#405 Listener Q&A: Chlorine and Gut Healing In Child Eczema with Christa Biegler, RD

This week on The Less Stressed Life Podcast, I’m answering two listener questions around childhood eczema—when it flares from pool exposure and when gut healing alone isn’t enough. If you’ve been navigating eczema with your child (or yourself) and feel like you’ve hit a wall despite diet changes and supplements, this one’s for you.

In this episode, I break down the different types of eczema and how they react to things like chlorine, chemical sensitivity, and gut imbalances. I also share what clues to look for (like how symptoms show up after swimming or starting solids) and why doing things in the right order can make all the difference.

❓Got your own question for Christa? Submit it here: https://www.christabiegler.com/questions

 🚨Christa is currently taking clients through the end of June! Book a call here: https://www.christabiegler.com/schedule

KEY TAKEAWAYS:
• When chlorine (or other pool chemicals) may calm vs. flare eczema
• How to identify different eczema types and what they really mean
• Why gut healing protocols don’t always work—and what to do instead
• What birth stories, antibiotics, and early solids can tell you about root causes
• Why order of operations matters (especially in kids under 5)
• When it’s time to stop guessing and get fresh eyes on the case

WHERE TO FIND CHRISTA:
Website: https://www.christabiegler.com/
Instagram: @anti.inflammatory.nutritionist
Podcast Instagram: @lessstressedlife
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@lessstressedlife
Leave a review, submit a questions for the podcast or take one of my quizzes here: https://www.christabiegler.com/links

NUTRITION PHILOSOPHY:

 🍽️ Over restriction is dead
 🥑 Whole food is soul food and fed is best
 🔄 Sustainable, synergistic nutrition is in (the opposite of whack-a-mole supplementation & supplement graveyards)
 🤝 You don’t have to figure it out alone
 💛 Do your best and leave the rest

Transcript

[00:00:00] Christa Biegler, RD: I'm your host, Christa Biegler, and I'm going to guess we have at least one thing in common that we're both in pursuit of a less stressed life. On the show, I'll be interviewing experts and sharing clinical pearls from my years of practice to support high performing health savvy women in pursuit of abundance and a less stressed life.

[00:00:29] Christa Biegler, RD: One of my beliefs is that we always have options for getting the results we want. So let's see what's out there together.

[00:00:47] Christa Biegler, RD: hello. So I'm so used to having guests on this podcast. I don't always get to just start with gratitude, so I just wanna thank you for being here. We've been publishing this podcast since 2017, and sometimes that kind of consistency isn't for the faint of heart. I. I just appreciate all of you that have been along for this ride with me.

[00:01:06] Christa Biegler, RD: Whether you just, this is your first episode, it's your fifth episode, or it's your 350th episode. I appreciate you being here and my podcast listeners are my favorite kind of people. And one thing I always wanna do is create more dialogue with the podcast 'cause it does feel a little bit one sided. So back when I published Part one of my Own Healing Crisis story a couple of months ago.

[00:01:26] Christa Biegler, RD: We asked you for your Q and As, and we've been back logging those since, so I've dedicated the month of June to answering just your Q and as. I'll do two per week. So let's start with Beth. Beth asked a great question about how chlorine might have played a role in the flare I had back in 2015. She mentioned in her question that her son reacted to a non chlorinated pool that was being treated with something called baquacil, and she was wondering if pools should be avoided altogether when eczema is active.

[00:01:55] Christa Biegler, RD: Of course, this answer will have nuance, so let's get into it. So when it comes to pool chemicals and eczema, we want to start with some high quality questions as much as possible. So that's where I'm gonna start. What kind of eczema are we dealing with? What's the context overall? What's the skin's baseline condition?

[00:02:11] Christa Biegler, RD: Is there any compromise to the skin barriers at broken open that will always impact maybe what we do. And how well is the body handling external exposures right now? So meaning. Is the skin not really flared or is it in a height of a flare? Because if we're already at a height of a flare, we're just gonna have to see how this new input is going to impact it.

[00:02:33] Christa Biegler, RD: What I don't know from Beth's question is if this is an isolated incident, which I'll get to at the end, but first big picture, we just wanna zoom out. Chlorinated pools are basically a big disinfectant bath. Chlorine is a stronger form of sodium hypochlorite, which is what's in bleach, so they're just a big old bleach bath, so that can irritate the skin for some, especially if the skin barrier is already compromised.

[00:03:01] Christa Biegler, RD: Depending on the type of skin or the how it's presenting. But the nuance is that if the eczema is driven by an infection, a low-grade infection, like staph, I call this inflammatory type eczema, then this giant bleach bath could be calming like a giant bleach bath, which we've talked about on the podcast with different dermatologists that have been on here, and very often this is a recommendation from a dermatologist.

[00:03:28] Christa Biegler, RD: So if the skin gets better from the swimming pool, it might be because it's controlling some of that overgrowth on the skin. A reminder that grows from the inside out, by the way. But there's another type of eczema. I think about this as like layers of a cake. It's not just one, but it kind of stacks.

[00:03:47] Christa Biegler, RD: You end up with two layers. In kids with this environmental eczema type, that just looks like a more dry picture. It is consistent with sluggish drainage, like just more of a need to support detox and drainage, and it is also looks like you would have more chemical sensitivities, then chlorine or some other chemical can flare.

[00:04:09] Christa Biegler, RD: This might also like if you've seen any sensitivities to chemicals in general. The skin is a safe place for your body to get rid of extra stuff, and so that is when you can see a bigger flare. Now if this pool was using BA wasl instead of chlorine, I did look on their website and I was unable to find the ingredients.

[00:04:29] Christa Biegler, RD: Unfortunately. I was curious. I was trying to look at all of their different products. I was trying to figure out if it contained copper, which is a very common fungicide used in pool treatments or another reactive compound. I had a story with a client once who had found out she was really reacting quite negatively to the copper based pool sanitizer that she had due to some interesting fungal issues, and just like copper being out of balance.

[00:04:56] Christa Biegler, RD: So there can be some things to unpack, but I would say. This would be an exception. Another potential exception that I did not include in my own story that I realized when I was working on my answer to yours was that I realized years later that I definitely did have issues with halogen.

[00:05:16] Christa Biegler, RD: Halogen include iodine, chlorine, and bromine. Halogen displacement. We all have iodine receptor sites in our cells, and so I didn't get into that in that story. I can get into it in part two because I learned that, realized that in part two when I was not dealing with an eczema flare, but when I was dealing with a crash of stress hormones.

[00:05:37] Christa Biegler, RD: However, because of the context of this question is with your son, with your child, I usually don't find that we need to get into working with halogen with children because they. Don't tend to need it like adults do. Okay, so big picture. This is why I like eczema typing. So first, knowing the type of eczema your child has.

[00:05:58] Christa Biegler, RD: So if it's more red reactive, worse in the late afternoon and evening versus the morning, most kids have this inflammatory type eczema, which is generally linked to gut and microbiome imbalance issues. But like I said before, types can be stacked like layers of the cake. So the longer the history, the longer someone's had something, the more layers that are usually there.

[00:06:16] Christa Biegler, RD: Of course, there's genetic predisposition that plays into it. We hand that stuff off to our kids. We can look at our own family history to get some clues about it. But when we understand what type of eczema your anyone has, like your child has, it becomes clearer to why they might be reacting and what they might actually need.

[00:06:35] Christa Biegler, RD: So in any chemical could cause a problem if someone has a lot of. Burden or there's something, and I will say it's very possible that particular thing is just an irritant to them. Might be the wrong thing at the wrong time. And this is the tricky part. If it's just an isolated incident, obviously we usually don't wanna create the same problem.

[00:06:54] Christa Biegler, RD: Some, I don't know what much context about the reaction, Beth, but I often say with clients that sometimes you can't really draw a conclusion from a one time experience. So I hope that is helpful. It might be right, wrong thing at the wrong time, but. This whole conversation needs to have that lens of what kind of eczema type is it to answer it appropriately and what is most appropriate and for different scenarios.

[00:07:20] Christa Biegler, RD: So it's not a one size fits all, which is why I have a job, which is good. It's good to know that there is nuance and if someone's trying to give you one size fits all, advice that may not apply to you because very often one size fits all advice does not always apply. When I do case audit calls with potential clients, we go through the whole history with children, especially the birth story, any symptom patterns, when things started, talk through what makes things better, worse, to just help you understand where all the missing pieces can be.

[00:07:53] Christa Biegler, RD: If your child is flaring after swimming, just don't panic, observe, look for connections. If it's continuous from different pool to different pool, of course, even though it's sodium hypochlorite or basically a big bleach bath. There can be other things that are in the pool as well that we don't always know are there.

[00:08:11] Christa Biegler, RD: So are they flaring because of the pool or was their system already. Tipping like overfilling, essentially those couple of little clues. I very often find a story can be very powerful and just know in isolated instance, we tuck that in our cap and look to see if there's a recurrence in other places.

[00:08:31] Christa Biegler, RD: If you need any help, if you feel like you've tried a lot of things without answers, then I'd love to help people sort through that in a case review. Those are only open for the month of June as I close those in July and August to spend time with my own family and kids. So thanks so much for your question, Beth.

[00:08:48] Christa Biegler, RD: So our second question today comes from Jen, who wrote in about her three-year-old son who's had eczema since he was six months old. They've removed common food triggers, tried just quoting dozens of gut healing supplements, and made some progress, but he's still suffering. I wish this story was less common.

[00:09:06] Christa Biegler, RD: It's one of the most common stories that I hear from parents with children's with eczema, and it. Can be not only frustrating, it's exhausting, and it feels like you're doing everything right and still getting stuck. So I don't have all of the context here. So I wanna share about some of the additional context that helps us figure out what the gaps are

[00:09:26] Christa Biegler, RD: when eczema shows up around six months, like Jen said, with her son, that's usually the time we introduce solids, which can be a big clue. It doesn't mean food is the issue or that's a primary issue. It means that the way we're processing those proteins, those food particles might be part of the issue.

[00:09:45] Christa Biegler, RD: It's a downstream thing. So in order to support Jen the most, or any child, especially five and under, what I really want to understand is full context. What's the birth story, what's the family history of allergens or eczema? How was the baby delivered? What happened right before, during, after birth or around especially since eczema showed around six months, that kind of set this up potentially.

[00:10:10] Christa Biegler, RD: Was there any antibiotic exposure? That may have affected the gut microbiome, C-section, et cetera, or how the baby is digesting things, because let's face it, babies are born and they're still maturing, right? They're still maturing. Everything is still maturing, including digestion. Gut healing to me certainly isn't about removing foods or throwing supplements at it alone.

[00:10:33] Christa Biegler, RD: Alone, it's really knowing what system is driving the issue. I think that most symptoms, eczema is a symptom, come from an imbalance of systems, and then through that imbalance there is deficiency. So a lot of people will focus on leaky gut or intestinal repair, but in most kids, I see that the real issue is.

[00:10:51] Christa Biegler, RD: Dysbiosis or an imbalance of gut microbes. That might be bacteria, might be fungus, it might be something else. But if you try to repair the gut lining without addressing the imbalance first, the results can be limited. And I wanna give some context around where this can go wrong too, next, but it can be like trying to re-seed a lawn where you haven't really pulled weeds.

[00:11:10] Christa Biegler, RD: Like you're still gonna have those weeds, or you might be like compromising the soil and it's draining all the nutrients from the soil and that can impact how fast skin is healing, et cetera. This is just doing things in the right order and there can be exceptions to things, but I think the right order does matter.

[00:11:28] Christa Biegler, RD: So I wanna look at like gut drainage, system hormone interactions, especially for adults and kids. I will address nutrients at a baseline level. Usually the kids I see are really well nourished. They have unicorn amazing parents, but in kids we gently support all systems that need help and we wanna target them and go in the right order.

[00:11:48] Christa Biegler, RD: When I'm doing case reviews for people, I find that families have often done a lot, but they're missing just a couple of steps or things are done in the wrong sequence. In short, there's gaps. Another really common gap is just missing, not great interpretation of test results or not great protocols.

[00:12:06] Christa Biegler, RD: So once we fix those gaps, we can get traction. And the good news is the less time you have eczema, which is usually. Usually the easier it is to solve. So I just mean if a child has eczema for six to 12 months or 18 months, it can generally, or an adult, if you have had eczema for less than five years, it can be easier to resolve than anyone who's had it for more than a decade or more than a couple of decades.

[00:12:28] Christa Biegler, RD: Not saying anyone can't bring the body back into balance, it's just that. It makes sense, right? More time in can sometimes mean there's more of a road to recovery. So Jen, you've done so much already, which tells me you're really committed. And I also know from experience that. This kind of puzzle needs like multiple layers in the right order.

[00:12:48] Christa Biegler, RD: So if you're doing the same thing and you're not seeing results, sometimes it's just worth zooming out with a set of fresh eyes to see what's being overlooked. And I'm sure you've thought of that too. That is why case audits exist. So we can just go deeper, take that pressure off your shoulders and Case.

[00:13:02] Christa Biegler, RD: That's helpful. Those are open in June. So thank you Beth and Jen for your questions this week, and thank you for spending a little time with me today. I love when you share your thoughtful and honest questions because I think that your story can help so many others that are walking a similar path feel less alone, if you are feeling stuck or unsure, or you're not sure what your next step should be, just know you don't have to figure it out alone. I'm here when you're ready and in the meantime, keep tuning in, keep asking questions, and most importantly, keep believing that healing is possible. We'll talk to you next week.

[00:13:36] Christa Biegler, RD: Bye.