Excerpted from  Allergy Today Autumn 2007. For more articles like this, subscribe to Allergy Today, click here.

For most parents, the day-to-day struggle of dealing with their children’s allergic conditions is accompanied by stress and anguish. Few can see any light at the end of the tunnel. But Allergy Today found four women whose search for a way to alleviate the hardships of dealing with allergies resulted in the satisfaction of helping others with similar problems, and a potentially lucrative business spin-off. There can be a silver lining to even the darkest clouds, as their stories show.

Putting the ease into eczema

When Jaxon was just a few weeks old, he developed an itchy rash that soon spread all over his body. His mother, Michelle Facer, spent the next eight months going backwards and forwards between doctors, trying to find ways to ease his discomfit.

“It looked as though I had poured boiling water over him, and people would look at me as though I was an awful mother. Those looks didn’t bother me as much as the fact he was so unhappy and I couldn’t seem to do anything about it,” Michelle says.

“It broke my heart to see him like that. He was just a really grizzly baby all the time, constantly itching, and there was no way I could calm him down.”

Finally, Michelle was referred to a dermatologist who diagnosed Jaxon as having atopic dermatitis — eczema.

“It was a relief to get a name for the condition, as I was absolutely at my wit’s end, but I wasn’t so happy when the specialist wanted to put him on a steroid cream. Even though it wasn’t particularly strong, there was a long list of possible side effects for long-term use.”

It was at about this time that Michelle had taken on a part-time position at a local laboratory, making colloidal silver.

“I would talk about my son’s eczema to my boss, and say wouldn’t it be great if we could make a natural product that would manage his eczema.”