Hi,
I just thought I'd pass on something in my experience that might be
useful to someone out there. You see, when my first child was tiny (and
exclusively breastfed btw) we had a spate of ear infections with her. I
knew that breastfeeding was not a 100% guarantee, but you can imagine, I
was somewhat miffed that it didn't seem to be helping at all :-(

Then the doctor told us it was eczema in her ears, which was getting
infected. Again, I was miffed because, after all, isn't breastfeeding
supposed to help against eczema? But at least it kind of explained why
my child was getting ear infections.

Recently, Emma has been diagnosed properly (as has the rest of my
family). She (and the rest of us) has psoriosis, *not* eczema and
judging from the family distribution, it's genetic :-(

Psoriosis isn't like eczema in that it is not an allergic condition as
such - it's probably genetic, but it's a problem with the proper
sheading of dead skin cells (the confusion in our family was caused by
the fact that we *also* have a lot of allergies). The skin cells in
psoriosis build up and causing scaley plaques of dead skin that can
irritate the young, healthy skin, causing itching, which leads to
scratching and infection. I am sure breastfeeding helps, but maybe not
in quite the direct way we believe it helps with eczema. Emma's ears
(and ear canals) are quite badly affected by psoriosis and that is why
she got lots of ear infections. Bingo!

It turns out that the Psoriosis Association in Britain believe that such
"ear psoriosis" is probably extremely common (a variant on scalp
psoriosis) and are trying to organise research into it. Now I am
wondering about other breastfed babies that get more than their fair
share of ear infections - is psoriosis possibly a factor?
--
Anna (Mummy to Emma, born 17th Jan 1995, Alice, born 11th Sept 1996,
??? due 18th April 1998)
Email: [log in to unmask]  Web Page: http://www.ratbag.demon.co.uk/anna