Atopic dermatitis

Pathogenesis of the illness from the sphere of the blood and the body fluids

 

After Chinese understanding, the reservoir from which the process, which causes eczemata, nurtures itself lies within the sphere of the blood and the body fluids (Chinese: "Xue"). Xue includes all kind of body fluids of the organism which are in constant movement and conversion. It includes all those substances which serve metabolically or immunologically to supply and to dispose the so called periphery of the organism.

If the sphere of body fluids stays in pathologic condition pushing again and again to discharge itself by bouts of eczemata the Chinese medicine speaks of "heat-humidity" or "cloudy heat". This means an inflammatory slagging, a state of overabundance which asks for cooling, humidity-converting and treatments draining the fluids. As a self-treatment the eczema carrying patient intuitively scratches himself until blood and lymph are released on the skin. By doing this he provides himself a short time alleviation thus confirming the pathology of "Xue overabundance".

Pathological state of overabundance

How delevops this pathology? How is a "cloudy heat" generated inside the "Xue"? Children with atopic dermatitis give us the didactical most valuable contribution to answer this question. Those children frequently demonstrate the still fundamental relationship between respiratory infections and dermatitis: "Whenever the child has a cold, the eczema becomes more badly" says the mother. The bout is provoked particularly through respiratory infections which the organism did not properly purge. The child has a a cold, but it doesn't cough and doesn't honk. The regular expelling of mucous through the nose and the bronchi misses completely or succeeds only insufficiently. The cold "goes inward" and strikes back in form of a bout of atopic dermatitis.

Of course, children who have problems to complete the complex process of defending an infect in the nick of time and at the appropriate part of their body are rather those being also sensitive and thin-skinned. Instead of relieving themselves with frequent sniffing and mucous expelling cough they shift the inflammable substances into the skin. That's nothing else than a desperate attempt of defense - much too late and using the wrong organ. In case of heat or inflammation caused by fever, the atopic dermatitis child still is able to release it through the skin. The same applies for the toxins of the measles. But in case of those substances which are responsible for the eczema, the mucous membranes have to be incorporated into the process of purging.

So to speak the basic constellation of the atopic dermatitis consists in a child who is susceptible for infectious diseases and also may have delimination problems in a psychological manner. It fails to deal effectively with respiratory infections. Those kind of respiratory infections additionally are suppressed by the treatment with antibiotics. According to the terminology of the physician they are "arrested". Finally, the child develops spastic bronchitis and pollinosis.

Beside from this immuno-pathological basic structure of atopic dermatitis, the following illness-causing factors are from a rather obvious character and also largely recognized at least within the different fields of naturopathy. They are without any exception a matter of factors suitable to increase the "cloudy heat":

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