What is Rosacea?

Rosacea is a skin disease that causes redness and sometimes pimples on your nose, cheeks, chin, and forehead. Rosacea is also accompanied by red lines on the face (telangiectasia). These small, thin, red lines are tiny blood vessels that look like spiderwebs. And they usually appear on the cheeks.The redness may come and go. People sometimes call rosacea "adult acne" because it can cause outbreaks that look like acne. It can also cause burning and soreness in the eyes and eyelids.

Rosacea often flares when something causes the blood vessels in the face to expand, which causes redness. Things that cause a flare-up are called triggers. Common triggers are exercise, sun and wind exposure, hot weather, stress, spicy foods, alcohol, and hot baths. Swings in temperature from hot to cold or cold to hot can also cause a flare-up of rosacea.

There are some things you can do to reduce symptoms and keep rosacea from getting worse.

Find your triggers. One of the most important things is to learn what triggers your flare-ups, and then avoid them. It can help to keep a diary of what you were eating, drinking, and doing on days that the rosacea appeared. Take the diary to your next skin care visit with your aesthetician or doctor visit, and discuss what you can do to help control the disease.

Use every day. Use a sunscreen with 30 SPF that blocks ultraviolet rays (UVA and UVB) and infrared rays. During winter, use a moisturizer to prevent dryness caused by cold and wind.

Be gentle with your skin. Use skin care products for your skin type and condition, and avoid any products that scratch or irritate your skin. Try not to rub or scrub your skin. Rosacea clients do better with enzyme forms of exfoliation. They are not abrasive and will digest dead skin cells. This will help improve product penetration. Also you will have a great glow to your skin.

And just because you have Rosacea doesn't mean you can't have professional treatments including chemical peels. We have special chemical peels just for Rosacea that will help calm and clear some of the skin flair-ups that show in papule or pimple form.