Favorite Things

Olive Oil

I love Extra Virgin Olive Oil

I think it is yummy with chicken

however

I have also learned that it has other important uses.

My Punk #4 has had varying degrees of eczema her whole life. As a baby it was easy to control with liberal amounts of Eucerin cream and limited amounts of soap. As she has gotten older it has become worse. There are two patches that are especially stubborn and the last year has been especially bad. I have tried almost everything with her, Eucerin creams, Vaseline, expensive lotions, cheap lotions, dye free and fragrance free soaps, no milk, lanolin, Chamomile and oatmeal baths, everything. Finally when her patches became so itchy that she would scratch until she bled I went to the Dr, and he gave me some creams to use; they sort of, kind of kept things at bay, but it was still a battle.

This winter was really bad, it seems like she would break out with a new dry patch daily. I would put her prescription creams on in the morning, then lotion her body up with Aveeno cream. At night after her chamomile and oatmeal bath I would put her creams on again, then I would cover her bad patches with gaze (to keep her from scratching them at night) then lotion her up again.

Then I read an article that said steroid creams can make the skin thinner making healing harder.

**sigh**

So I asked my aunt, whom we affectionately call the “witch doctor” for some advice. My aunt Beki is a healer, she knows all sort of “natural” healing methods. Well she told me to try plain old olive oil.

Olive oil?

Olive oil.

Yes,

Olive oil.

I didn’t want my daughter to smell like dinner.

So I said thanks, and didn’t try it.

As winter turned into spring her skin started to get a little better except for her two bad spots and on a whim (and because I had run out of her regular lotion) I dabbed a little olive oil on her bad spots. The oil soaked right in, so I put on a little more, and more and a little more after that. The next morning the spots seemed much, much better. Hmm…maybe smelling like dinner was better than having bloody, oozy scabs all the time. So I kept it up for about a week and slowly, but surely things are looking better.

Then I was talking to a friend and she mentioned that she had been using lavender oil to help with her skin problems. I like the smell of lavender, it doesn’t smell like dinner. So I mixed the two. In a small Tupperware I put in about a half cup of olive oil and about 12 drop of lavender essential oil and slathered it all over my punk (by this time I was using olive oil all over her body and it was keeping her skin hydrated and smooth). She really started to heal by this point and she didn’t smell like dinner anymore, she smelled like flowers, a much better smell. I also noticed a little side effect, my fingers and thumbs tend to get dry and cracked (something to do with wiping sticky fingers and faces and doing a lot of dishes) since I had been using the oil on my baby girl punk my fingers had been soft and smooth!

Thanks Auntie Beki for the advice, sorry I didn’t follow it sooner!