Re: Staphylococcus Scalded Skin Syndrome (SSSS)- ACIDIFY SKIN?

"When we use real soaps like we used to do in the old days, they just destroy the acid mantle, or acid background, of your skin. Some of the newer cleansers are a little bit closer to your skin’s 5½ pH, and we think that this is probably pretty important.

Staphylococcus bacteria multiplies as you get farther away from this ideal pH, so if you use soaps and your skin pH goes up, you get both more irritation and more potential for Staph.

The perfect balance for someone with sensitive skin might be a pH of 5½ or maybe even a little bit lower, a little more acidic to help restore that acid mantle. The ultimate goal is to repair and restore that barrier, to help rebuild our skin.

What if we could put the right ingredients in to help the body rebuild the barrier? Cholesterol, the thing we try to get rid of in our diet, is important in our skin. Ceramide is another type of fat that plays an important role in our skin. And these two types of free fatty acids, essential and nonessential, are also highlighted. It turns out that if you mix them in a particular ratio, you get this powerful mixture that restores the skin barrier better than other combinations. Right now I would say it’s nice to look for something that contains ceramides. If you can get a moisturizer with ceramides.

There was a study in 2003 that showed very clearly that not only did stressful events worsen folks’ atopic dermatitis but they actually slowed down the barrier function healing of their skin. Another study of non-eczema patients found that their skin barrier function started to break down when presented with psychosocial stress or sleep deprivation.

A study that came out last year involved patients viewing a humorous film and sampling their B cells (the immune cells that make the immunoglobulin allergy proteins) before viewing and after. After the humorous film, the allergy proteins were decreased significantly. It’s interesting, this idea that your mood and your state of mind could change something so quickly. In my experience, it does seem to bear out that more optimistic patients do seem to have better outcomes and are able to get their eczema under control more easily."

Some more info on skin acidity:

http://www.doctoroz.com/blog/audrey-kunin-md/chemistry-lesson-healthy-skin


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