Baby Eczema

Baby eczema

Eczema is very common in babies now. The figure grew from 1/10 forty years ago to 1/5 in recent studies. It is also worse in developed countries than undeveloped countries. It must be something we introduced in the last 40 years that contributed to the situation.

I suspected the culprit is baby formula. Baby formula can be “refined” from cow’s milk. Cow’s milk is good for calves but the benefit on babies is doubtful. Cow’s milk must be modified before it can be used in the formula. Proteins and enzymes the babies can’t absorb are removed or altered. Other chemicals the manufacturers believe are good for the babies (or good for promotion) are introduced. Is this chemical cocktail cause allergic eczema reaction in babies?

There was a TV program recently looking at the danger of baby formulas. A 3-month old baby covered in the program defecated blood resulted from sore and bleeding intestines. The doctor suspected the baby formula caused severe allergic reaction in the baby. As soon as the baby switched back to breast milk, the symptom went away. This may be an isolated case, but it shows baby formula is not a quick fix for every baby. Case 2 was that another baby has facial eczema but he’s not taking formulas. The mother tried everything she could, changed the detergent, clothing, bedding for the baby but the eczema did not go away. Then she remembered she’s taking cow’s milk herself to replenish calcium and she suspected the enzymes presented in cow’s milk were passed to her baby through breast milk, causing allergic reaction. She stopped drinking milk herself and the eczema on the baby cleared in a week.

Remember your parent’s generation or your grandparent’s generation. They did not grow up drinking formulas and cow’s milk and did turn out ok. My parents grew up drinking breast milk and then move on to mash up table food. Back then, cow’s milk is a luxury for kids. They seldom have cow’s milk or other diary products as kids and still grew up well. It’s hard to know if over consuming diary product everyday is causing more harm than goods.

Read more about baby formula http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infant_formula