Quote from wavygravygadzooks on October 16, 2021, 9:46 pm

I started getting some kind of dermatitis below and around the outside corners of both my eyes about a year after starting my low VA diet.  I think it was there for at least a month before it gradually went away, but just today I started getting the same little red bumps coming back.

My current guess is that it is related to zinc deficiency.  I don't have any lab data to indicate zinc deficiency, but it seems like I'm getting more and more symptoms that could possibly be the result of zinc deficiency (dry skin, receding and irritated gums that might be associated with herpes reactivation, and I'm starting to wonder if my GI problems have to do with zinc deficiency that is enabling the wrong bacteria to persist).  These problems seem to rapidly worsen when I take thiamine supplements lately, and also when I consume shredded coconut, and my current hypothesis is that all that thiamine is speeding up one part of the detox process but I don't have enough zinc to match it, so Vitamin A (retinoic acid?) is possibly being liberated and damaging my gums, and any additional copper I get (from coconut, for instance) might just be making the zinc problem worse.  The arginine in the coconut might also be encouraging a herpes manifestation.

So, you might consider supplementing with zinc or trying a topical zinc product if you think it could be similar to what I'm experiencing.

On another note, before I had my problems, my wife got some kind of nasty perioral dermatitis that spread to her eyes as well.  We think it's a result of her wearing face masks (often N95's) at her job during Covid.  A dermatologist prescribed a variety of oral and topical antibiotics/antifungals/antiinflammatories but said they could take a month to work, and they were not guaranteed to work, so I convinced my wife not to take them and see what happened.  We tried putting plain coconut oil on it, and coconut oil with a tiny amount of peppermint essential oil, but I don't think it did anything...might have even made it a bit worse.  It eventually went away on its own, but it probably took over a month.  I still don't know what caused it or why it lasted so long, although I bet the moisture and lack of ventilation from mask-wearing had a lot to do with it.  She's been on a mostly meat diet for a while and is very fit and healthy aside from pet and seasonal allergies.

Quote from tim on October 25, 2021, 8:17 pm

@jeremy

6% hydrogen peroxide will kill all bacteria and yeast on the skin. Until a low vitamin A diet cured the seb derm I suffered from, I used a spray bottle to apply it and control the seb derm.