Roseanna Murray (@the.organicwardrobe) is an English crochet designer, creating crochet clothing patterns for women and children (moaracrochet.com), while living in Brazil with her husband and daughter. This year Roseanna has started a new adventure sharing her life long experience of living with chronic eczema and how wearing natural fabrics help to heal sensitive skin.
Born with eczema in the 80’s very little was known on how to treat eczema other than medications and steroid creams. Over time and experience Roseanna was raised with the old sayings, ‘Buy quality over quantity’ and learnt to invest in quality, well made, natural fiber clothing to help keep her eczema calm and protected. Below Roseanna shares with us the benefits of choosing to wear linen garments for sensitive skin.
Living with a form of sensitive skin such as eczema or psoriasis means our skin in is a constant change of state, which can be easily triggered into an angry red itchy inflammation through what we touch, eat, the weather and stress.
Choosing to wear the right fabrics can either help or hinder the recovery and health of our delicate reactive skin. I have lived with chronic eczema since birth and have learnt through experience which fabrics help to calm and sooth my skin during a flare up.
Linen carries many properties which can protect and help sore broken skin heal with its ability to breath and absorb moisture. Linen also inhibits bacterial growth which can reduce the development of a skin infection from an open wound.
One of the worst aspects of eczema during a flare up is the sudden burning sensations, as my patches quickly become angry, hot and inflamed. Wearing linen helps to my regulate my body temperature, allowing air to flow freely. While the moisture wicking properties absorb the excess moisture cause during a flare up, which help to keep my skin cool even during the hardest moments.
During these moments we also have an overwhelming urge to scratch our skin, often until we bleed. Linen is an easy fabric to wash and is durable which can be thrown in the washing machine with no worry and can also handle a deep scrubbing to remove any unfortunate stains.
Another trigger for sensitive skin is dust and fluff, there is nothing more annoying when you buy a new piece of clothing and it gets covered in lint. These extra loose particles can easily trigger a reaction. Unlike cotton, linen does not lint reducing any worry of a flare up.
There are many triggers for sensitive skin such as food, weather, dust and stress. Having the ability to reduce any of these causes is always on our minds, and knowing that my clothing is not going to be a cause is a huge worry I can take off my daily check list. I believe investing in a few quality linen garments is an investment of skin health which will allow your sensitive skin to breath, heal and feel good.
