Put on a Happy Face

Hi there. As I said above, this blog will be devoted to my self-research, recommendations, insights and plain rambling about atopic dermatitis. Also known as skin asthma. If you're here you probably know what it is so I'm not going to bother too much with that. Welcome here.

I have it, and have had it since I was 8 months old. I'm now 23 years old which gives me over 22 years of experience to share, not to mention any number of doctor's recommendations that I've heard and unconventional treatments as well. As of right now my atopic is pretty darn severe. This comes and goes in waves of a few years at a time.

So I will begin with a funny insight I had the other day. I woke up after a good night's sleep (a rare occurence for me these days) but due to some renovation noise on the floor above me, my good mood soon turned annoyed. Took my bath and started putting creams on (more about all that later) and was really upset and itchy. This surprised me because, as I said, I woke up with a smile on my face after my first 8+ hour sleep, possibly in weeks. Yet twenty minutes later I was grumpy and as far from smiling as night from day. And then it hit me. I was down and couldn't bring myself to smile, for a very simple reason. My face was so dry that it actually hurt my muscles to smile. I immediately applied my favorite moisturizer to my face and, surprise! The smile came back. It was like magic. Try it the next time you're grumpy for no apparent reason.

By the way, I believe this realization took part in place due to the difficulties I was having in the previous evening's sports class - I attend a muscle-training/toning class. Usually I enjoy the class but that evening I was so dry that it was literally painful to stretch and work the muscles. The next mroning I recognized that very same feeling when I tried to smile. So take this for all muscles, not just your facial ones. Exercising can lift your mood as well as smiling, but if you have atopic, make sure your muscles are getting a reasonably moist skin to work with. Otherwise you will just be in pain.