Melissa Joan Hart Shares How She Manages Her Son's Eczema, Says There's 'Shame' Around Chronic Skin Disease (Exclusive)
The 'Sabrina the Teenage Witch' alum says "getting ahead of it is key" as she manages her son's eczema treatment plan
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Melissa Joan Hart.Melissa Joan Hart says when she first noticed something going on with her son's skin, she wasn’t quite sure what was happening.
“It took us a little while to figure out what it was exactly, especially when you have sons like I do and you're trying to figure out, ‘Is this poison ivy? Is this a rash?’ “ Hart, 48, tells PEOPLE exclusively.
“We worked with our family doctor and found out this is eczema,” the Sabrina the Teenage Witch alum, who shares three children — Mason, 18, Braydon, 16, and Tucker, 11 — with her husband, singer-songwriter Mark Wilkerson, says.
Eczema is a chronic skin disease that causes “dry, itchy and inflamed skin,” and flare-ups, according to Mayo Clinic.
Flare-ups range in severity, from dry, cracked skin, to rashes, to oozing — and the skin can get raw and sensitive from scratching.
Katie Mosley
Melisa Joan Hart with her family.Related: Gina Torres Introduces SXSW Documentary 'Under My Skin' About People with Eczema: 'There's No Shame'
It’s why Hart teamed up with AbbVie to host the Science of Skin panel on Aug. 8 to help educate and support those living with eczema and other skin disorders.
The former Nickelodeon star says she “hopes that it sheds some light for people out there that might feel alone.”
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“I have a lot of friends that I see trying to cover up psoriasis or eczema,” she tells PEOPLE, sharing that her siblings also struggle with the skin disorder.
“They’re constantly kind of pulling at their clothes to try to hide this thing, and that thing — and we all do it with different things — but especially around chronic skin disease, there seems to be the shame.”
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Stock image of a child's arm with eczema.As a caregiver, she says the “number one thing is to work together as a family — with your dermatologist, with your healthcare provider — to really come up with a plan because as soon as you can manage symptoms you'll be better in control,” she said, sharing that for her family, “getting ahead of it is key.”
For her son — she declined to say which of her three boys struggles with eczema — “dryness and wintertime is the worst so, we make sure we're on top of it," she explains. "We make sure we treat it before he goes to bed at night.”
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Having a plan is the difference between “a controlled skin disease and a chronic skin disease," she says. “We want to be able to protect our families any way we can."
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