Hello, Dry Season! Hello, Skin Asthma!

Ugh, I hate the weather. I really do hate the weather.

I live in a tropical country. We do not have “spring.” It’s just wet and dry season. Wet season is where the rain is and cool air and such. Dry season is heat, heat, heat, heat and more heat. And lately, the weather’s spiking up at 36°! It’s way too hot! And this is only the beginning. There’s an El Niño coming. I heard it will last until August. Somebody save me! D:

I can’t sleep well due to heat and my atopic dermatitis (skin asthma) keeps acting up. My entire body is itchy and full of rashes and small wounds from the dry/scaly skin, to the point that creams doesn’t seem to have an effect anymore. Luckily, it doesn’t occur much on my face, unless I went out and stayed under the sun for some time (like more than 15 minutes or something). But from my neck down, especially on my back, lower tummy and legs, are full of small wounds and scaly skin. 🙁

I’m trying to take less antihistamine because I’m getting immune to it. Sometimes, when flare ups are worse than normal, I needed to take more tablets. I don’t wanna reach that point where I needed to take a seriously large dosage of it to relieve myself. So, I’ve been fighting my flare ups by doing different things I read online. This may help you as a tip, in some ways, so I’m posting it.

To keep my flare ups at minimum, I do things such as:

• using unscented bath soap (I use the unscented Dove soap)
• using mild lotions often (I used Jergens Fragrance Free lotion and Nivea Baby Smoothy Cream – yes, the lotion for babies)
• increasing liquid intakes (about 2-3 liters of water a day)
• taking multivitamins (Clusivol) and vitamin c (generic ones from Generics Pharmacy x3, lol) everyday
• avoiding eating too much foods that causes allergies like foods like eggs, milk, peanuts, wheat, soya, fish, shellfishes (I still eat them, but not too often)
• eating fruits like apples, grapes, oranges, etc. ( I love apples!)
• exercise (I walk long distances to and from work, everyday!)
• avoiding exposure to too much sunlight (according to my dermatologist when I caught some weird viral skin disease before, the best times to expose your skin to sunlight are from 6-9 am and anything beyond that is already harmful for the skin)
• avoid dogs, cats, and furry animals
• avoiding dirty places, places with too much heat and pollution, and places with a lot of people smoking

Other things that I do not do/doesn’t really concern me, but may be of help to you as well:

• keeping stress at minimum (impossible when you’re working, but I try!)
• eating omega-3 rich foods (I’m not sure how to go about on this)
• quit smoking (I don’t smoke)
• avoid drinking alcohol; occasional (grape) wine is okay (I don’t drink too because I’m also allergic to alcohol)
• avoid spicy foods (I despise spicy foods! XD)

I found a few other tips online too that were shared by people with skin asthma or parents with children with skin asthma. I haven’t tried applying Glycerine that Camille suggested in this post, and I plan on trying it soon. But I’ve tried damping a hot towel with Lipton tea on myself (because I was once gifted by Lipton a lot of tea) by the suggestion of MYR on her post, and it works! You should seriously try the Lipton thing because teas (especially Oolong tea), I read somewhere, are great with skin asthma.