Meet Your Atopic Dermatitis Care Team
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[MUSIC PLAYING] HEATHER HENSLEY: Atopic dermatitis can affect your whole life and even your whole family's life. Each aspect of care is so deeply important, and so it's very important that you have a team on board to help you along the journey. You start with primary care.
So your primary care, whether you're a kiddo, it could be your pediatrician, or if you're an adult, your family practice doctor or internal medicine doctor, they're going to lead you through all of the different specialists that you'll see. They're like the chief person of your medical team. They will direct each aspect of care.
Sometimes the primary care physician can handle mild cases of atopic dermatitis. But once they reach the dermatologist, it's common that they have moderate to severe atopic dermatitis, and it's highly impacting their life. The dermatologists would examine the skin, figure out how severe, and which medications that you need for your condition.
Thirty percent of atopic dermatitis is exacerbated by either food sensitivities, food allergies, or environmental allergies. So if I'm treating a patient and they're not getting better with the medications that I've prescribed, then I will, oftentimes, send them to an allergist for further testing. The benefit of going to an allergist is that is their specialty of figuring out what is their ultimate trigger for atopic dermatitis.
They would usually either do a blood test or the skin prick test to figure out what those allergens are. Either the topical, the environmental, or the food can make a big difference. You want to have a well-balanced diet that's mostly anti-inflammatory.
Some people use the Mediterranean diet, but I would leave that up to the nutritionists, since they're the expert in healing patients from within. If you had atopic dermatitis, you would tell them about your condition, how it affects your life, and then you would tell them about your visit with the allergist and the dermatologist and let them know maybe the results of your food sensitivity test or your food allergy test. That way they could help you formulate your diet for the day-to-day living.
If the primary care physician or dermatologist are noticing any effect in the mood or just your day-to-day normal life, you start recruiting your licensed therapist or psychiatrist. I think it's definitely overlooked and something that the primary care team and any doctor that's seeing their patient with atopic dermatitis should address. Mental health is very important with skin conditions. Because I definitely have seen it more in my older population dealing with depression and even anxiety from just a skin condition that they couldn't handle anymore on their own.
I think the patient is the leader of the care team. I think it's good that a patient is well-informed, definitely, and directing their care the best that they can.
When a patient walks into the room and talks to that physician, they should feel like they're getting all the education that they need about their condition and which treatments are best for them. It's very important throughout your healing process that you're updating each physician on how well you're doing because they will not know if you need any further assistance. The most important thing is maintaining communication.
I think it's important that whenever you first meet with your primary care physician, that you ask who they recommend and then start adding people. So your dermatologist for your skin, your allergist to help with any environmental or food allergies, and your nutritionist and your psychiatrist or licensed therapist. It's very important that if you have atopic dermatitis, since it affects your whole system as far as your health, that you recruit the people that are experts in those fields.
Atopic dermatitis is also a chronic condition. So you're going to you're going to need to like the people that are on your team because you're going to be probably dealing with them for the rest of your life. Yeah, it's very important that you recruit people for each aspect of atopic dermatitis so you can live your best life and the best quality of life.
So your primary care, whether you're a kiddo, it could be your pediatrician, or if you're an adult, your family practice doctor or internal medicine doctor, they're going to lead you through all of the different specialists that you'll see. They're like the chief person of your medical team. They will direct each aspect of care.
Sometimes the primary care physician can handle mild cases of atopic dermatitis. But once they reach the dermatologist, it's common that they have moderate to severe atopic dermatitis, and it's highly impacting their life. The dermatologists would examine the skin, figure out how severe, and which medications that you need for your condition.
Thirty percent of atopic dermatitis is exacerbated by either food sensitivities, food allergies, or environmental allergies. So if I'm treating a patient and they're not getting better with the medications that I've prescribed, then I will, oftentimes, send them to an allergist for further testing. The benefit of going to an allergist is that is their specialty of figuring out what is their ultimate trigger for atopic dermatitis.
They would usually either do a blood test or the skin prick test to figure out what those allergens are. Either the topical, the environmental, or the food can make a big difference. You want to have a well-balanced diet that's mostly anti-inflammatory.
Some people use the Mediterranean diet, but I would leave that up to the nutritionists, since they're the expert in healing patients from within. If you had atopic dermatitis, you would tell them about your condition, how it affects your life, and then you would tell them about your visit with the allergist and the dermatologist and let them know maybe the results of your food sensitivity test or your food allergy test. That way they could help you formulate your diet for the day-to-day living.
If the primary care physician or dermatologist are noticing any effect in the mood or just your day-to-day normal life, you start recruiting your licensed therapist or psychiatrist. I think it's definitely overlooked and something that the primary care team and any doctor that's seeing their patient with atopic dermatitis should address. Mental health is very important with skin conditions. Because I definitely have seen it more in my older population dealing with depression and even anxiety from just a skin condition that they couldn't handle anymore on their own.
I think the patient is the leader of the care team. I think it's good that a patient is well-informed, definitely, and directing their care the best that they can.
When a patient walks into the room and talks to that physician, they should feel like they're getting all the education that they need about their condition and which treatments are best for them. It's very important throughout your healing process that you're updating each physician on how well you're doing because they will not know if you need any further assistance. The most important thing is maintaining communication.
I think it's important that whenever you first meet with your primary care physician, that you ask who they recommend and then start adding people. So your dermatologist for your skin, your allergist to help with any environmental or food allergies, and your nutritionist and your psychiatrist or licensed therapist. It's very important that if you have atopic dermatitis, since it affects your whole system as far as your health, that you recruit the people that are experts in those fields.
Atopic dermatitis is also a chronic condition. So you're going to you're going to need to like the people that are on your team because you're going to be probably dealing with them for the rest of your life. Yeah, it's very important that you recruit people for each aspect of atopic dermatitis so you can live your best life and the best quality of life.
