It’s absolutely imperative, right now, to wash your hands as often as possible. In the last couple weeks, since I first heard of COVID-19, I’ve been scrubbing mine ten-ish times a day, for at least 20 seconds per wash. The reality is, most of us don’t normally wash our hands this frequently — and even if you don’t suffer from eczema or psoriasis like I do, this level of cleanliness can be pretty irritating on the skin. About a week ago, my knuckles erupted in red, inflamed, itchy scales. And it seems I’m not alone: I’ve gotten texts from my friends and family (as well as Slacks from co-workers) asking if I happened to know of a good, ideally inexpensive product to help relieve their itchy, chapped hands.
Finding this relief is important — it’s much less painful to wash one’s hands if they’re not chapped and bleeding. And since my hands were so far past any irritation I’d ever experienced in the past, I decided to do some research to find the most healing hand cream available. After perusing one of Reddit’s eczema forums, I decided on bottle of Gold Bond’s $4 Eczema Relief Cream (it’s comment section was rife with rave reviews: “so much better than anything else I’ve used!” and “It calms everything instantly!”).
I put it on as soon as it arrived, and the first thing I noticed was how nice it felt to massage the thick, hydrating cream into my skin. It didn’t immediately eliminate the dry patches and irritation, but after two days of consistent use (I put it on two to three times a day), they were completely gone — my hands looked back to themselves. I attribute this to the cream’s formula: it is comprised of oatmeal (which calms the skin and prevents itchiness), aloe vera (for soothing and hydrating), and vitamin E (which helps build the skin’s protective barrier and lock in moisture.).
And though this is technically marketed as an eczema relief cream, it cleared up my boyfriend’s less patchy — but still dry-as-a-bone — hands in a matter of hours.
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