To get some kind of understanding of what eczema actually is you first need to know a little more about your skin and how it works. After all your skin is the largest organ on the body.

Your skin is on the outside protecting internal organs and the skeleton, so it is exposed to many elements of pollution and the rays of the sun as well as the icy winds in the winter.

Your skin is consists of three layers and these all have the ability to be affected by some kind of irritants that can lead to swelling and soreness.

Within the layers of the skin there are a number of chemicals that are produced when the skin comes into contact with something that it does not like. And sometimes you can see a discoloring of the skin or even pigmentation on the surface of the skin.

As well as the skin changing color in some area there can also be some swelling when these chemicals are released.

This is all very well and good, but what goes wrong with the skin to cause eczema in the first place?

If the immune system of a person is not functioning as well as it should be then is known as dysregulation. An example of this is chapped hands that you can get when your hands are exposed to very cold winds. Your body does not understand what this wind actually is, so therefore it begins an automatic system in order to create a level of defense.

So the problem takes places when the body creates too many defense mechanisms and this is the actual process of what is known as eczema. The body is just not able to cope with this excess and so that is why the skin appears to be very flaky in appearance as there is just too much skin for the body than it actually needs.