Olympic gymnastics all-around champion Suni Lee is opening up about her longtime journey with eczema, an inflammatory pores and skin situation also called atopic dermatitis.
Lee, 21, shared she was first identified at a younger age.
“My pores and skin was all the time tremendous dry, tremendous flaky. It was actually uncomfortable as a result of it was actually itchy,” she stated, talking at a panel in partnership with Eli Lilly and Company, pharmaceutical firm and well being fairness sponsor of Team USA. “But my mother ended up taking me to the physician and my physician despatched me to a dermatologist, and that is once we bought my analysis and we discovered the correct therapy plan.”
She admitted when she was youthful she was embarrassed by it, as a result of “no one ever talked about it.”
Now, she’s hoping to be the position mannequin she might have utilized in her youth.
“It might be type of isolating if you take care of eczema and having an eczema flare-up, so I simply need individuals to know that you’re not alone and it doesn’t outline you,” she stated. “When you take care of it and also you’re consistently trying down at your pores and skin, you in all probability suppose, ‘Oh, different persons are taking a look at it and observing it.’ But in actuality, I do not actually suppose anybody’s trying that arduous.”
This is not the primary well being problem Lee has spoken about publicly. Last yr she revealed she was recovering from a debilitating kidney situation. In a quick replace, she shared with CBS News she’s “doing so much higher,” including she’s “so glad” to be heading to Olympic trials.
“I’ve needed to take care of a lot the previous two years. Just really feel so good to know that I might be again on the market, not even at my greatest, and I can nonetheless be capable to carry out,” she stated. “I’m so excited.”
During her first Olympic run on the 2020 Games in Tokyo, Lee gained the person all-around champion title at 18 years outdated, making her the primary Asian American lady to win the title.
With sights set on the 2024 Paris Olympics, she medaled on the U.S. Classic final month, a key qualifying occasion for this yr’s Games earlier than placing on elegant routines on uneven bars and steadiness beam on the U.S. Championships earlier this month.
Next up is Olympic trials, which is able to formally decide who will take one of many 5 ladies’s spots on Team USA. The trials are set to happen later this month in Minneapolis, the place Lee grew up.
“I get to compete in entrance of a hometown crowd, and all my pals and my household are gonna be there so it’ll be a very good one,” she instructed CBS News.
The bodily and psychological influence of eczema
Childhood onset is widespread for eczema, stated dermatologist Dr. Alexandra Golant, who was additionally a part of the panel. She stated Lee’s expertise is just like that of many with the situation.
“Oftentimes there is a pores and skin element — that may be redness, that may be flaking of the pores and skin, that may be pores and skin discomfort, and it is nearly all the time accompanied by a extremely relentless itch that these sufferers endure from,” Golant stated on the panel. It may even trigger pores and skin lesions from getting caught in what’s referred to as a “scratch-itch cycle,” she stated.
And the situation is greater than pores and skin deep — there’s additionally a psychological element.
Even in periods of comparatively clear pores and skin, for a lot of sufferers there’s usually “anticipatory anxiousness round when the subsequent flare will come,” Golant says — one thing Lee says she’s skilled herself.
“Eczema flare ups, they will positively get in my head,” Lee stated through the panel. “Being on a contest flooring, having so many eyes on you and simply making an attempt to not be nervous about if persons are taking a look at my pores and skin or like itching myself as a result of the extra that I itch myself, the flakier it’ll get, the drier it’ll get.”
In an interview with CBS News, Lee shared she was in a position to flip from feeling insecure to assured in her personal pores and skin by realizing “everyone has one thing occurring.”
“I do should be on the market in a leotard the place my pores and skin is absolutely uncovered and everybody can see it, and the insecurity I really feel like was simply holding me again,” she stated. “So the extra I began to embrace it … and simply went on the market and competed with it, I used to be advantageous. And figuring out that I had the help and the assistance that I wanted from the correct well being care supplier and dermatologists helped me as properly.”
Lee isn’t at the moment taking a Lilly drugs, however the firm has launched a resource page in partnership along with her to assist these in search of sources on eczema.
Stress and eczema
Anxiety and stress are widespread triggers for eczema flares.
For Lee, stress is “a each day factor that I’ve to battle,” she instructed CBS News, however provides it “positively begins to select up when I’ve to carry out.”
So how does the Olympian keep calm? Journaling and remedy, she shared.
“I do loads of journaling,” she shared. “I write how I really feel so much as a result of I’m a really personal and quiet individual. So every time it involves my emotions, I preserve all of it in till I simply burst. To preserve that beneath management, I wish to journal and get out the whole lot I really feel. I additionally go to remedy so much, the place I can simply say how I really feel and simply work by all the psychological challenges that I’ve to undergo.”
