Asthma Gone, now Eczema has developed

Hi everyone, it has been several years since I was on Curezone. I used to have adult-onset asthma anytime I had bronchitis, but I followed an Antibiotic protocol I found online from a guy not selling anything and claiming to have resolved his asthma (azithromycin and eventually doxycycline), and it also seemed to have gotten rid of it for me as I haven't had any flare ups in years. I took those Antibiotics off and on for several years (although early on I also took diflucan, in case my problem was from fungus), not always both at the same time. Back in March 2017 or so I stopped taking all Antibiotics (I was taking probiotics of various sorts also while taking Antibiotics ). I noticed that I started to develop dandruff at the very top part of my head, but it was limited to just a relatively small area and I didn't think much about it.

In about July I went to a warm mineral springs lake in Florida, swam lots daily for about 2 weeks. I got a bad sunburn on my face and body that took longer than usual to heal. On top of that, I had a tendon injury apparently from swimming so much (which I believe was related to the doxycycline use--weakened my normally strong tendons), and was more worried about that than the sunburn, so I got some ibuprofen initially (high dose) and lots of physical therapy for a couple of months. The tendon injury was more important at the time, as I was having difficulty walking and healing it (it did eventually heal and now feels fine--even ran a little on it the other day).

But then I noticed that my whole scalp was getting very dry, and my hair falling out from the inflammation. Then slowly the dryness seemed to spread to my face, and then to my chest and back. I have never had any sort of skin problems in my life, so this was all new to me and when it didn't go away with common things like lotion, I began to worry about it. I tried common remedies for dandruff--raw honey, H202 baths, and some other things, but nothing helped, and maybe even made it worse.

I finally went to a dermatologist for the first time in my life who said I was having an allergic reaction to something but couldn't figure out what, and gave me steroid creams. The steroid creams helped while I used them, but then the dryness came back. I haven't had this problem long, so I'm looking for wiser advice than I can give myself. When I had asthma, I tried lots of different things, although avoided steroids except for the times I ended up in the hospital or was about to end up in the hospital. I kind of want to avoid steroids still.

So the asthma seems to be gone, but the eczema is here, which doesn't make lots of sense to me. Any advice or thoughts on how to reverse this? I am in my early 40's now. I've read some recent research showing a connection between a molecule that some staph bacteria produce to possibly keep away other bacteria from intruding on their area, like this one https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/scientists-home-eczema-causing-germs-n779816 , and I've read others who say it is from a leaky gut. I've had some experience with trying to fix the gut when I had asthma, although I'm not sure how much that helped as much as the long-term Antibiotic combo I took seemed to help. I have taken bleach baths (about 1/2 cup of household bleach in bathtub), and that seems to help with the itching for a period of time. I've had some basic allergy blood tests done showing I have low-level reactions to various food proteins, high level reactions to silver birch, but I think that was the same back when I had asthma problems. My auto-immune blood tests came back negative, thankfully. My eosiniphils are elevated some, like they were back when I had flare-ups of asthma.

Anyhow, sorry for the long post, but I like to try to be thorough and factual, in case my situation is similar to someone else. Right now I'm leaning toward a bacterial cause of this (from a combination of the mineral lake and sunburn?), although certainly I could see some convincing me my gut is messed up and I need to work on that. But if it is a gut thing, I just wonder why the asthma didn't come back as well? Or could it be the antibiotics somehow damaged my skin, or maybe even the ibuprofen? Anyhow, thank you for reading this long post. Tweet