What are your Mustachian dermatological and skin allergy solutions?

[Daisy]

This is all very interesting to me, Daisy. Thanks for sharing. I'm not sure I'm on board with homeopathy, but I do think you are indeed right that many causes and solutions often fall through the cracks of traditional medicine. I think this is because of the widespread use of specialties. They all have their focus, and while they are certainly trained and capable of looking at the body as the complex system that it is, I'm not sure this always occurs in reality.

It's hard, because internists can't always correctly identify a skin rash, just as the urgent care docs didn't correctly identify the bone that was broken in my foot. I had to go to an orthopedist to do that. After all, doctors are just people, and it's unrealistic for us to expect them to know everything.

But the underlying causes of things get lost in the round of specialists (other than my broken foot. It didn't take a genius to discover the cause of that was my clumsiness!). I have an excellent internist who does a pretty good job looking at me holistically, but even he has his limits, i.e. I've learned never to mention anything having to do with my lady parts. That will get the immediate, "Well, you should discuss this with your OB-GYN!" This is a shame, because hormones can play a large role in your health. OBs are actually pretty good at looking at women holistically, at least the good ones are, because they know that some women's only annual contact with a doctor is with their OB.

I'm pretty sure my ear infection was caused by overzealous use of Q-tips (really, don't stick them deep in your ear!), but even before you suggested this, I had a suspicion that my frequent use of Q-tips and overall itchiness related to eczema in my ears. My ENT didn't see that much upon inspection though. Anyway, you've given me a lot to think about and work through again.

I was guilty of over-Q-tipping as well. Now that I think about it, maybe my ears were itchy too. I was using the Q-tips to remove the ear wax buildup.

I got so tired of people telling me not to use Q-tips, not to scratch my itch, etc. If only they knew that it wasn't really an option. When you have a 24/7 itch, you are going to scratch it no matter what others tell you. Scratching the itch is a temporary relief. I used to hate when people would look at me and say "just don't scratch it and it will go away". Yeah, right...if I wasn't so nice I'd facepunch them. ;-)

Geez....I realize this ear wax and skin oozing must sound really disgusting to others. Unfortunately it was my reality for a long time. I apologize if it grosses anyone out.

I wish you good health. Best of luck in finding an approach that works for you. You shouldn't have to accept your current condition as the norm. I know I did for a long time and did not search for alternatives until someone suggested it to me. Any relief you can find will be life enhancing.

[mozar]

Necropost

[MissPeach]

I was initially diagnoses with ecema but I think it was wrong. I found the steroid cream just gave me horrible Perioral Dermatitis I then had to get over. I would recommend checking for food intolerance and trying to minimize products for awhile. I found mine was a food allergy, fragrance allergy, and an allergy to my blush. Once I got rid of that I was good until fungal acne.

As for fungal acne, I highly recommend this.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07857W8MS/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Most anti-fungal creams actually have ingredients in them that feed the fungus so I found they weren't working for me. This is a wash that kills the fungus but that doesn't have anything that feeds it. It's gentle, cheap, and effective. I leave it on for a few minutes before rinsing. I also used the cerave cream as that has nothing in it to feed fungus. I also highly recommend this guy's blog. He did a lot of trial, error, and research on his fungal acne and most of the recommendations are cheap and effective.
https://simpleskincarescience.com/

For acne, I recommend a retinol. I have been using differin. It also works well with fungal acne. I miss my retin-a and had always liked the cream versions better than the gel versions but it's a good enough former prescription substitute.

Fragrances, essential oils, and witch hazel were the sources of my skin redness. I just buy cheap fragrance fee products like vanicream, cerave, or cetaphil now. Just watch it with fungal acne because vanicream and cetaphil feed the fungus. Cerave has some that don't but my skin doesn't like them for too long of term.

[Loretta]

I have several of the skin issues mentioned here and the stuff that has worked for me is:  full sun light and consumption of avocado in the winter.  I’m still searching for the perfect effective eye drop for eyes with rosacea.