ByBruce Y. Lee,
Senior Contributor.
When you’ve got eczema, you don’t necessarily want to just skate by, so to speak. Take it from Erin Jackson, who knows a thing or two about both skating and eczema. Jackson is a speed skating star, having won an Olympic gold medal in the women’s 500 meter event at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. And her experiences with eczema have motivated her to work with Lilly to raise more awareness and understanding about what is actually quite a common condition but at the same time have quite an impact on one’s life.
Yep, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases calls eczema “the most common chronic inflammatory skin disease.” one that affects 10 to 30 percent of children and 2 to 10 percent of adults in the United States. And even though Jackson is a very rare athletic talent, being the first Black woman ever to win a Winter Olympic gold medal in any individual sport, this common skin problem has affected her skating in a not so “ice” way.
Jackson recently described to me some of these challenges. For example, the itchiness, irritation and swelling of her skin have significant detracted from her practicing and training. It certainly hasn’t helped that speed skating involves wearing a very tight aerodynamic super-hero-like body suit that can rub against the rashes and aggravate them. Subsequent changes in the suit for aerodynamic reasons have made the bottom part of the suit lighter, more breathable and thus more tolerable, though.
