If you’ve got hands that seem to be constantly dry, maddening itchiness (if you’ve ever had eczema, you know the feeling), irritated, cracking, bleeding, splits in the knuckles/grooves of your fingerprints or something along those lines, then chances are, it’s an allergy to nickel/cobalt.
I’ve been putting a lot into the program for the last week or so, and I noticed that my hands were in pretty rough shape, and not from the usual wear and adjustments expected while adapting to playing. I was drowning them in lotion and a medicated salve I have as well to no avail, and they kept getting worse. I’d had a similar reaction years ago that led to me putting custom grips on my golf clubs, and I recognized the same issue here. I suspected the strings were the cause, and fortunately, I’ve got an older sister who shares some of the same allergies, and is also a doctor, so I shot her a message asking if she’s checked for a nickel allergy, and she got back right away letting me know that she has a pretty severe nickel allergy, so I got my answer pretty quick. I’m switching the strings on my bass to the D’addario Prosteels to see how that goes.
I’ll post a couple pictures of what it looked like on my hands for reference in case someone else stumbles onto this in the future looking for answers. You can see the splits it was giving me in the grooves of my fingers and the dry/irritated spots on my palms as well as the cracking and bleeding in my knuckles, and this amount of damage was done in about a week, even with a medicated salve that treats it. So if you happen to see the same issues on your hands, this is something to look into.
My office manager (who still shuffles and deals with paper documents, letters, forms, etc…) has such dry skin die to our climate…
..she also uses gloves specifically for dryness. it is an overnight use format:
Apply preferred hand lotion or cream.
Wear the moisturizing gloves overnight or as desired.
Remove gloves and wash hands to complete the moisturizing process.
I cannot recall the last time my hands looked that good, mine can be severe at times. Still haven’t found anything that is all that effective. Currently use clobetasol, potent, prescription only, somewhat effective.
I can relate. I need to use eye drops constantly during the winter, because the air gets too dry with the central heating. I also have two air humidifiers to keep the humidity at a more comfortable level. Otherwise my eyes get dry, lips too. Hands as well.
Right now we have 36% humidity indoors, thanks to the living room’s air humidifier. This winter it had gone sometimes to 26%. I try to keep it over 30%, otherwise I might get nosebleeds. Also A vitamin oil drops for the nose before going to sleep have helped. I once had the idea of using these A vitamin oil drops for cracked fingers and it worked wonders!
I made sure to clean and condition (oil) my Squier’s fretboard after changing strings, to avoid problems with the dry air.
I always use a rich hand moisturiser before going out in the winter, otherwise the skin on my fingers cracks and bleeds. After starting to play bass, I have been very careful with this, so my hands are in a better condition than they used to be before in the winter.
I can assure you that it is. Ive had a clobetesol script since before Covid. It works well for flare ups. Not so great at getting rid of existing patches (thats what the other meds are for).
I don’t have cracking or bleeding but I’m like a living snow globe of dry skin falling off me all the time.
Issue is I hate hate hate hate lotion on my skin. I’ve got lots of humidifiers and I’m lucky in the apartment that I can bring high grade purified water up from our pilot plant to keep the micro in them down to basically nil. The building I’m in, in the winter gets to 9% humidity so they are a must.
This got a surprising amount of replies fairly quickly, so I guess I should add to the context. The photos I uploaded were also taken after a couple days of healing. they were originally even more cut up, red and irritated. Even just washing hands felt like pouring alcohol on 100 paper cuts. I see a lot of people with dryness issues got good results with O’Keeffe’s, which is great stuff. Unfortunately, since it’s due to an allergy, it won’t really help in this regard. Those with eczema/psoriasis are definitely on the right track since the reaction is allergic contact dermatitis and works more or less the same way, and responds to the same medications.
People with this allergy may also notice a similar issue with dress shoes making their feet extremely itchy if they were made in North America since the leather tanning process uses chemicals that irritate the same allergy, which is why European leather is much better and less itchy since the tanning process doesn’t use the same chemicals. I had the same issue with the grips of my golf clubs since a lot of rubber has the same elements, and had to have them regripped with polymer grips to resolve the issue.
I’ve had a whole slew of different medications to treat this issue as I’ve slowly eliminated contact with the things that set it off, but the product I’ve found that works the best to treat the mild flare ups I get from the various things I come into contact with is Spectro Eczema Care. It’s a mild Clobetasone cream that you don’t even need a prescription for since it’s mild, and it can be ordered on Amazon, or if you give the DIN to any pharmacy, they will generally order it in pretty easily.
Get some cotton gloves to wear at night and slather up before bed. Leave on as long as you can, gloves will help retain some moisture.
I keep a pair by the bed as I have reduced resistance (not full on allergy) from types of rubber like nitrile and butile which cause minute subsurface blisters. Also a tube of anthisan to reduce that irritation and urge to scratch.
I’m so sorry you have this issue. I appreciate you decided to share this issue with nickel allergy to the group, because of all metals nickel is the one most likely to cause allergies, but not everyone knows this, so it could be difficult to find out the reason of the symptoms. And as many strings are coated with nickel, it is good to know about this.
Once I had contact dermatitis and went to the doctor. We never found out what had caused it, but one possibility was the band of the Fitbit I had back then. I got a few tiny and itchy blisters on my left hand (on the back of my thumb, one closer to the wrist, but the tiny blisters were far away from the Fitbit watch, so it was difficult to determine the reason. I got some medicine and I bought another watch, and the problem went away. Though the blisters were few and tiny, they were very itchy.
Which makes me think of how most sports tracker bands come from China. I don’t mean to imply things made in China are bad, but as it is a huge country and lots of cheaper things there are made with little quality control, it is always safer to buy bands made by the brand (though they too come from China, they have better quality control and are safer than cheaper bands sold through Amazon). Who knows what could be in the plastics. Dangerous chemicals have been found on cheap clothes teenagers like to import from Temu and Shein.
But back to strings, fortunately there is a huge variety of materials and coatings to choose from.
@peterson.bryan.a I’m glad you found the cause and the solution for your allergy. Zooming in those pictures we can see the cracks in the skin looked pretty bad. I can imagine how painful it was. We have a lot of nerve endings in the hands, and cuts like that can hurt like hell.
