Sticky back plastic: my (historic) run in with seborrheic dermatitis, and testing perfumes in unusual places

Long term readers (or any Instagram followers) may recall that I am prone to several kinds of dermatitis: mainly the allergic and irritant contact variety, about which I have done a few posts, most notably - and graphically! - this one.

I did also have a six month spell of seborrheic dermatitis, which came out of nowhere after the first Covid booster vaccine - I will of course never know if the two things are connected. This consisted of red blotches randomly dotted around my face, and it also resembled dandruff due to the addition of flaky white bits, particularly in my eyebrows and hairline. It was pretty unsightly, and no sooner had some patches subsided than new ones sprung up in different spots, a bit like the Visual Field Test in the optician's, where you have to track a pinprick of white light darting around the screen - or a vintage bagatelle-style fruit machine, if anyone remembers those. ;) 

Anyway, I did a lot of research about possible cures, and eventually lit upon a blog post by a guy who had been suffering from seborrheic dermatitis for many years, trying over 30 remedies to no avail. One of the few supplements that had worked for him was L-glutamine, and since this was the only one of the several things he mentioned that I could readily access, I gave it a go, and sure enough, within a month or so I was completely free of the blotches, and they have never returned. I did find that L-glutamine made me very wakeful at night though, so was glad to come off it, being a scrappy sleeper at the best of times.

Now I can't say for sure either that the L-glutamine "cured" my skin issue - it may have been a placebo effect, as the blogger was so convinced of its efficacy, and these complaints do sometimes completely resolve or come and go of their own accord, which was my doctor's theory. He did still refer me for some allergy patch testing, something I had already undergone seven years previously for the other types of dermatitis I have; these had thrown up that old chestnut nickel, plus benzoyl peroxide (typically found in acne medications to which I have had bad reactions in the past) and more suprisingly, Vitamin E, especially in its synthetic form (tocopherol acetate).

The original test date came through when I was laid up with trapped nerves in my neck in 2022, so it was in fact only last month that my appointment was reinstated. And so on a Tuesday in late August I headed up to a clinic in Basford, near Stoke-on-Trent. The area is a notorious traffic black spot, and I had to run the gauntlet of multiple warning signs saying "Road Work's" and "Delay's" with rogue apostrophes, which I am amazed haven't caused pile ups involving shocked and distracted grammar nerds.

Source: Stoke on Trent Live

At the clinic it took no time at all to stick a big clear plastic sheet on my upper back, filled with lint pockets that had been impregnated with mostly chemical allergens. I wasn't told what any of them were, but was simply urged not to get my back wet until Saturday(!). After 48 hours the patches could come off, as any reaction would have taken place by then, but I still had to keep my back dry till my return visit. Which sounds fairly simple, but turned out to be tricky in practice on several counts. Firstly, the plastic sheet tugged constantly at my skin, pulling it in different directions, like an Elastoplast you have initially put on too tightly. In this case though, I was not able to remove and re-stick the sheet down in another position, so I had to put up with the itchy, scratchy, pulling sensation; this was especially uncomfortable at night when I positively rustled with every move in bed.

I stuck to very shallow sit up baths for the week, which were manageable, but meant I couldn't have a soothing soak for the irritated skin under the plastic, or for my collection of 20+ midge bites, which happened to be in full angry red cry at the same time. (They were mainly at the front and down my sides - had they been on my back I was worried they might confound the test!) 

The next challenge was finding a friend to carefully peel the sheet off after 48 hours, and then go over all the ink marks again, which would help the nurses figure out which allergen(s) had "gone off" - my back had been divided up in a grid system to accommodate the 50 numbered substances. I enlisted the help of my friend Gillie, who is an artist amongst her many other talents; she did a great job of re-inking my back with the marker pen the clinic had provided. She also photographed the area as soon as the sheet was off.

Two hours later, I was meant to take a photo of my back once it had settled down after the removal of the sheet, so I asked a neighbour to pop over and do the honours (it didn't look any different in fact, but we followed the clinic's instructions to the letter). I tell you, where health matters are involved, living alone can be logistically complicated!

On Saturday I duly went back to Basford, trying and failing to unsee the "Road Work's" and "Delay's" signs again, which were still very much in place. A nurse inspected my back and declared that I had had a reaction to nickel and nothing else. It turns out that they didn't include my other two known irritants in this panel, so I had no way of telling if I was still allergic to those, but the nurse said just to take that as read. I was finally issued with a list of all the things they had tested me for, and it was interesting to note that a few were perfume-related, and hadn't bothered me at all. I had rather assumed this would be so, but it was nice to have it confirmed, as the odd friend has suggested that my perfume hobby might be bothering my skin.

Here are the substances I clocked as perfume ingredients - there may also be one or two more I didn't recognise:

• Balsam Peru
• Fragrance Mix 1 & II (I don't know what was included in these selections)
• Linalool
• Limonene

On an unrelated note, I spotted that allergen No 1 is potassium dichromate. Does anyone remember setting fire to that in chemistry class at school and creating a volcanic eruption? Ah, hold on - I just checked and it was ammonium dichromate, not potassium. Here's a video of the experiment I remember doing - fast forward to a minute in for the main action.

Which nostalgic memory - coupled with the fact that it's that "back to school" time of year - reminded me of covering my new text books in "sticky back plastic" - mostly clear, occasionally with a coloured tint. Now there's a more comfortable use for the stuff! ;)

If you have had patch testing for allergies, I would be interested to know what your findings were  - hopefully nothing perfume-related!

Complex complexions: patch test upshot and my top topical tips for dealing with dermatitis

Queued for ingredient reading!

When I was a kid, I remember my mother going to the local pharmacy and asking for a moisturiser called 'Pretty Face'. "Sorry", said the chemist, "We don't stock that, but I do have 'Happy Feet'?" Or maybe it was the other way about, but whatever, it still makes me smile.

Now to create a mash up of the two products, I have not had a 'Happy Face' for over forty years, in terms of the state of my skin. For I have been an acne sufferer without interruption - but with lots of eruptions! - since I was 15, then about two years ago I was diagnosed with contact dermatitis AND another kind of eczema that manifests itself as red blotches with or without a kind of white scurfiness. I hope you are not reading this at a mealtime. A condition possibly known as seborrheic dermatitis, but I am way too scared and squeamish to look in Google images, with it being as we all know a bottomless pit of grossness, pretty much regardless of what you look up of a medical nature.

But the distinction between the two is that I get symptoms of contact dermatitis when I use a skincare or beauty product that contains a specific ingredient to which I am allergic, while the causes of seborrheic eczema - if that is indeed what it is - are harder to pinpoint. They include stress, cold, dry weather and hormonal changes, as well as things like harsh chemicals, detergents etc, where it crosses over with the other kind of dermatitis.

So in short I now have a double whammy of skin ailments, triple if you include the acne of yore. I was moved to write this post because last weekend I happened to be back in Preston, staying at the very same guest house where the notorious 'Clarins cleanser incident' occurred in April 2016, triggering this latest on-off phase of contact dermatitis. I wasn't in the same room thankfully, but one of my friends was. He looked much the same at breakfast, so I assume that no such dermatological disaster befell him in the night.

Source: booking.com

While remembering back to this trouble all kicking off two years ago, I realised that I never did do the follow up post about my allergy tests last June(!) and their upshot. It might also be useful to recount how I have gone on since in terms of experimenting with skincare products of varying degrees of innocuousness.

I had the patch tests during the hottest few days of last year - it was 35C in my car on the drive down to Wolverhampton, and I was absolutely drenched in sweat by the time I got to the hospital. And no, I don't have air con in my car in case you were wondering. ;) As a result, my back was far from the ideal substrate to have a load of sticky fabric strips affixed to it, in which dozens of would-be allergens nestled in little pockets. I had some 120 different substances split across ten strips and the nurse drew notches at intervals in black marker pen all the way down both sides of each strip to facilitate the reading of any reactions. I was told to come back in a couple of days for a review, and again about five days later (the exact time frame is approximate as it was a while ago). During that period I was told not to wash my back and to stay cool and dry! Well, fat chance of that, as I was semi-liquefied on arrival, and the presence of ten strips of gauze taped to my back made me feel itchy and uncomfortable, and if anything more inclined to perspire in these extreme weather conditions.

Black marks still visible after patch removal!

After what seemed like an eternity, the day of the final 'reveal' arrived, and the strips were whipped off my back. The tests showed three different allergies:

NICKEL(II)SULFATE HEXAHYDRATE
BENZOYLPEROXIDE
TOCOPHEROL

Now nickel by any other name is very common, to the point of being dull and boring, like the house sparrow of allergens. It is found in jewellery, coins, household utensils - the list is endless.

"The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 10 to 20 percent of the population is allergic to nickel. The reactions can be unpleasant, but not fatal."

That's reassuring. You can't really avoid nickel in life, so I basically moved on to...

Benzoylperoxide

This is an interesting one, as I used to use acne medications with this as the active ingredient, and found it really harsh and liable to bring me out in a worse reaction than I had to start with. Actually, if you read all its applications, it doesn't sound too appealing:

"This chemical is used to bleach edible oils, flour, bread and other food. It is also used in some dental applications, for the treatment of acne and as an antiseptic and local anaesthetic in the treatment of burns and ulcers. It is also used in vinyl flooring, in fast drying printing inks and in mixed fabrics with viscose, silk or cotton. Further research may identify additional product or industrial usages of this chemical."

Hey, you can stop right there for me with your research - I am sufficiently put off as it is! I don't think this allergen has anything to do with my recent outbreaks, however, because I ditched the acne creams decades ago, and I don't eat much bread, haha. Leaving us with the final culprit, which the nurse said was the main one:

Tocopherol...aka Vitamin E

Oh my lord, this is also a tough one to avoid, for Vitamin E is added to a ton of toiletries, make up and skincare products, including both the suspects I featured in my last post on this subject.

Only at that time my finger of suspicion was pointing to two other chemicals: a formaldehyde-releasing microbial preservative called 2-BROMO-2-NITROPROPANE-1, 3-DIOL (in some makeup removing wipes that had triggered an isolated, but earlier attack in early 2014), and METHYLISOTHIAZOLINONE, a controversial preservative found in the Clarins cleanser I used in Preston. And instead the villain is the harmless - nay, positively benign-sounding - Vitamin E! Surely vitamins are meant to nourish and feed the skin, not sent it into paroxysms of allergic mayhem.

And what a pain it was to eliminate tocopherol in its various forms from my wash bag...! My gut feel was that the synthetic form of tocopherol, where it is combined with acetic acid to become tocopherol acetate, was more likely to be dodgy than the naturally occurring Vitamin E you get in many facial oils, so over the next few months or so I set about cautiously testing toiletries one by one to see what happened. I did also throw out any that had tocopherol acetate very high up in the ingredients list, but kept an open mind about any that had it as a middle ranking one!, which was more typical. Because logically the amount of the chemical may have a bearing on the matter, also whether it was present along with a whole bunch of other fairly aggressive things such as the two mentioned above, even if the tests had not revealed an allergy to those in particular - and they did test for both. I still don't like the sound of them, and quite a lot of other chemicals if I am honest!

Nine months on, I have a routine of skincare that broadly works. I have had no reactions as bad as the one in the picture below(!), but I do get shadows under my eyes and extra wrinkles in a sort of sweeping semi circle - the "engraved" look I developed after the make up wipes disaster of 2014. I think stress could be a trigger on its own, mind, and also lack of sleep, but the problems tend to occur more when I am travelling. This suggests that it could partly be a reaction to unfamiliar toiletries in hotels, though I do try to take my own. That said, there may be nefarious effects from the manky bits of moisturiser I shouldn't still be keeping in my travel pots! ;) Oh, and of course who knows what fumes are emitted from the aggressively laundered bedding I have blogged about recently.

Me on a very bad dermatitis day before the tests!

Here is a round up of the main products I use now:

Morning cleanser

Liz Earle Cleanse & Polish

Shampoo

Dr Organics range from Holland & Barrett

Actually I don't think what I put on my head is the issue here, or I am working on that assumption. So I do still use shampoo freebies in hotels, but NOT those generic 'hand and body and hair and everything washes' in those wall mounted dispensers to which hotels are increasingly migrating, which don't have an ingredient list you can inspect.

Serum

Olay Regenerist Daily Regenerating Serum

Daytime moisturiser

Paula's Choice Resist Super-Light Daily Wrinkle Defense Normal / Oily / Combination SPF30 (when it is sunny!)

OR

Nivea Daily Essentials Light Moisturising Day Cream for Normal to Combination Skin SPF 15 (when it is dull!)

The former doubles up as a foundation on good skin days, as it is slightly tinted, so were it not for the price I would use it all the time.

Source: Paula's Choice

Make up removal

La Roche-Posay Toleriane

I do additionally use one or two micellar waters specifically to take off eye make up, though they can sting a bit. And sweet almond oil is a good standby for stubborn areas.

Acid toner (once or twice a week)

Bravura Purifying Calendula Toner

Nighttime moisturiser 

Cerave Facial Moisturizing Lotion PM (with ceramides, niacinamide, and hyaluronic acid).

How much do I love this product!, which I was put onto by a blog reader. It is cheap and packs a lot of skin boosting goodies for the money.

Source: Dermstore

Sometimes, if my skin feels a bit twitchy, I just use a very neutral moisturiser for sensitive skin such use Avene Skin Recovery Cream for Hypersensitve and Irritable Skin. You can use it in the day but it doesn't have any SPF. Or even just slather my face in coconut or sweet almond oil to mix things up a bit, taking care not to get oil all over the pillow.

And that is it more or less, though I occasionally ring the changes round the margins beyond what I have described. But here is the kicker...several of these products have Vitamin E in them, also in its synthetic form! And I appear to be completely fine with that, much like Eleanor Oliphant. So assuming the tests were in fact accurate, all I can say is that the precise amount of tocopherol in each must be at a sufficiently low level not to trouble me. From which I also take that there is no point having a knee jerk response and ditching literally everything containing the allegedly offending allergen. For that way lies baby and bath water throwing.

Meanwhile, controlling the seborrheic eczema is a whole other game, and the bottom line is that I frankly don't think I can. Or rather I cannot stop it coming back every few days - which doesn't sound like controlling to me! - mostly on my forehead (mercifully screened by a fringe), above one eye only, and in both eyebrows. The only thing that really shifts it is hydrocortisone ointment at the very gentle 0.5% strength, making it suitable for the delicate eye area. Though I still don't like using it very often as it is said to thin the skin. Tara kindly gave me a new eczema remedy called Gladskin - I need to have a few more go's with that before I can definitively report on the outcome. And am a bit wary of using it round my eyes.


Have you every had patch testing? If so, what did it find, and how did you go about rejigging your skincare routine?

I would love to hear anyone else's experiences!