An alkaline eczema diet is basically a simple food choice adjustment that you make to eliminate or minimize food that can trigger itchiness or inflammation. Most people who adopt this diet notice a great improvement in the itch level within weeks.
Karen’s Eczema Diet book , written by an Australian nutritionist outlines a 3 day detox program which is basically having a strict menu on whole food which are alkaline based, which does not trigger itchiness or inflammation, in fact healing good food for the skin. It is not an extreme diet or fasting program, in fact the recipes are delicious and appetizing. After the 3-day intensive alkaline cleanse, food can slowly be reintroduced to observe for any trigger.
The recipes in the book is more Western centric, but it can be easily adapt to replace some of the food with local produce which are seasonal. The list of grocery is also easily available from local wet market or NTUC supermarket(Finest) or Cold Storage, making the preparation practical and affordable.
Preparation to lead up to the 3 days is advisable. Choose a period that you will be able to take time off from work and minimal outdoor activity. Some form of walking or relaxing yoga stretching is fine.
Preparation
First, is to get the grocery shopping done, to stock up on the ingredients. There are a couple of homemade broth to be prepared in advance and used a lot during the 3 days. Beef bone is readily available from the butcher at the wet market, and definitely cheaper than Cold Storage. You could also choose to replace beef with chicken. The reason to buy banana and papaya from the local fruit stall is because the type of banana that is more suitable is the Malaysian bananas because they are fresher and not loaded with chemical to stop the ripening process like the Dole from supermarket. Papaya are easier to be found in wet market. NTUC Fairprice Finest or Cold Storage supermarket would also have most of the vegetables and fruits. Total budget estimated : SGD60.
Using a slow cooker, you should first started on the main “stock” that will be used in most of the dishes. It took 30 min to cut the vegetables and 8 hours in the slow cooker. After that, an important step not to miss : To cool it down, put in the fridge and skimp off the solidified fat layer on top.
Day 1
Breakfast : Steam sweet potato
Lunch : Potato and Leek Soup
Dinner : Chickpea Casserole
Mid-day Snacks : 1 Pear, 2 banana, 1 cucumber slices, 1 bowl of fresh pea sprout
For breakfast, since it’s a simple plain sweet potato with a glass of water, try to choose the golden sweet potato which is the yummiest even when it is steamed.
At 11am, start preparing for lunch. Preparation and cooking will be relatively simple because it consisted of mainly potato, leek and brussel sprouts. In the book, the portion was a bit too much and you may have to make some adjustments to 2 servings to keep for tommorow’s lunch as well.
By mid-afternoon, you may start to feel hungry, don’t starve yourself. Much on pear and banana. Do also ensure to drink several glasses of water throughout the day.
At 6pm, start to prepare my dinner. Also relatively easy and quick as it consist of mainly 4 ingredients – sweet potato, leek, celery and a can of chickpea.
Day 2
For the next day, you may follow the same menu as the first day but add some cabbage into the menu for lunch.
For dinner, you can have some brown rice(try to keep it to within half a bowl at most) with the chickpea casserole as the main dish.
Day 3
By this day, your body would have adapted to the menu but if you start to get bored with the menu, remind yourself, today is the last day. In the morning prepare lunch using the leftover broth and the casserole again for dinner. This time, add cabbage and pea sprout for side salad.
Easing back into the normal diet
By the 3rd day, you may already starting to feel less itchy and skin less inflammed. If not, do not be demoralised, stick to the similar food for a while more, slowly adding in other alkaline based food and some normal/acidic food. Observe for any unusual itchiness as you start re-introducing food. For example, you can start the next day with oat & apple for breakfast, vegetable and pea salad for lunch with chicken breast and rice with fish and cabbage for dinner.
Read more about “What is an Eczema Diet” :
https://skinshare.sg/blog/2017/01/01/what-is-eczema-diet/