Treat your hands the way you would treat your face and body.

Many Earthcare Asia followers use Aquatect Gel as a moisturizer to take care of eczema on their hands. In fact, I am one of those people. Thanks to Earthcare Asia’s Aquatect Gel, I was liberated from my long battle with hand eczema. 

To be completely honest, there’s not much of a difference between skincare for your face and for eczema on hands. Both areas are made up of the same skin, so it’s important to understand your skin texture and needs to determine the most suitable care method.

In other words, to cure that dry, scaly eczema on your hands, it’s crucial to understand the basics of skincare.

Just like with any other skincare, moisturizing is the most important. Why?

I cannot emphasize this enough: the most fundamental element of skincare is moisturizing. Just like with skincare for our face and body, our hand care is no different. 

To make this easier to digest, let’s start with the causes of eczema on hands. 

There are countless causes for this skin condition - stress, allergies, diet, environmental changes. But all of them result in the same phenomenon: dry skin. And I mean extremely dry skin. 

And what causes extremely dry skin? Overdry. 

Repeated overdry strips your hands’ moisture

When the water on your hands evaporates, it takes your hands’ natural moisture with it too. This is what is known as “overdry”. 

The reason why we skincare advisors at Earthcare Asia instruct users, “Immediately apply Aquatect Gel to your skin after washing your face or taking a bath,” is so that you can protect your skin from overdrying. 

It’s important to mention here that our hands are more at risk for overdrying than our face or body because it comes into contact with water much more frequently. After going to the bathroom, coming home, cooking, doing the laundry, cleaning the house, washing your face, putting on makeup, taking a bath, before and after a meal, etc. In just one day, our hands come into contact with water numerous times. And every time, our hands lose their natural hydration and become dry.

This dryness is made worse if you use a cleanser or detergent too. The cleansing ingredients in facial cleansers, detergent, or body wash take away our skin’s natural oils, making our skin even more susceptible to dryness.

Taking all of these drying factors into consideration, our skin’s barrier function is severely damaged. As a result, it becomes incredibly sensitive and reactive to just the slightest stimulation. 

As we’ve established in another article, this phenomenon is the same as the skin on our face. But it doesn’t end here for our hands…

Our hands are constantly stimulated

And inevitably so.

With anything that we do, we always use our hands. Whether it’s to hold something, grip something, rub something, pull something, we practically cannot survive without our hands coming into contact with things.

These unavoidable practices in our daily lives put a huge strain on our hands - especially if they’re dry and sensitive. From this, hand eczema symptoms such as redness, itchiness, and rashes become more likely.

Now, if something like this happened to our face, what should we do? If you’ve been following us for long enough, the answer should come to you immediately: MOISTURIZE. The most effective care method is to provide your skin with ample hydration, as well as oils and moisturizing ingredients to retain that hydration. That is the key to dewy, healthy skin. 

And the effects of effective moisturization shouldn’t be temporary. If you’ve done it properly, your skin will remain hydrated for 24 hours. Moisturization is what will allow your skin to slowly go back to a healthy, normal state and fight against external stimuli. Skincare for eczema on hands is the exact same as this.

“But I’ve always moisturized my eczema hands. Isn’t that basic common knowledge?”

I’ve been there too - I always moisturized the eczema on my hands. But (and perhaps this might be the case for many of you) I was using hand creams to do so. And that’s where a big issue lies: moisturizing with hand creams is not “moisturizing”.

Hand creams cannot properly moisturize

For the large majority, the first thing that pops up in our heads when we think about hand eczema treatments is hand creams. I was definitely one of those people - I’ve used tens and hundreds of hand creams over the years. But there’s a reason why hand creams never worked, and now I know.

Eczema on hands can’t be solved with hand creams because the main ingredient in hand creams is oils. There is simply no way to effectively moisturize your skin with just oil. 

True, oils are necessary for our skin to a certain extent. Like I mentioned before, oils prevent our skin’s moisture from evaporating. But if you apply oil to your dehydrated, incredibly dry skin, you’re only maintaining that dry state. Clearly, that doesn’t solve the problem.

This is where Aquatect Gel becomes your best friend.

5 tips with Aquatect Gel to heal eczema on hands

With Aquatect Gel, you get to replenish your skin with LOTS of moisture for hydration and oil for moisture retention. In other words, you get to hydrate your dry skin and maintain that hydration.

Not to mention, unlike hand creams (which only supply you with oils), Aquatect Gel provides your skin with hydration, oil, and moisturizing ingredients every time you apply it. And by applying it several times per day for a long period of time, your eczema on hands will slowly heal too. 

Because our hands are much more susceptible to dryness and irritation than our face or body, it is important to stay consistent and patient. Results won’t show up immediately, but that doesn’t mean it’s not getting better.

If you’ve been struggling with hand eczema like me for a long time, or if you’ve never had the opportunity to conduct proper moisturization, then you won’t regret giving Aquatect Gel a try.

Lastly, here are 5 tips to maximize the effectiveness of your eczema hand care routine.

Step 1: Frequently apply Aquatect Gel

When using Aquatect Gel to solve eczema on your hands, the main goal is to solve your skin’s dryness. Thus, it becomes crucial for your skin to maintain a moisturized state for as long as possible. 

That being said, it’s quite difficult to do that with our hands because it has more chances of becoming dehydrated in our daily lives (washing your hands, using detergent, holding/touching things).

You must repeatedly and frequently reapply Aquatect Gel on your hands to assure that you can maintain that moisturized state. The more you reapply, the more hydrated your hands will be, so I recommend you do so - even if your hands don’t feel dry.

“I’m too busy, I don’t have the time to reapply.”

“It’s too time-consuming.”

Depending on your lifestyle, it may be difficult to frequently re-moisturize. However, Aquatect Gel is water-soluble so it won’t feel sticky or heavy on your skin. Even if you accidentally touch something right after you’ve applied it on your hands, all you need to do is wipe it with a towel.

Moreover, you don’t need to apply a lot at once. Applying just a small amount will make a significant difference than if you didn’t apply anything at all.

The best thing to do to get rid of eczema on hands is to stay consistent. Adjust the amount and frequency to your lifestyle and preferences, but the important thing is to make it a long-term habit.

Step 2: If you can’t reapply Aquatect Gel throughout the day, combine it with a hand cream

Because Aquatect Gel is water-soluble, it washes off easier than oil-abundant hand creams. If you want to make your skin’s protected state last (i.e. before doing tasks that involve water, in situations where you can’t reapply Aquatect Gel for a long time), it may be good to layer hand cream after applying Aquatect Gel on your hands.

The hand cream will create a barrier around your hands and will temporarily secure the moisture in your skin. But remember - once you apply hand cream, you can’t moisturize your skin by putting a layer of Aquatect Gel on top of it. The oil in the hand cream will simply swat away the moisture. 

Once you’re in a situation where you can apply Aquatect Gel again, make sure to wash your hands with a gentle cleanser and wash off the oil before moisturizing your hands.

Step 3: Avoid physical stimulation

If eczema on hands is severe, try applying a thick coat of Aquatect Gel, as well as wearing cotton gloves to avoid direct physical contact.

When you need to use water in these situations, try wearing rubber or plastic gloves on top of your cotton ones to avoid water contact as much as possible.

Step 4: Use jointly with prescription medication

If eczema on hands is severe, it may be worthwhile to visit a dermatologist. They may prescribe you with anti-itching or anti-inflammation creams. 

These are good solutions to healing eczema on hands too. If you use steroid-containing creams properly, it’ll dramatically quicken your skin’s recovery. Especially if you just began using Aquatect Gel, your skin is still very weak. And Aquatect Gel alone cannot reduce itchiness. 

Enduring and tolerating the itchiness may cause you to itch your hands unknowingly, further distancing yourself from recovery. So, if your hands get itchy, stop it with prescription medication, and continue to moisturize your hands.

Just be sure to check with your dermatologist that you can use Aquatect Gel and prescription medication simultaneously. If you can, let the Aquatect Gel soak into your skin, and then apply the medicated cream.

Step 5: Always keep 100g in your bag

Ever since I started using Aquatect Gel for my hand eczema treatment, I always keep a 100g bottle of Aquatect Gel in my bag at all times.

The 100g bottle is slightly smaller than a regular tube of toothpaste, so it’s like carrying a slightly big hand cream. If you always have it on you, then it’s super easy to re-moisturize throughout the day, even if you’re outside.

Some of you may be thinking that it’s too difficult to continually moisturize your hands because we use our hands for everything. But it’s important to improvise and work creatively around your schedule to maximize the number of times you moisturize your hands. 

I struggled with hand eczema for 10 years.

But after using Aquatect Gel every day for a year, I noticed that my hands weren’t itchy; I wasn’t using any other medication or product. After 2 years, my hands stopped reacting badly to dishwashing soap. 

Because the amount of moisture in my hands increased, my skin slowly recuperated, and it became stronger against dryness and external stimuli.

2 years may seem incredibly long. But I couldn’t find a cure for 10 years. It kept getting worse for 10 years. For me, it was just 2 years.

For any of you struggling with eczema on your hands, I hope these 5 tips will guide you to recovery!

Ready to cure your hand eczema once and for all with Earthcare Asia?

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