350: What Drives Itchy Skin In Kids (And Natural Childhood Eczema Treatment Options To Stop It) w/ Jennifer Brand, MS, MPH, CNS

The Healthy Skin Show

Childhood eczema treatment options can get confusing fast, especially if you don’t know what’s driving your child’s itchy skin rash in the first place.
If your child is scratching constantly, it’s easy to blame histamine (and think it’s a histamine intolerance issue). Or if they have scaly eczema skin, it’s easy to blame food and start to cut more and more out.
Couple all this with the stress of watching your child suffer, and childhood rashes can be devastating for the whole family while trying to figure out the best childhood eczema treatment plan.
That’s why I thought it was time to discuss specific itch triggers that hit children with itchy skin and atopic eczema symptoms especially hard. While the conversation focuses on children and babies, it’s definitely still worth tuning in if you’re an itchy adult since many of these hidden triggers could still apply.
Joining me to demystify itchy skin and talk about childhood eczema treatment options is return guest and my good friend Jennifer Brand, MS, MPH, CNS. Jennifer is a clinical nutritionist who helps children with chronic rashes navigate the journey to healthy skin and enjoy a childhood free from disruptive skin symptoms.
As the top pediatric skin referral resource among trusted nutrition experts, Jennifer's passion for helping children with chronic rashes stems from her own health challenges that left her feeling different, judged, helpless, and alone as a child, and her family members' struggles with eczema, psoriasis, and vitiligo.
She has helped hundreds of families get to the root causes of the problem through her signature and proprietary step-by-step method called Conquer Your Child’s Rashesᵀᴹ . Her work has been widely recognized on a variety of podcasts, and she is a member of the American Nutrition Association, and LearnSkin (where she served as faculty).
In This Episode:

• How itchy skin affects children and parents/caregivers
• Does severity of eczema skin impact the severity of itchy skin?
• Why itchy skin ISN’T necessarily a sign of histamine intolerance
• Struggles that parents go through supporting children with atopic eczema symptoms
• List of itchy skin triggers
• Thoughts on skincare products for kids in need of itchy eczema relief
• Nutrient deficiencies that trigger itchy skin
• Childhood eczema treatment options and simple tips to stop itch

Quotes
“The skin pH is actually a little bit acidic, and that acidity helps maintain the skin's natural oils and protects it from harmful bacteria…If your skin pH becomes more alkaline, that's going to disrupt the natural flora on the skin, and that means that that normal healthy bacteria or the skin microbiome isn't going to grow as well. The skin barrier is going to start to break down.”
“When we're talking about eczema, the inflammation, the dryness, and the other damage on the skin that comes along with eczema triggers nerves in the skin that send itch signals to the brain that result in the need or the desire to scratch. So then it becomes such a vicious cycle because excessive scratching can cause more inflammation, a stronger urge to scratch. And so it's really that inflammation on the skin that is triggering the itch. And this has nothing to do with histamine.”
Links

Find Jennifer Brand online | Instagram | Facebook | TikTok
FREE guide: Ditch the Itch
Cure Your Child’s Rashesᵀᴹ Online Course

Chapitres

1. Introduction (00:00:00)

2. How itchy skin affects children and parents/caregivers (00:03:26)

3. Why itchy skin ISN’T necessarily a sign of histamine intolerance (00:07:03)

4. Struggles that parents go through supporting children with skin rashes (00:10:34)

5. List of itchy skin triggers (00:12:52)

6. Thoughts on skincare products for kids in need of itchy eczema relief (00:20:41)

7. Nutrient deficiencies that trigger itchy skin (00:26:27)

8. Childhood eczema treatment options and simple tips to stop itch (00:34:10)