Skin update: My skin has been a LOT better since changing things in the previous posts. I no longer wake up with the area around my eyes hurting, with a face that looks wrecked, and haven’t had skin so dry it felt like cracking and peeling right off in weeks. I can go about my daily activities with little to no bother and I no longer feel like hiding my face. (For example, I stayed out late last night with a friend and had a few drinks and my skin is not really the worse for wear, which I couldn’t have done a few weeks/months back!) My skin is definitely making its own moisture again (to the point where I have had to actually dial DOWN my moisturization-cream level because I started breaking out with acne, but that is a-ok!) I think some of this is also helped by the warmer weather, which has been really nice.
But, my skin is not totally healed yet. I still have some mild but annoying “peri-oral dermatitis” on each corner of my mouth, the dry rashy patch on my jawline (though it’s gotten smaller) and I still have some mild dryness around the eye area. I’m being patient with this, as the skin around the eyes is thin and fragile, so I know it might take a while to be completely back to normal.
The “peri-oral dermatitis” (I’m putting that in quotes because I am not sure if that’s what it truly is) has changed from being super dry, to being more flaky and uneven textured, but not super dry. Because it doesn’t have the same level of irritation as the skin around my eyes had, I am making the reasonable hypothesis that there were really two separate issues going on causing my rashes – a primary issue, and then a secondary irritation (potentially caused or aggravated by things I have now stopped using or switched, such as my eye makeup, shampoo, hairspray, and laundry detergent).
My physician had me do a 132-food sensitivity test a few weeks ago and I recently got the results back. I could do a whole separate post investigating the ‘science’ behind these tests, as there seems to be a lot of mixed data with some consensus being that they can be misleading. However, I had a 96 food test years ago that actually DID help as it pointed to many inflammatory foods that truly did provide me improvement once I eliminated them and then very gradually re-introduced them.
So one of my theories now is that the lingering ‘peri-oral dermatitis’ is based on something I am consuming, so I was eager to see the results of my 132 food test. Here they are:
SOME of the purported issue with food sensitivity tests is that they are picking up on levels in your body, which can either be caused by true inflammation, or because you ate that food recently. I should have recorded what I ate the night before the test (and my doctor said to just eat normally), but I am pretty sure I had lentil soup, spinach salad, and some kind of bread. The 2+ reactions of walnuts and hazelnuts are interesting as I never eat those (and actually, walnuts flagged off the charts on the 96 food test I took years ago and I’ve never really gone back to eating them, as I don’t care about them one way or the other), so those are probably legitimate.
The gluten flagging honestly doesn’t surprise me, as gluten tends to make me feel tired, achy, and not as well recovered. I already know I feel better when I avoid it, as tasty as it is. Peas flagging is interesting too – in my reading of labels, I realized that I typically consume at least two things with pea protein most days of the week – my protein powder, and these protein bars I enjoy. Also interesting, my brother is legitimately allergic to peas (and beans, and many other things).
The **IDEAL** way to handle this data would be to eliminate all of these foods for at least probably 8 weeks, and then gradually try re-introducing them one at a time. A long process. It’s an extremely busy month for me where right now, I’m simply doing my best at avoiding all of these foods while not striving for absolute perfection. (Gluten is the hardest as I do crave it!) Once this month calms down a little, I’ll be much more systematic in eliminating them and then monitoring my progress, and seeing if that solves my “peri-oral dermatitis” rash!
eczemaexcellence 