for the red, irritated skin.

We have a lot of patients who come into our spa that deal with “irritated”, “red”, and “sensitive” skin. Usually after doing a thorough skin care consult and assessment we find a lot of the times that the patient is actually dealing with rosacea.  Rosacea is a chronic skin condition that usually will affect the face, causing redness, visible blood vessels, and sometimes, acne-like breakouts or little red bumps. Typically, we will see it on our lovely fair skinned beauties and it will show up on the cheeks, nose, forehead, and chin. 

Though we don’t know the exact cause, factors like genetics, immune system responses, and environmental triggers such as stress, spicy foods, and extreme temperatures can contribute to flare-ups. Rosacea can be super frustrating for our patients, because it often not only affects your appearance but can also cause discomfort such as burning sensations and irritation.

Unfortunately, this condition is chronic and can stick around a while, so we like to focus as much as we can on maintenance treatments and getting our patients on the right skincare routine to keep their symptoms at bay. While we make each protocol individualized, we typically focus our skincare recommendations on oil control for rosacea. Oil usually plays a big role when looking at possible causes of rosacea. The oil will get trapped under the skin and cause congestion leading to the redness and often those lovely little red texture bumps we see. Here are some of our favorite skincare must haves when it comes to treating redness.

While we want to focus on long term skin health, we also have access to professional treatments that can help you more “instantly”.  BBL is one of our favorites for rosacea and like we talked about in the last post the BBL uses light to target and reduce redness and broken blood vessels under the skin.  It works its magic by heating the affected skin, causing the blood vessels to constrict and fade over time. Again this treatment typically requires little to no downtime, and is well tolerated by most of our patients.

Lastly, we want to also look at different triggers that can cause rosacea flare ups. Most typically we see that unprotected sun exposure, super spicy food, or intolerances to certain foods can lead to a lot of these flare ups, so listening and paying attention to your body can help to pinpoint the things that make your rosacea angry.  We suggest wearing an SPF everyday, and if your rosacea is moderate to severe maybe even checking some lab work to see what else is going on underneath the surface!  Again, your skin is a huge organ and can be affected by other malfunctions so to speak happening in your body.  So let us help, you are not alone!