Bleach Prescribed to Relieve Eczema Itching: Talk About a Toxic Bath!
Editor’s note: The following post was originally published on Green and Clean Mom. “Green & Clean Mom can inspire you to try a little harder, be a catalyst for change and to offer you some new tips and news on how to be the green, sexy and sassy mom…I know you are!”
The New York Times recently reported that a study was just published in the Journal of Pediatrics showing the children who took a bath in a half a cup of bleach per full standard tub were relieved of their eczema related itching. The bleach apparently had very little odor and the children were relieved of the itching. One article totes the solution of using bleach in the bath with children as “safe, simple and inexpensive…” and I’m trying to figure out how the hell this is safe. Something is seriously messed up about this and I’m feeling very sick over the idea of a child breathing the toxic fumes, having their body exposed to the toxic substance when bath time should be a safe place to play. Do the children drink the water? How does it not get in their eyes? How is this legal and okay? Time Magazine explains that using the bleach bath might sound harsh but it’s safer than exposing children to the antibiotics…
“The bottom line is that the more antibiotics we use, the higher the risk for something becoming resistant to them,” says Dr. Amy Paller, a study author, specialist in pediatric dermatology and chair of the dermatology department at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. “The beauty of something like dilute bleach is that one doesn’t get resistance to it.”
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Eczema and Your Child
So what is eczema and why is that you would want to put bleach patches on your child’s skin or have them soak in a bath of bleach? The online eczema center compares a bleach bath at home to swimming in a pool but will parents correctly mix the solution and aren’t may pools trying to switch from bleach to safer alternatives? Besides not all bleach is the same and companies like Clorox have ultra bleach with high concentrates. Seems like a dangerous prescription for a doctor to give and easy mistake for concerned parents to make.
Both my daughter and my niece suffer from eczema so I understand the frustration and wanting to help your child. According to Keep Kids Healthy eczema is:
Atopic dermatitis, or eczema, is a common problem in infants and children. It usually begins between two and six months of age with very dry and sensitive skin that will then become red and extremely itchy. It often starts on the forehead, cheeks and scalp and spreads to the trunk, creases of the elbows, knees, and wrists. With scratching the rash may become raw, crusted and weepy.
Kids Health offers many solutions and helpful tips, none of which include bleach. Avoiding harsh detergents, clothing and lotions instead are suggested. I’m not sure I would call bleach a mild detergent or soap. A March 2009 study claims that food allergies are not to blame for eczema but instead says environmental and seasonal allergies might be playing a role in the increased number of children being diagnosed and suffering from eczema.
Eczema can be made worse by allergens like pollen, as well as irritants like soap or woolen clothing, according to the Institute.
“Research knowledge on eczema and allergies is growing quickly, so parents need to make sure that the information they are relying on is based on up-to-date evidence,” commented Professor Sawicki.
I’m not sure I agree with the study totally ruling out food allergies. Have you read Monica from Healthy Green Mom and her experience with eczema and food allergies?
Must Know Information on Bleach
If you decide to use this so called “safe” remedy I would really like to point out some information about bleach and poisoning - the dangers associated with bleach. From Right Health:
Airways and lungs
Breathing difficulty (from inhalation)
Throat swelling (may also cause breathing difficulty)
Pulmonary edema (water filling the lungs)
Eyes, ears, nose, and throat
Severe pain in the throat
Severe pain or burning in the nose, eyes, ears, lips, or tongue
Loss of vision
Gastrointestinal
Severe abdominal pain
Vomiting
Burns of the esophagus (food pipe)
Vomiting blood
Blood in the stool
Heart and blood vessels
Hypotension (low blood pressure) develops rapidly
Collapse
Skin
Irritation
Burns
Necrosis (holes) in the skin or underlying tissues
Blood
Severe change in acid levels of the blood (pH balance) which leads to damage in all of the body organs)
Many children I personally know with eczema also suffer from asthma and allergies (my daughter) and if I used this bleach remedy it would likely throw her into a horrible asthma attack. Chlorine bleach has even been linked to childhood asthma but a year after this study was released another study comes out telling parents that it is okay to put their child in a bath with chlorine bleach - what? The American Academy of Allergies and Asthma even lists Chlorine Bleach as causing dermitis and irritating the skin. Personally, we opted out of taking my daughter to swimming lessons due to the high chlorine odor and what we felt it would do for her lungs; why would I put her in a bath of it and let her breath it?
Natural Alternatives and Solutions for Eczema
There are a number of other alternatives that I would personally consider but everyone should contact their doctor and feel comfortable with their choice for treatment. Personally, using probiotics and other natural alternatives and food changes to help “heal the gut” as well as avoiding all thing harsh on babies skin, using botanical solutions for pain relief and even seeking alternative medicine. I like how Dr. Amy Well’s explains eczema and that creams and medicine doesn’t get to the root of the problem. Dr. Amy Well’s offers some great suggestsions for helping naturally cure and deal with eczema.
Read more at Green and Clean Mom!
This has to be the most absurd “remedy” that has been proposed in this decade! Next they will be telling us to put battery acid on sunburns…
[...] The New York Times recently reported that a study was just published in the Journal of Pediatrics showing the children who took a bath in a half a cup of bleach per full standard tub were relieved of their eczema related itching. … More Eczema Tips [...]
I’m as easily panicked as anyone at the idea of putting chemicals all over my kids, but I, like another reader here, am also wondering why we’re freaking out about this, but no one thinks twice about sending their kid into a swimming pool. Pool maintenance requires huge tubs full of pure chlorine that bleaches hair and dries out skin and stings open wounds, and we know our kids swallow a little sometimes, but we don’t blink. Put a half cup of bleach in a bath full of gallons of water and it becomes horror inducing? Hang on. Let’s not pick and choose our battles, guys- if chlorine in small concentrations is a true problem, it needs to be a problem ALL AROUND. Is it? I’d personally be interested to know if I should be keeping my daughter away from pools.
…I say this after soaking my arms in cold bleachwater last week to dry out my poison ivy, mind you.
I first heard about this treatment almost 3 years ago. As a fiercely alternative and protective mother, I was horrified as you are. The reason I heard about it was because I had a 3 month old son who was COVERED in not only eczema but tenacious and increasing staph infections. Both of my sons had severe eczema by the time they were a month old, I mean SEVERE, but it was my second who was also covered in infection. I saw a dermatologist I felt good about, she was talking about probiotics and analyzing all the natural ingredients in the washes, salves, ointments I was applying to try to help my son’s raw and oozing skin heal. To my horror he was allergic to the base ingredients of the most pure, EXPENSIVE, best-I-could buy healing treatments. We had to start him on an oral antibiotic. I can’t tell you the anguish of feeding that nasty artificially-flavored antibiotic concoction to my 2 month old son. His first solid was, to me, the equivalent of garbage. And it didn’t work. Nor did the next, or the topical antibiotic we moved to next. I was dying inside as I helplessly searched for every alternative solution and found no lasting improvement with the antibiotics. I breastfed exclusively, had eliminated all the major allergens from my diet before he was even born and kept eliminating to try to break the cycle, all the while trying to keep myself heathy to nourish him. I took a probiotic for him and applied it to his skin.
Finally the dreaded bleach bath was suggested. I’d been against this but knew the dermatologist understood my agonizing decision and equated it to a pool. This helped some to keep it in perspective as again I was faced with what felt like poison. It was logical, a chance to knock the staph back enough to allow the skin to form even a minimal barrier to protect itself. My son literally did not have skin on his face, he was a raw, oozing chubby smile. With a broken heart I mixed that bath as carefully as I’ve done anything in my life. I kept it to the minimum, rinsed him immediately and checked my pride at the door. This was a chance for him and all my best efforts just weren’t working.
It worked. An improvement, not a cure, but in the one time I did it it bought us time before we got to the point that we were hospitalized for over a week with viral and bacterial skin infections that were threatening his life. When a parent is faced with the possibility of losing their child, or filling them with drugs that can damage them further, bleach might be a better option. Its side effects are temporary, and while we’d prefer to protect our children from everything, every child is different and what works for one DOESN’T work for everyone. I hope this treatment is prescribed carefully and sparingly but it is an improvement to me over corticosteriod use which can cause permanent damage. The strongest we were prescribed could have caused my son to go blind.
Please don’t judge unless you have been there and never assume what you would do before you are facing losing or damaging your child. Any treatment taken out of context can cause alarm and controversy.
This article is an outrage. I sit here today 15 months later after my children’s entire bodies were burned by high chlorine concentrations at an indoor waterpark. They have had rashes since and today my daughter saw a new dr and looked at the hive like welts all over her and said it was Excema, never had it before now, also got asthma due to the exposure as well. Who and what kind of person would ever subject their children to such a toxin, it is a carcinogen. Very careless whoever wrote this.
I have cured THOUSANDS of patients of Eczzme, cancer, soriassis and scabbies adn lice!
buy my cream–it is NATURAL not toxic bad things like those EVIL doctors like to give!
just givve ME your money! trust me! I went to a natrual school called “Jim’s forest” and learnt the ways of nature. The problems are all caused by LACK OF NATURE and BAD PARENTING!!!!!!
Mom in MA - if you check back here - can I talk to you over the phone? Were you able to help you child? I am also agonizing over eczema that is rapidly spreading all over my sweet 2 year old, who also suddenly became covered with an acne-like rash, getting more and more constantly clingy and crying and awkwening at night–and docs who just don’t like you if you won’t do what they say unquestioningly–WHAT worked? Did anything? If you can write, I would be so grateful. leorarosen@yahoo.com.
My 2 1/2 yr. old daughter has suffered from excema since she was an infant. We have tried the full spectrum of treatment, from homeopathic to aggressive medical treatment with steroids.
Nothing - NOTHING - provided any sustained relief for her and she was absolutely miserable.
I read about the bleach bath treatment, and I was initially appalled. But after another agonizing excema breakout recently, I decided to just try it once.
It has been like a MIRACLE. We have done three baths over the last ten days, and all her excema patches are almost completely healed. I am shocked at how quickly and thoroughly it has worked.
If you are a desperate sufferer, or the parent of one, don’t knock it until you have tried it. No treatment, natural or medical is without effects or risks. The benefits have been so dramatic in our case, they have far outweighed the negatives.
Our son was healed by using 14 drops of bleach in a tub filled with water. 14 drops of BLEACH is better than steroids or antibiotics which must be applied twice daily and NOT heal him. He had the worst type of eczema I have ever seen or heard of - most of his body was covered by it at one point. I am thankful I heard of this alternative cure becuase we were close to going crazy from not sleeping at night. Yes, it sounds cruel to bathe your baby with bleach, but when you think about it, its even worse to give him/her steroids or antibiotics that are known to cause problems later on.
My son is 18 months old and has suffered from severe eczema since birth. We tried many home remedies, but he still always seemed to be in pain and was always scratching himself to relieve how itchy eczema can be. He would scratch himself raw until the spots would be horribly red, cracked open and bleeding.
When I heard about the bleach baths, I was very sceptic as well. I read many articles and did much research before giving into the idea of putting bleach in my son’s bath.
First of all, the bleach baths are not mean’t to be done when you child needs to be washed. Obviously, you wouldn’t want to irrate their eyes or have them swallow any of the water! The bleach baths are mean’t for them to soak in. We do it once a week and he only soaks for 15 minutes. He is closely monitored so that he doesn’t swallow any water. All it’s mean’t to do is soothe the skin and help with the itching.
After the first bleach bath we gave him, his skin looked dramatically better! He had less redness and the itch seemed to be much better. I have never seen his skin 100% clear of his eczema, but since the bleach baths is just keeps getting better.
I know that people will still think the idea of bleach in a child’s bath is crazy, but after seeing how much it helped my son’s suffering, I will continue to do it.
If bleach is still too extreme for you, I have also heard that salt baths or vinegar baths can help. It’s the same principal. You only use 1/2 to 1 cup of salt or vinegar and let them soak in it.
I hope this helps any other parents who struggle with children who have eczema! I would recommend it any day of the week! Good luck!