Rosacea management self-help guide

If you suffer from rosacea you may feel you need medical help and prescription medicines to manage the rosacea symptoms.

But many rosacea sufferers have found that antibiotics can make their rosacea symptoms worse and medical intervention can be costly and less than helpful.

Since rosacea doesn’t have a cure – the most effective treatment lies in controlling the symptoms of rosacea.

Self-management is a good place to start.

No one can say without a doubt what causes a rosacea outbreak – what causes a flare-up for one person may not have any effect on another.

Just like people – rosacea triggers are highly individual the key is to get to know what yours are and try to avoid them.

Keep a diary – not just any old diary what you need is a log of your flare-ups. Note down the time, day, what you were doing or what you had eaten, how you felt, whether you had taken exercise, what you had been drinking, how severe the flare-up was.

Write down any detail about the circumstances you can recall. Reviewing your rosacea diary will provide important clues to what triggers your own particular flare-ups and help you avoid rosacea triggers in the future.

A great place to start is with the free diary produced by The National Rosacea Society and available from their website. It comes with pro forma inserts to help you note down all the important information.

Control your stress levels. Wherever possible avoid stressful situations. When you are under stress your body releases stress hormones into your bloodstream and can result for some people in a flare-up of their rosacea symptoms.

Anger, embarrassment or fear can all result in a flushing response which can trigger a rosacea flare-up. Try to manage situations so that you are able to stay calm or withdraw before you get stressed.

Learn to identify and avoid vascular dilators. Vascular dilators are substances which cause a flushing response and should be avoided by rosacea sufferers wherever possible. Common vascular dilators include stimulants like coffee, tea, cigarettes and excessive sugary soda drinks.

If you think about it anything we depend on to stimulate the brain can also easily stimulate your sebaceous glands and raise your stress levels neither of which is what you want as a rosacea sufferer.

Stay away from Aspartame or NutraSweet. Aspartame and NutraSweet are common sweeteners in many popular drinks and both have been found to cause substantial redness in around a third of all rosacea sufferers.

Keep hydration levels up. Drinking lots of water is vital if you have rosacea – you need at least 2 liters of water a day and more when exercising or when it’s hot. Drink regularly throughout the day whether you feel thirsty or not.

Drink iced water in hot conditions to reduce your body temperature even further and stave off the flushing response which is such a distressing symptom of rosacea.

Create your own chill-out zone. If you are going somewhere you know you will be hot take a small insulated picnic box with your iced water and some chilled flannels. If you feel yourself getting hot and flushed apply a cold flannel to the back of your neck and drink your iced water.

Manage your weight. Excess weight puts a heavier load on the cardio-vascular system and will result in greater vascular dilation, flushing, sweating and skin redness.

Avoid extremes of heat and cold. Whether inside or outside – extreme temperatures cause changes in the body which can provoke rosacea flare-ups. Both the sun and the cold are damaging to the skin structure.

It’s even more important for rosacea sufferers to use sunblock, cover up in the sun and stay in the shade. Wrap up well in the cold or come inside.

Watch what you eat. Most rosacea sufferers find that certain foods act as triggers for flare-ups. Monitor what you eat n your rosacea diary over a six month period and you will discover the foods that trigger your rosacea and you can eliminate them from your diet.

Use the best rosacea skin care products you can afford and be scrupulous about hygiene. What you choose to put on your skin can greatly improve your rosacea symptoms – irritants will cause a flare-up.

Following these tips doesn’t guarantee you’ll be free of rosacea symptoms but it will help reduce them.