Today, I will tell you why commercial moisturizers don’t heal eczema despite what you have been told. Since I was a kid, I used commercial eczema moisturizers daily. Now, years later, I am completely eczema-free without using any. I have spent too much money to count on creams for eczema that have not only not healed me from atopic dermatitis or at least helped me a little bit, but they have actively made my eczema even worse. So basically, I was paying to get worse.
I had eczema since I was a kid, and my mother and I have tried everything that we could find, and I am not over even overexaggeration. We tried everything we could find online, at stores and pharmacies, and of course, what my doctor gave me as well. I remember screaming because of pain every time my mother put one of them on me as a kid, remembering all of that know makes my heart ache and makes me sad knowing how many people that are not in a position to spand money on creams that promise them health, but do the opposite just because they think that is the only thing they can do.
The reason why these moistuiruzers havent healed a single person, yes, they havent healed a single person, is because they are not designed to do so. They are not designed to heal; they are designed to cover up the problem. This article will tell you all you need to know about why these creams don’t work, how they ruin your skin even further, what is a good natural alternative to these moisturizers, and I will tell you why you will never heal eczema if you want to cure it from the outside.
The Fundamental Misunderstanding: Why Commercial Moisturizers Don’t Heal Eczema
Commercial moisturizers are designed to hydrate the stratum corneum, which is the outer skin layer. It only hydrates the skin temporarily for about 2-4 hours, but they don’t fix anything in any way. I have to give credit where it is due, and I think it is better to have hydrated skin than not because there is a bigger chance of open wounds that can catch infection if your skin is dry.
But a natural alternative like beef tallow also does that while providing vitamins A, D, E, and K, which are amazing for skin, while the companies that make these creams claim that their creams contain a lot of vitamins. In reality, those vitamins are practically useless. Because they are synthetic vitamins that your body doesn’t absorb as well as real, natural vitamins from tallow.
This is because tallow has been used for hundreds of generations, and your body knows what to do with it and knows that it is familiar, while these new synthetic vitamins are the opposite of that.
What you will also create by using these moisturizers dont our ancestors never use is a dependency cycle. This is similar to when a bodybuilder uses steroids, and his body stops producing testosterone naturally because it thinks, well, why would I produce any testosterone when there is a lot coming to me from the outside? This will create a dependency on steroids because it is much harder to stop when your body is already not following its natural rules.
In our case, these creams give you their protective oils, which makes your body think that it doesn’t need to produce any on its own. This makes you more and more reliant on them as time goes on.
The Ingredient Problem: What’s Actually Inside That Bottle
Preservatives that you can’t even pronoucne like methylisothiazolinone (MIT) and methylchloroisothiazolinone (MCI), are contact allergens that are found in over 65% of commercial moisturizers. These allergens will do the opposite of what the product promises to do. They will destroy your skin even further and cause eczema flare-ups as well as other health problems.
Emulsifiers like sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS) and propylene glycol can disrupt the skin’s natural pH balance. In the healthy human, the pH balance should be around 4.5 to 5.5, but it is not uncommon for people with eczema, especially if they use similar products as I did, to have a much higher pH than that.
The famous loophole that I absolutely hate is when they say natural. The thing that you have to understand is that everything at some point is natural. So the term natural can’t be properly defined because everything is natural if you have a very broad definition of the word natural. These companies know this, and it is their favorite loop whole because it sounds absolutely amazing and healthy when you read that something is natural.
In reality, just because something is natural doesn’t mean it isn’t inflammatory, especially for people with eczema.
What Your Skin Actually Needs (That Most Moisturizers Don’t Have)
Most eczema skin is missing a specific building block called ceramides, which makes the skin strong and holds skin together. Adding that to a leaky gut and inflammed body, there is no surprise that your skin is unhealthy.
The problem is that regular lotions don’t contain ceramides, or they don’t contain enough and the right types that will rebuild damaged skin.
I personally made a switch to grass fed beef tallow around a year ago, and the results were incredible. Right now, when I know all of this information and when I did prolonged research about what is actually good for your skin, it is not surprising when I think back how well grass-fed beef tallow worked for me.
Your skin needs cholesterol and fatty acids to recover properly; it also needs fat-soluble vitamins, which your skin is probably deficient in.
Besides that, humans used tallow for a extremlly long time compared to any of these commercial creams, and your body and genes know how to respond to grass-fed beef tallow. This is not the case for some chemical or synthetic vitamin that was created 12 years ago in a lab.
Of course, if you are familiar with my story and my other work, you will know that this is only a small piece of a big image. Using grass-fed beef tallow will do absolutely nothing if you don’t heal your gut. I have a lot of articles that talk about diet because I am certain that diet is the main cause and the main solution to atopic dermatitis. Read my full comprehensive guide about Healing Eczema Through Diet.
Why Your “Dermatologist-Recommended” Cream Might Be Garbage
A dermatologist or expert test means absolutely nothing. Similar to natural, there is no real definition for an expert, and these companies will say it any time they can to gain credibility. A dermatologist’s test means nothing as well because they can pay one dermatologist to say something like “This is the best product on the market” or something similar.
If a cream has a certification like National Eczema Association approved, that also means practically nothing because companies can easily pay for that, and because these companies have so much money, they give donations and funding only for studies that benefit them, and that they like.
Similar to the processed food industry, where they demonised saturated fats without any evidence and started recommending seed oils instead. They said that butter, beef tallow, and ghee cause heart disease, but since people started using seed oils in the early 20th century hearth attacks increased by multiple fold.
Also, the creams that are getting promoted the most are usually the most expensive, and they are just as ineffective as all other creams. They need heavy marketing because they know nobody is going to share the success story from their product, because there’ll be no such thing as a success story. Some of these creams come in very small packaging for a high price, and the problem escalated because I am a pretty big guy, around 6,2ft and 220 pounds at the time I was using most of these creams. Which made it even more expensive than when I was just a small child.
The Steroid Trap: Why Your Skin Gets Addicted
Since I was a kid, I used corticosteroids from time to time. Because I didn’t use them a lot, I didn’t experience the terrible side effects that they bring. But when I was 15 and started going to high school my condition worsen a lot and my dermatologist started giving it to me more often and she started giving more stronger creams. At that time, I was completely unaware of any potential side effects, and that was probably because they didn’t tell me they existed.
At the time, I thought perfect this is the cure, because they really did help a lot. But already after a week, my eczema came back, so I used steroids again. And with some time, I started noticing that every time my eczema came back, it was worse than the last time, like it was accumulating under my skin and then getting back on the skin as soon as I stopped using steroids.
Also, I noticed that my skin was getting thinner and weaker than it was. I was also much more likely to get infected and wounded than before.
That was just the side effects that I noticed and knew existed, but that is far from the truth.
- Weakening of the immune system
- increased appetite
- insomnia
- early closing of growth plates
- infection susceptibility
- moon face
- weak bones
- weak muscles
- weak joints
- skin thining
You get the point, there are many side effects of corticosteroids. It is weird when people tell me that the diet that healed me and that I recommend to people with great results is too extreme and could potentially be dangerous. They always say that without realizing how dangerous it is to not even try to fix eczema through diet, supplements, and other things that I write about, but instead use and give your children, who are still growing, steroid creams that can ruin their lives.
My Current Routine: What Actually Works and how I healed
Now, over a year later since I found out about the ultimate elimination diet and started researching about healing eczema the natural way, I am completely eczema-free.
It was a long journey, but I am only starting because now I don’t think about myself, I think about countless others that I want to teach to heal from eczema.
The only thing that I put on my skin now is beef tallow, and I like it a lot. I believe that diet is most of the work, and you can only fully heal eczema if you heal it from the inside and not from the outside. I would also recommend grass-fed beef tallow to everyone, no matter if they have eczema, because of the many fat-soluble vitamins that your skin needs.
Read my article about Best Beef Tallow for Eczema if you want to find the best beef tallow on the market. All the tallows on my list are high-quality grass-fed tallows with a lot of vitamins A, D, E, and K, which are important for skin, and many anti-inflammatory features.
My other point with beef tallow that I always mention is how much our genes are adapted to beef tallow compared to chemicals that were made just a decade ago in a lab. People have been eating ruminant animals since the start of mankind, and soon enough have started using fat from the same animals.
Beef tallow itself has been used for dozens of generations, and your body knows how to respond to it.
FAQ
Conclusion:
Commercial moisturizers and steroid creams are not made to heal eczema; they are made to cover it up temporarily until it comes back even worse. Oftentimes, the ingredients in these creams are not natural, and the vitamins that are mentioned on the bottle are synthetic, which means they are not bioavailable, and you will not actually get much at all.
Chemicals and steroids that are in these creams may make it look like the issue is fixed, but that effect only lasts temperarilly and those same components are very negative in the long term. Unlike these creams, your skin has adapted to natural moisturizers like honey and beef tallow, which bring actual vitamins and anti-inflammatory effects your skin is desperate for.
Producers of these creams also use many loopholes to make their products look better and more natural, even though they are not.
Corticosteroids are very effective in the short term, and I have used them for many years, not knowing the severe side effects that come from them. Many doctors just follow what they are told and constantly say that diets like carnivore and keto are unhealthy and extreme, while giving kids steroids that will stunt their growth, weaken their muscles, and worsen their overall health.
If you want to learn how I healed my severe atopic dermatitis, read my article about How to Heal Eczema Through Diet and Supplementation.
