Frank Bures: Suffering from eczema? Try a bleach bath

Bleach baths 2-3 times a week for a child or adult who has atopic eczema can bring a lot of relief from the staph infections and colonization that plague the eczema and make it difficult for other treatments to have an effect.

The idea of using bleach as an antiseptic goes back a loooong way. We think of bleach as taking color out of cloth, hair, whatever (I hate it when my whatever gets bleach on it). Some 17th-century scientists discovered the chemical we know today as household bleach or sodium hypochlorite. A Swedish chemist discovered chlorine. Different French scientists discovered it could be used to bleach fabric, and created the much less caustic sodium hypochlorite solution, which was also found it to be disinfecting. A Scottish chemist devised the powder form, calcium hypochlorite.

The idea of using diluted bleach for an antiseptic is not new. In World War I an English chemist, Henry Dakins, and a French surgeon, Alexis Carrel, created a recipe of bleach for a disinfectant of battlefield wounds. It has been used over the decades by dermatologists for antisepsis, but has since largely been replaced by topical antibiotics. The formula is 4 cups of boiled water, half a tablespoon of baking soda, and 3 ounces of regular bleach.

Atopic, or so-called childhood eczema, affects at least 15 to 20 percent of the U.S. population. From observation, it seems to be increasing in non-European countries as well. The precise causes of it have never been completely deciphered, no matter what you read or are told. Things about it are known. One well-recognized fact is that the abnormal skin also has abnormal natural immunity and seems to collect various strains of staph aureus bacteria like a magnet. These bacteria are ubiquitous, especially up the nostrils of most of us.

These bacteria will both aggravate the eczema and often times become an infection. In the face of the movement to use fewer antibiotics, the search for alternatives came back to the future. The idea of a bath with something in it for eczema has been used in diverse ways. Adding bleach to the water, and allowing the bather to sit in it, allows a mode of application with minimal irritation on a skin that is already miserably irritated and itchy.

The technical explanation is that (I have to do this sorry) the hypochlourous acid diffuses through the bacterial cell wall and inactivates triosephosphate dehydrogenase, which destroys the microbes capacity to metabolize carbohydrates. Thanks. I feel better after saying that.

Or, it sort of barbecues the nasty little critters. Is that better?

One study from Texas Childrens Hospital in Houston followed kids who were chronic staph aureus carriers. They took bleach baths and put an antibiotic, mupirocin, up their noses for a year. This reduced skin infections requiring oral antibiotics by 90 percent compared to the prior year. More studies than this show such favorable results. There dont seem to be any adverse reactions, skin or otherwise. It may take the color out your towels, but not anyones skin.

The method is to fill a standard bathtub full, about 40 gallons. Then add half a cup of bleach. The person stays in the bath about 10 to 15 minutes to get soaked well. Instead rubbing the skin dry, just pat it (use a white towel!). And, perhaps apply some barrier/moisturizer right away to prevent evaporation, especially in Klondike-like weather in Minnesota. The disclaimer always is to check with your smiling, friendly dermatologist first before making your kiddo smell like laundry.

Its another technique to attempt to minimize the misery that some poor little, and big, people endure from their eczema. Its one condition where sometimes the sufferer would like to jump out of their skin because it itches so badly. It is always worthwhile to make your child feel better with no jeopardy. Besides, you feel bad when they do.

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Frank Bures: Suffering from eczema? Try a bleach bath