Topical steroids aren’t always an answer

As a mother and as a pharmacist, Karen Cheah knows topical steroids aren’t always an answer to skin issues in the long run.
This is especially true where the skin is thinner or for babies and children.

When Karen's young son developed severe eczema and, naturally, she wanted to help him find a way to heal it - and that meant taking a different approach. 

A Margaret River community pharmacist for 14 years, Karen had all the weapons at her disposal when her son developed eczema at four-years-old.
Her parents are pharmacists. Her brothers, too. Topical steroids, Tubifast wraps and treatment creams were familiar territory. But none of it worked. They were difficult years of attempting to manage broken skin, relentless itch, staph infection, and the sleepless nights and distress of a little boy who needed immediate relief.

Karen made the suggested dietary adjustments - cutting back on wheat, dairy and sugar - and introduced probiotic supplements. But long-term solutions couldn’t address her son’s tiredness from the lack of sleep caused by relentless itch and the everyday pain of inflamed skin.

And then came the side effects: damaged and over reactive skin that wouldn’t heal. Topical steroid withdrawal wasn’t something she had come across until it presented in her own son. Like many others, Karen had believed the only way forward was to keep using the strong steroids to suppress the eczema flare-up. But it wasn’t working. And Karen knew she had more to offer her son.

When they installed a compounding room in the pharmacy two years ago, Karen was able to experiment with different types of creams, balms and ointments combined with botanical extracts and essential oils to help soothe the symptoms of mild eczema and dermatitis.

The results were just amazing.

Karen and her pharmacy team had such fantastic results and feedback from the people who were using the Botanical Chemist range of products that Karen formulated, including her son for his eczema.

It is from her personal experience and their positive feedback that DermaGen by Botanical Chemist products was created.