Eczema can have a huge effect on both our work and personal lives and tracking down the triggers for flare-ups can be incredibly difficult. I was contacted by Kerrison from Australia, who has had to put his university studies on hold while dealing with his severe eczema. He’s used this time productively developing an app to help track and record eczema symptoms which I think is a fantastic idea.
Building a mobile app for Eczema sufferers By Kerrison Garcia
I have spoken to a few health professionals and not many agree that there is a correlation between diet and eczema. Many people I know who suffer from eczema believe there is.
I have had eczema since I was a child and only recently has it become very severe. It has become so bad that I had to take months off from work, and time off from my university studies. As many of you know, sometimes this condition can just engulf your life.
Recently, I went to get tested for lactose intolerance and the test begins with you drinking a cup of water mixed with lactose, and then breathing into a bag at certain intervals for 2 and a half hours. Half way through this test I began getting symptoms of intolerance and my eczema began to weep. My eczema wasn’t weeping before the test and nothing changed in that time frame. The only suspect was the lactose drink, so I knew there must be some correlation.
It’s difficult to determine whether what you’ve eaten is a trigger because we’re eating multiple meals a day, the eczema may not react immediately, and it’s just difficult to remember every single thing we’ve eaten every day. So I’ve built an app called Exma to make this process easier.
The app allows you to keep a food diary by taking photos of your meals and also to record when you get itchy. You can look back and see what you’ve eaten and when you were itchy, and hopefully be able to find a trend.
What I would like to be able to do is track more than just food. If we could track other variables such as weather, sleep, stress and more, we can get a better picture of your health and how this is affecting your eczema. Even the possibility to bring custom reports to your health professional to get a more tailored treatment.
The mobile app is free and is currently in Beta so you may run into a few issues here and there. The first version is built for Android and can found in the Google Play Store here (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.exmaapp). If you have any feedback or feature requests, or just want to have a chat send me an email at exmamobileapp@gmail.com or you can find me on twitter at @kerritaco (twitter.com/kerritaco).
