Florance, 28,  is a mum of two and a marketing executive from Buckinghamshire.

Florence says; 

"I've had eczema my whole life. It cropped up when I was a baby and it’s never really gone away. There have been times that it’s been more manageable than others but it’s always there.

I also had really bad asthma as a child, as well as being allergic to pet hair, and when I’ve been looking into eczema causes before I’ve heard that people with those two things often have eczema too, so I think they may all have been connected. Whilst I’ve grown out of my asthma and pet hair allergies, the eczema has stuck with me! Neither of my parents have eczema, but my younger sister does.

My earliest memory of an eczema was me just itching and itching and itching my skin until it bled – almost zoning out until you can feel your hands are damp and sticky with blood from where you have quite literally torn your skin apart. It’s a very uncomfortable sensation but the itching is almost addictive.

I was back and forth to the doctors for much of my childhood due to my eczema several times as a child. I’ve been prescribed several steroid creams over the years and whilst they sometimes, only sometimes, work at tackling the eczema in the moment, they certainly don’t prevent the eczema from coming back. 

I had a mild reprieve from my eczema in my early 20’s but then it returned with a vengeance when I got pregnant.

The most aggressive flare up I’ve ever had was on my hands just after I had my second baby, in May 2023. Suddenly I was uncontrollably itching my hands for minutes at a time. They became red, sore and dry looking and the skin on y hand literally peeled skin. Not only where they sore but they also came with something I had never had before – dozens of mini blisters were cropping up right in the middle of the eczema, on the palm of my hands and on my fingers. They would burst whenever I got into an itching frenzy and this would cause them to get infected and then reappear. It was just horrendous. 

Previously my eczema has only ever been in places you can hide – inside my elbows, on my tummy, behind my knees. But you can’t hide your hands! It was also so stressful having a newborn who wants to chew on your fingers etc and having to keep your hands away because they’re all sore and horrible.

Even my three-year-old made comments about how horrible my hands looked, so I knew what everyone else was thinking even if they didn’t say it.

I was trying anything, literally, I could get my hands on to try and sooth my hand eczema but while a few things soothed it in the moment it would keep coming back and nothing was having an accumulative effect in dampening down the flare ups. 

I was on an endless search for something that I use on my hand eczema that didn’t contain steroids and which had a lot of independent reviews from eczema sufferers and that was when I discovered Hydrosil Turmeric Butter & Milk Salve. 

This product turned out to be ‘the one’ that I had been praying I would discover because not only did it work but it kept on working over time. I noticed a difference within a day of using it! The improvments increased quite rapidly over the course of a week or so, this was the first product to do that! The blistering was the last to go but nothing else I had tried had cleared them except this salve, which did eventually get rid of them.

The best thing was it almost completely stopped the infuriating itching. I still had a bit of itching when I was washing my hands a lot or been stressed but one quick application of the Hydrosil salve and the itching quickly got under control and was completely gone within twelve hours. 

This is one of those products that’s been a life changer for an eczema suffers like me, I can’t recommend it enough.”