Treating Rosacea - Acne Rosacea

Treating Your Rosacea
Is your acne really acne? If you’re over thirty, have fair skin that flushes or blushes easily and have had a bad reaction to acne medication, your problem may not be acne at all. Frequently mistaken for acne, rosacea affects one in twenty adult Caucasians – yet a recent Gallup survey showed that nearly 80% of people surveyed were unfamiliar with the condition. Symptoms include skin redness and swelling in the areas that typically flush when we’re excited or embarrassed; telangiectases (the appearance of broken blood vessels), and, occasionally, acne-like papules and pustules. For this reason, rosacea is often misdiagnosed as acne and treated with acne medications. While these courses of treatment may have some success, there are treatments that target rosacea specifically that may have better results.

It’s not acne! Scientists are unsure what causes rosacea, but they do know that it differs from acne in one important way. Unlike acne, which is a condition of the sebaceous hair follicles, rosacea is a condition that involves both the skin and the blood vessels. Says Vic Narurkarm M.D., Assistant Clinical Professor of Dermatology at the University of California at Davis: “Blood vessels in people with rosacea seem to dilate easily, causing a flushing response to any number of triggering factors. After years of frequent dilation, it’s thought that the blood vessels ‘wear out’ and stay dilated permanently.”1 For this reason, it’s important to treat this condition properly – or risk permanent damage to the skin.

Understand your triggers. Like any skin condition, rosacea is different for everyone – so first step in treatment is to identify your personal triggers. Flushing triggers vary widely between individuals, but studies have identified a number of common foods and situations that can bring on the flush response. These may include: cheese, chocolate, vanilla, alcohol, spicy foods, hot beverages, spicy foods, sunlight, cold winds, stress, steroids, vigorous exercise and alcohol-based skin products. Since prevention is the best medicine for rosacea, it’s important for sufferers of this condition to be aware of diet, habits and surroundings. If you think a particular food, skin product or lifestyle issue may be triggering your flushes, try discontinuing it for a few weeks; if your flushing subsides, it’s a good idea to eschew it altogether.

Find the right treatments. Of course, it’s difficult to pinpoint every single thing that affects your rosacea. So when you do have flushing, blushing or breakouts, be sure to treat them as rosacea, not as acne. The acne-like lesions can be treated with topical and oral antibiotics, which stem the profusion of the bacteria p. acnes as well as demodex mites, which are five times more prevalent in patients with rosacea as in those who don’t have the condition. Topical antifungal agents, such as metronidazole, are also quite helpful. There are also a wide variety of pulsed dye lasers that can reduce the redness of telangiectases, or broken blood vessels. Most importantly, just be kind to your skin; use a gentle cleanser without alcohol or exfoliating grains.

If you think you may have rosacea, see a dermatologist right away. While there is no known cure for this condition, it is treatable – and early treatment will help prevent permanent damage to your skin.

1 McCarthy L, “Flush and Blush: Understanding Rosacea,” Healthy Skin & Hair, Fall 1999, pp. 6–7.