Garcelle Beauvais Reveals Her Eczema Battle:’I Wanted to Crawl Out of My Skin’

Garcelle Beauvais is famous for her lavish lifestyle on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, but she suffers from the severe skin illness eczema behind the camera.”I was in my 30s when I began getting these itching spots on my skin out of nowhere,” Beauvais tells PEOPLE. “I had no idea what that was – I was like, ‘Did something bite me?’ It simply kept popping up in various locations, and the more I worried about it, the more of them appeared. I had no idea what to do.”Beauvais was eventually diagnosed with eczema, a long-term skin condition that can be worse by stress, the environment, and allergens. More than 31 million Americans have eczema.

“I started getting the spots behind my knees, and it’s so irritating that I wanted to crawl out of my skin,” she says. “I didn’t want to wear halter tops or shorts because the dry, itchy spots were visible.”Beauvais tries to stay away from scented lotions, perfumes, and her favorite hot baths these days, but sometimes the stress of a reality show with a lot of drama is hard to avoid.

She laughs and says, “Oh, I always break out while filming Housewives.” “But I do the best I can with it. I have to choose the ones I fight.”