Say goodbye to the rosy sting of rosacea with the latest at-home treatments.
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There was a time when the blush on a woman's cheek inspired sonnets and royal weddings. But a persistent ruddy complexion definitely goes against the feminine ideal. Rosacea is a progressive and cumulative skin disorder that starts off as a diffused redness, then, little by little, distorts the evenness of your complexion. It affects more than two million Canadians, most of them fair-skinned women over the age of 25.
What's up, doc? There is no rhyme or reason as to when, why or whom rosacea hits, says Dr. Anne Curtis, a Toronto-based clinical dermatologist who heads up the Dermatology Laser Centre at Women's College Hospital in Toronto. "But people with rosacea appear to have a different flush process that may be activated by a number of factors -- from extreme weather, spicy foods, hot drinks, pollution and excessive exercise to increased stress."Any one of these triggers, by themselves or in combination, may enlarge the blood vessels in the face and keep them open. The result is skin that is swollen, hot and painful to the touch and, if left untreated, plagued by a trail of pimples. However, before rosacea sufferers identify their triggers, usually through the help of diaries, they often get misdiagnosed. "For the longest time, I just thought I had acne, but that wasn't the real problem,"says Lisa Roy, 35, a Toronto-based customer relations manager who was diagnosed with rosacea a year ago. "I had teenage acne, but my pimples changed as I got older; they went from being spots I could pop to these closed-off hard bumps under my cheeks and chin."Roy tried everything, including combinations of intense moisturizers and benzoyl peroxide, to reduce the parched redness and treat the acne. Instead, she ended up with very confused skin. "I didn't need to dry the pimples because the problem wasn't acne."
