organic.
And even if we are lucky to find organic food, most produce is picked before it’s ripe, is shipped across the globe, and is potentially radiated and pasteurized to “remove organic compounds,” which are vital to our health and are key to a healthy gut flora!
The best we can do is to go with the most ideal options we have in those circumstances, and if possible, grow our own fruits and veggies during the spring and summer seasons. If we are confined to supermarket availability, here are a few tips on how to choose the food that will provide energy (alkalinity) as opposed to robbing us of it (acidosis):
- If it’s packaged in any form, limit its intake.
- If you do buy packaged food, always read the label and check the ingredients; if the ingredients list preservatives, colorings, trans fats, flavorings, corn syrup, artificial or complex sugar sweeteners, chemicals that you can’t pronounce, or anything suspicious, don’t buy them.
- Always buy organic produce in season, and as locally as possible.
- A great option is to buy frozen fruits and veggies; usually, they are picked the ripest by producers, since they will be frozen and preserved in that state to ensure the best flavor. This means that frozen fruits and veggies have the best nutritional quality and since they are frozen not long after they are picked, they don’t ferment and lose their nutritional value like other produce. Another perk is that they will not go bad in your fridge and you can store them for as long as you like! If you have an opportunity to pick ripe fruits and veggies from an organic garden at the end of the summer season, a personal recommendation is to freeze them and enjoy them in the fall and winter months.
How the Body Digests Chemistry and Uses Energy
You can think about it this way: you eat a croissant that has been made from conventional, white flour, various fats (including trans fats), table salt, processed sugars, and marmalade that has been highly processed with coloring and artificial flavors.
Your body then kicks into gear by using 70% of all your stored energy (the other 30% is always utilized by the brain to keep your nervous system online, so to speak) that is available that it has to then arrange to keep the whole system working optimally.
It uses the energy to break down and process the croissant and deliver its chemistry to the body parts that need the energy to function. However, since the croissant doesn’t have the chemistry the body needs, the body uses even more of its stored energy to compensate for and eliminate the toxic chemicals that were produced.
Photo source: justhealthyway.com
Once we understand that everything in life – including how our bodies work – is about the net gain and loss of energy, we can be more empowered to conserve the energy that our bodies desperately require through nutrition, rest, meditation, quality sleep, and time in nature (our biology becomes more balanced when we are in our primal environment).
When we feed the body the chemistry it needs, our net energy reserves will increase significantly and the body will have more energy to devote to detoxing poisons and healing the tissues that are either genetically weak or chronically weakened due to our lifestyle choices.
Final Thoughts
The symptoms of hand eczema are nothing but the symptoms of internal chronic inflammation and the inability of the lymphatic system and the kidneys to move and purge acidic and metabolic waste out of the body properly. That’s where the skin comes in like a superhero – compensating for the weaker function of its elimination organ friends!
So, what are the best long-term and natural hand eczema treatments? It is a treatment protocol that prioritizes cleansing the body and strengthening its elimination organs.
By strengthening the kidneys with a proper detoxification protocol and a kidney-friendly diet, and helping the lymphatic system move through light exercise, sweating, and dry skin brushing (or gentle lymphatic massage), you will eliminate the root cause of your hand eczema and help the body reverse chronic inflammation.
In addition, prioritizing light exercise, dry brushing/gentle lymphatic massage, and living an emotionally balanced life with plenty of relaxation will supplement your diet’s alkalizing effects and bring even more beneficial healing results.
This article is an excerpt from my free guide, The Ultimate Guide to Healing All Skin Issues (in only 3 months!), which you can find at the bottom of my landing page. It covers everything from food nutrition, lifestyle changes, the essentials of body detox, and cellular regeneration in 20 pages of comprehensive naturopathic information and advice.