What is Rosacea?
Rosacea is a chronic progressive inflammatory skin condition that causes redness of the cheeks and nose, dilated blood vessels and small red acne-like blemishes. Symptoms can also include frequent flushing, burning, stinging, soreness and irritation, and sometimes red swollen eyelids.
Triggers of Rosacea
There are often environmental or lifestyle triggers. Getting to know one’s triggers (and avoiding them) can help to keep symptoms at bay.
Sun
Exercise
Food: spicy food, hot food, caffeine, alcohol
Exposure to extreme hot and cold
Rubbing and friction
Certain sunscreen ingredients
Skin care products with acids and alcohols
Make-up, especially with glitter and gritty ingredients
Soaps and detergents with fragrances and perfumes
Treatments for Rosacea
Skin care: remove ingredients that make redness worse (like acids and retinols) and adding ingredients that tamp down redness (green tea, argan oil, resveratrol, aloe, chamomile, caffeine, heparan sulfate (HSA)).
Prescription medications can help prevent flushing and the red acne-like lesions
Oral doxycycline
Laser and IPL/BBL treatment: can decrease the redness and dilated vessels
Diet: an anti-inflammatory diet (including foods high in Omega-3 fatty acids) is helpful to decrease inflammation of the skin