Hello Beautiful!

It looks like you're new to The Community. If you'd like to get involved, click one of these buttons!

In this Discussion

Should I be worried?

NuttgirlNuttgirl Raw Newbie

This strange rash on my neck is not going away. It is sort of dark in color and feels dry and a bit itchy. I tried cortisone cream and Benadryl but they didn’t do anything. I’ve tried covering it up with makeup but that doesn’t really work either.

Is this part of the detox process or do you think it is a food allergy? Should I be worried?

Here is a pic of my rash. I do have a little makeup on from this morning to cover it up but it really does work. I am becoming very self conscious about it too!

http://i147.photobucket.com/albums/r311/fragran…

Comments

  • eczema, read up on it… i have the same thing on my underarms.

    Eczema is an irritation if the skin, so what kind of soap do you use? Lotions, etc??? I also had this on my arms (opposite of elbow, don’t know what that part is called!) and it went away after TWO YEARS by just switching to a 100% olive oil soap. I’m still battling the eczema on my underarms though.. even though I’ve switched to using baking soda as deoderant I think it is still too harsh! I don’t know what else to use that’s milder than baking soda and will keep me from stinking!

    Anyways, sorry for getting off topic! Yes, the cortisone is suppose to help the itching, but the only way I know of getting rid of the rash is to figure out what’s irritating it. Good luck!!

  • http://www.emedicinehealth.com/eczema/page3_em.htm

    here’s a link of the symptoms! you can browse through and learn how to make it all better :o)

  • Hi Nutgirl- I’m not a dermatoligist but there are two things I think it could be. One is a b-vitamin related rash. If you have strictly limited your intake of foods with b vitamins or have had digestion problems which cause malabsorption issues.

    The other thing a lot of people might say would be that it is candida related or detox. I haven’t had that rash in particular but if it isn’t responding to cortisone that tells you something- that it’s not an alergy.

    I would try sublingual b12 or a b complex vitamin if you take things like that. Also coconut oil on the rash can help heal it.

    Let me know how it goes and if you feel like giving more info on other aspects like your digestion and basically what you eat that would be helpfull also.

  • NuttgirlNuttgirl Raw Newbie

    I’m trying to backtrack to see what I ate differently or did anything differently. The only thing I can come up with is that I am eating more nuts that I ever have since I started this journey 3 weeks ago. I used a sunless tanner last week too but I have used this particular brand before although it has been a few months. I use various sunless tanners every week and I never had a problem before.

    I do take multivitamins daily. I am not 100% raw. I am about 85 to 90% for now. I’ve never had eczema before. :( These dark red marks are only on the creases of my neck. They are dry and slightly itchy.

    I hate to be so vain about it but it really does bug me.

  • queenfluffqueenfluff Raw Newbie

    Nuttgirl,

    I could be that since your body is getting cleaner you are becoming more sensitive to chemical products. What kind of soaps and shampoos do you use?

    I would definately NOT use sunless tanners – very bad stuff! I remember when I used one once when they first came out and it turned by body orange – I had to use Clorox on my skin to get it off! They are basically dyes and the skin absorbs everything and it goes into your blood stream. If you are trying to clean out your body with raw, it will never be very clean if you put dye in it. That is a toxic load for it to handle.

    Now that you are more raw – you should be able to go out in the sun and not burn as easily (is that why you are using sunless tanners?)

    Even though you might not have had problems with it before – your body is changing when you start eating raw – this can bring up new sensitivies to certain things.

    Definatley stop the sunless tanner!

    Try to cut out soap for a while and use coconut oil or shea butter on the rash.

    It could part of be detox – I have gotten strange rashes which I never had before I started being raw.

    For skin rashes the best thing to do is to cut out any chemical products you use on your skin and see if the problem goes away first – if not, than look into possible allergies or if it is detox it should clear up by itself eventually.

  • Hi- Here is a link with a pic to see if you might think you have this. http://dermnetnz.org/systemic/pellagra.html

    Page 55 and 56 of this reference: http://content.cdlib.org/xtf/view?docId=ft2d5nb…

    Here is another link with more pics. http://books.google.com/books?id=CZPKIZNgNJgC&p…,M1

  • Nuttgirl,

    Do you have any other spots in creased areas….elbows, back of knees, thighs. I could be the combination of heat rash, detox and a sunless tanner. Eczema is normally very itchy.

    Have you changed your detergents. Do you own pets?

    I too have skin issues right now, and the dermatolgist is stumped. She thinks it looks like Melasma(pregnancy mask)., but I am not of hormones, nor pregnant – and it kind of looks like your neck, although it is 4 patches on my face. I will let you know if she says something earth shattering next week!

  • NuttgirlNuttgirl Raw Newbie

    I have red spots under my boobs but I think that maybe from sweat/perspiration. The coloring is completely different that from what is on my neck. Every once in awhile I will get this but it usually goes away in 1 week.

    The crease in my left arm is a little pinkish but nothing like my neck.

    Maybe it is a vitamin or protein deficiency? Tomorrow I will look into getting some more vitamin B supplements. I am currently taking 2 Viactiv Multivitamin chews a day. Granted they are not vegan but they are pretty good. I am a little freaked out because I’ve never had anything like this before.

    My typical diet is usually some fruit in the morning, a green smoothie with flax seed oil early afternoon, a salad for lunch, some fruit and nuts as a snack, for dinner it varies, and at night usually some nuts or dried fruits for dessert.

  • If it’s under the breasts at all its most likely candida, even a few spots.

  • MarichiesaMarichiesa Raw Newbie

    Nuttgirl, I am absolutely not an expert or a doctor and if this continues or worsens you should see a doc you can talk to but… My money is on Candida. Its so common with a dramatic diet change for detox symptoms to manifest in our skin. ( largest organ after all! ) Personally I would lay off the nuts and sugars for a least a week and see what happens.Fruit-wise careful too.I take a great supplement for Candida called Candex in the AM and PM which has few if any die off symptoms. Good Luck!

    (Go to the bottom of this page to check out the foods to avoid list for Candida) http://www.annboroch.com/candida.htm

  • NuttgirlNuttgirl Raw Newbie

    I thought Candida was only common in yeast infections? If I don’t see any change by mid-week I probably will make an appointment with the doctor. I’m not normally a vain person but this is really bothering me.

  • queenfluffqueenfluff Raw Newbie

    I could not tell much from looking at your picture before but now that you say you have it under your boobs too – it makes sense what the others are saying. I have the “candida rash” myself – it is called tinea veriscolor. It is basically a “yeast” skin rash. Does it look like either of these?

    http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article…

    http://www.aocd.org/skin/dermatologic_diseases/...

    (the spots can range in colors from white to light pink to darker salmon color)

    I had the darker spots – they didn’t itch or anything like yours they were just there and were ugly – I had two small ones on my neck and the rest were small spots under my arms and large ones by my bikini area. I successfully got rid of those with tea tree oil and trying to stay on a 100% raw diet and takinga antifungals. My rashes didn’t show up until I started doing raw – so like Marichiesa said the dramatic change in the diet can cause things like this.

    Now that I am tan I have the white version of the spots that have appeared across my chest area and under my boobs. I am using a natural sulfur mud I bought online called Saprox.

    http://www.torfspa.com/saprox.html

    I fell off the 100% raw after a heavy yeast die off reaction and I am trying to get back into it. So far the dark spots haven’t come back. I haven’t taken the spit test in a while but I am sure I would probably fail it.

    So far it is taking awhile to get rid of the white spots. You can also use Selsun blue. I opted not use that – the tea tree worked on the dark spots and I am trying the mud for the white ones.

    Here is a link to a thread that I had posted on these rashes and RawVee helped me figured out what they were.

    http://www.goneraw.com/forums/6/topics/670

    If this is what you have, good luck – it is a pain trying to get rid of it. It is a pain trying to get rid of candida too.

    Oh, another tip: Yeast hates sun. So get out in the sun and get some rays on those rashes.

    Oh another point too – it can take a while for the skin to return to its normal color too even after you get rid of the rashes – I think the sunless tanners are going to make it hard for you since it is dying the rashes darker. If you go to the derm, I have a feeling they will tell you to stop using those.

  • Just your pen name implies to me that you must consume nuts. If I am correct about that assumption you might try to eliminate them from your diet. Nuts are very hard on our system even in their raw state. In fact I bought some raw almonds still in their green ‘fruit’ a while back and I can not see any way that early man could have possibly ate them because it requires a nut cracker to open them. Maybe a couple of flat rocks would have worked but I say that nuts are not a good idea to consume – if you stop consuming them for a few weeks and see the rashes go away then you will know what was causing it.

  • NuttgirlNuttgirl Raw Newbie

    I’ve been applying an otc anti-fungus cream and that seems to help. I’ve also been using fragrance free and dye free lotions and body washes. I’ve cut way back on my nut consumption and haven’t used any sunless tanners. It looked like things were getting better until today. I gave into my cravings today and ate a lot of foods that were not good for me including a soy hotdog and some buttered popcorn. A few hours later I noticed that my chest is blotchy red. Is it possible to be allergic to soy?? I used to eat soy based foods all the time without any problems. I give into my craving just once and now I look blotchy. Ugh…I feel like I am fighting a losing battle.

  • ZoeZoe Raw Newbie

    SoCal, that’s odd, I bought some fresh almonds a while ago and I just peeled the soft green velevty covering off with my fingers and ate them.There was no hard shell, just a very soft, pliable covering just like velvet.

  • rawmamarawmama Raw Newbie

    I had developed itchy rashes around my face, dermatologist said it was dermatitis. Never had it before, and what she gave me was toxic so I ended up putting a pinch of sea salt in pure water in the palm of my hand, then added a little bit of raw honey and with my finger, rubbed it around until it was a thin, watery mixture. I put this on the patches and left it on over night. If it’s too sticky, I just added a little more water on my face. If it got too itchy during the night, I washed it off, but tried to keep the raw honey on the spots when I could throughout the day if at home, even just raw honey not watered down. Day 1, rash was 1/2 gone, by the end of the week it was almost totally gone.

    RFOODIE (you might be interested in this too…) However…a few weeks later developed brown patches on my face and found some interesting info about how a predominantly vegetarian diet (raw diet of course) can cause brown patches (Melasma or Chloasma or pregnancy mask) on the skin because of the type of proteins ingested because “If you are on a vegetarian diet, its likely that your copper levels are also elevates because of the proteins you ingest.” Most of the time it’s from high estrogen, as in pregnancy, which is why it happens when some women are pregnant, BUT high copper can mimic high estrogen and high copper can come from certain foods and lack of zinc and vitamin c…

    Three Essential Tips before you do anything else It said that a person can have these reactions when they have high copper in their system and low zinc and low vitamin c. I found a list of foods that they listed that had high copper (Grapes, chocolate, avocados, almonds, walnuts, white wine, beer, and soy protein like tofu are high in copper. Birth control pills (which may contain copper) and IUDs (which are usually made of copper) are another cause of copper toxicity. People who spend a great deal of time in swimming pools can become toxic with copper, since the metal is a common algicide.)I found this last bit on info on goneraw.com!!!

    http://www.goneraw.com/posts?q=pigment&commit=S…

    http://www.vegsoc.org/info/zinc.html

    So to try to balance it all out, I am trying to eat less nuts and more foods with zinc and vitamin c in it. It also said that folic acid taken before meals can help to fade the brown patches. I might try lemon also to lighten the patches. Oh, and I also visited my doctor about all of this and she poo-pooed everything and said that diet has nothing to do with dermatitis or brown patches on the skin…wrong, diet can effect it. It is something to look into.

    One thing about your photo… is the darkness gathering where your neck naturally creases? If so, I’d first suspect that it’s from the sunless tanning lotion and it reacted differently in those areas, concentrated there for some reason and has caused your skin to react almost as though it has been burned by a chemical in the lotion. Just because you’ve used it before does not mean it’s always mixed perfectly in the factory, we learned that the hard way when my husband and dog were rushed to the hospital with weed killer poisoning due to a weed killer being a wrong concentration from the factory.

    Were you looking down, like reading a book, while you were waiting for it to tan? Have you called the company that manufactures your sunless tanning lotion?

    You could try the raw honey on the patches to see if it soothes the skin enough that it can heal, it is anti-bacterial and does do wonders. You could also try applying wheatgrass pulp (or just plain grass pulp) on those areas to see if it’d help heal your skin. Also aloe vera. I do hope that you find some answers, it is frustrating when something effects how we look and feel, I am just thankful that there are such kind people with great sage advice on this website!

  • queenfluffqueenfluff Raw Newbie

    Nuttgirl,

    The anti-fungus OTC works because the yeast is a fungus. When you get yeast rashes you probably have an overproduction of yeast in you (candida). If you eat something that feds the yeast you might get more blotches. (did the soy dog have yeast in it?) – for some people it is sweets.

    Also, the yeast rashes tend to show up in spots that get sweaty on your skin – like under the breast for women, under the under arms and if you sweat on your neck. So, it makes sense for the rashes to show up in the neck creases.

    Try the tea tree oil too. Plus, it may take a bit for the dark coloration to return to your normal skin color. Good thing you stop the sunless tanners.

  • NuttgirlNuttgirl Raw Newbie

    My rashes are almost gone. I’ve been using an otc anti-fungus ointment and just unscented body lotion. I’ve permanently stopped eating all soy products and have temporarily stopped using any sunless tanning products. I even went to a tanning salon against my better judgment to help speed up the healing process. I personally do not care for tanning salons but I figure 2 or 3 sessions of artificial sunlight might help kill this yeast a little faster.

    At this point I don’t know what triggered this rash but I am trying to eliminate anything that might cause it to come back again. It’s not fun looking like a mess. :)

  • queenfluffqueenfluff Raw Newbie

    Nuttgirl

    Does the artifical tanning seem to be helping at all? Just curious because being out in the sun DOES help kill yeast and can definately help with the rashes. Yeast hates sun but I am not sure that applied to artifical light. I think it is just REAL sunlight. I am not sure if it is the Vitamin D or what. I would be curious to know if it is helping for you.

  • Hi all … reading all of the posts kinda has me scared of going 100% raw.

    i see so many ppl that are experiencing all these skin issues when they go 90-100% raw and i DO NOT want them!!! i want to look better .. not worse!!

    I’ve never had skin problems nothing but thismakes me realreeally hesitant!!

  • Looks like a build up of sunless tanner to me. Hope you can figure out just what exactly it was.

  • NuttgirlNuttgirl Raw Newbie

    My neck does look a lot better. The rash is almost gone; there is just a little discoloration left but it is not too noticeable. I really do not know what caused this whole skin drama.

    I am still going to do 1 or 2 more tanning sessions. I think it has helped a bit.

  • queenfluffqueenfluff Raw Newbie

    Nuttgirl,

    Do mind telling me which OTC ointment you used? I am interesting in trying one for my rashes on my back. 

  • NuttgirlNuttgirl Raw Newbie

    I used Target’s brand. It is the 1% Clotrimazole cream. It is supposed to be just like Lotramin but a lot cheaper. :)

Sign In or Register to comment.