“Just stop scratching” is the unhelpful eczema advice that Cosi Care is on a mission to challenge this National Eczema Week.
Launched yesterday, Cosi Care announced it’s ‘Just Stop Scratching’ campaign to shed light on the often painful and uncomfortable condition. The brand is on a mission to challenge the unsolicited advice, introduce safer solutions and raise awareness of the realities of living with itchy skin conditions.
For the 1 in 10 people in the UK living with eczema, being told “just stop scratching” is not just unhelpful, but for many, is simply impossible to follow due to the reflex-like itch and scratch cycle caused by several skin conditions. Eczema can also bring excruciating pain with symptoms such as rashes, cracked and oozing skin.
As part of the campaign Cosi Care has created a series of videos and imagery spotlighting the real stories of young adults and children who suffer from the condition. One of the faces featured within the campaign is Karishma Lecraz, who has atopic eczema and topical steroid withdrawal.
Sharing her story within the Cosi Care campaign videos, Karishma explains: “My skin condition makes me feel really uncomfortable, really scratchy and itchy. I’m frustrated all the time. A lot of the time if I’m not trying to grab the closest thing to me just to scratch my skin, it’s crying and screaming and shouting.”
The ‘Just Stop Scratching’ campaign was born from Cosi Care founder Lauren Bell’s first-hand experience of navigating eczema. Lauren shared, “Growing up with eczema and being told to ‘just stop scratching’ caused so much upset and frustration in my family. When you have chronically itchy skin, and you’re fighting the urge to scratch every second, someone telling you to simply stop can make you feel your battle is minimised, and you feel defeated every time you do scratch. That’s why I knew I had to invent an alternative.”
In addition to her own struggles with the skin condition, Lauren saw her brother Rhys battle with a secondary skin condition, Topical Steroid Withdrawal (TSW) after several years of using topical steroid creams to treat his condition. Often the go-to fix for eczema, topical steroids can come with debilitating long-term side effects which many people are unaware of. TSW can occur when patients stop the long-term use of steroid creams, and despite numerous experiences shared by patients, TSW remains unrecognised as an official condition by the NHS.
In a bid to help people manage their symptoms in a safer way, Lauren created the Cosi Care scratching devices – with fingernail-like bumps and cooling rollers to mimic the sensation of scratching and instantly cool the itch, without the long-term damage or risk of infection and scarring.
To help the community feel less alone in their itchy skin journey, Cosi Care has created a ‘Scratch Survival Guide’, that can be accessed for free on the ‘Just Stop Scratching’ online hub. The hugely informative guide acts as a resource for family, friends and caregivers supporting somebody living with a chronic skin condition, and has been written by those with over 20 years of experience with chronic itch.
