Gluten intolerance may be to blame for cracked fingertips
Q: I had been suffering with painful cracked fingertips for years. I even went to the doctor for it. However, the prescription creams I got didn’t work.
Then I decided to stop eating whole-wheat bread and other wheatbased products. Within two weeks, my fingertips were healed, and my digestive troubles resolved. I think I could be gluten-intolerant. That was a few years ago, and I have not had a single split fingertip since.
A: You should ask your doctor if you might be at risk for celiac disease. If you have been scrupulous about avoiding gluten, though, an antibody blood test for this condition will not be accurate. Even a biopsy may not tell the story. A genetic test might reveal your susceptibility, but it won’t determine if you actually have celiac disease.
Q: When I was a child, I frequently suffered from colds. My aunt would make a cough medicine of very soft-cooked onions with butter, brown sugar, ginger and a bit of vinegar. I liked it, and I always stopped coughing.
A: Onion cough medicine appears to be popular in many parts of the world. We have heard of various versions from India, Hungary and the North American frontier.
Some people sweeten the onion syrup with honey rather than brown sugar. There is some evidence to suggest that honey has antiviral activity (Molecules, Oct. 29, 2020).
A meta-analysis of six randomized controlled trials found that honey worked better than placebo to alleviate coughs in kids (Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, April 10, 2018). Honey should never be given to babies less than a year old because it might contain botulinum toxin.
Q: My husband went to a new nurse practitioner because of a stubborn itchy rash that would not go away.
The NP prescribed a steroid cream (triamcinolone). When he finally picked up the prescription, it was a large bag. Inside were 30 15-gram tubes of the cream. The NP had prescribed 450 grams of the cream.
When he tried to return the unopened tubes, they wouldn’t take them back. The pharmacist explained that 450 grams usually comes in a “tub” and they didn’t have that; hence the 30 tubes.
This doesn’t make sense as the rash is not all over his body. The NP told him at the visit to use the cream only as needed and only on the
itchy spots. He is stuck with at least 28 unneeded tubes of this medication and doesn’t know what to do with them.
Why wouldn’t the NP have offered him a sample to see if it worked on his undiagnosed rash? What are his options with the excess cream?
A: A sample would have been appropriate. Pharmacies rarely, if ever, accept “returns” because they cannot resell pills or cream, even if in a sealed container. We fear your husband is stuck with unusable medicine.
It might be important to know what is causing your husband’s itchy rash. The steroid cream is a symptomatic treatment. A dermatologist might be in a better position to diagnose the underlying cause of his rash.
You may want to visit the website, www.SkinSight. com. The search engine enables people to view skin conditions that match their symptoms.