Ana-Maria Temple, MDHolistic Pediatrician | 2x Bestselling Author

If you’re relying on topicals to heal your child’s eczema… that’s where things can get frustrating

7 May 2026 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

0:40

In this educational monologue, Dr. Ana‑Maria Temple explains that topical medications for pediatric eczema primarily support the skin’s barrier and provide symptomatic relief, but they do not address the deeper, underlying drivers of the disease. She emphasizes that true healing requires first reducing inflammation—likening an inflamed, itchy, oozing skin to a house that’s on fire. Just as you wouldn’t call a construction crew to rebuild a house while it’s burning, you must extinguish the inflammatory “fire” before the skin can be rebuilt and healed.

Chapters

Here's really the most important piece is that topicals support the skin barrier, but they do not address the deeper drivers of eczema. Topicals do not heal the root cause of eczema. What they do is they offer relief. They offer some support while we work on the internal healing. We need to decrease inflammation because when our kids are itchy and red and cracked and oozy and weeping and all the things, it is like our house is on fire. And we know that if our house is on fire, I'm not gonna call the construction crew to come and start rebuilding my house while it's on fire, right? Ultimately, yes, I need my house rebuilt, but before that can happen, I need to put the fire out.