As a youngster, Maria suffered with occasional and very manageable eczema patches here and there. From about the age of 21, Maria started to use a type of steroid cream called hydrocortisone every few years when her skin became very sore.
But then during the trip to Tuscany in 2015, she woke one morning with her eyes and face swollen and horrendously itchy.
Maria Marzaioli, 43, says her skin became so hot after she suffered an adverse reaction to beer she drank on holiday that she “could have fried an egg on her neck”. She woke up one day during a trip to Tuscany in Italy with her eyes and face swollen – which she believes was a result of wheat beer she drank the night before.
The itching was so extreme that she completely shaved off her long hair to try to ease the irritation. Maria’s skin was so irritated she would awaken with “blood all over her sheets” from scratching during the night.
And after eventually ditching the creams after reading hundreds of online stories just like her own, Maria, who works as a quality officer, still faced an ongoing battle with her skin. She said: “At my worst, I would regularly wake with my eyes swollen shut, and blood all over my sheets from scratching during the night.