Westlab Wellness Blog

Eminé Rushton is Wellness Director of Psychologies magazine and a trained holistic skin therapist. She has been writing about holistic health for 15 years and also written a book on Ayurveda, The Body Balance Plan.

I've suffered with eczema since childhood – and it's ranged from those tell-tale red, raised rings, around outer thighs, backs of knees and inner elbows, to sore, weeping blisters across the palms of my hands. As a child, my mother would apply topical steroid cream to my skin, as it was the only thing the doctor ever prescribed, and while the reaction would always diminish for a while, it would soon reappear – if I sweated, ate flare-up foods (more on that later), allowed my skin to dry out, or got particularly stressed.