Men and Rosacea

Men suffer from rosacea just as much as women, but many men ignore it, push it off to something else, like high blood pressure, too much sun, and best yet--just my NORMAL skin tone. Men are also less likely to seek help for a cosmetic problem-even when they know it is a problem. The problem with this approach is rosacea is progressive. In other words, it does not go away.

Since about 80% of the American public have never even heard of rosacea and have no idea what it is, rosacea becomes more that just a cosmetic problem. A simple job interview and to the interviewer, you look like a drunk. Your face is red, your eyes are bloodshot(ocular rosacea) and guess what? You are turned down for the position! Not because of your knowledge in your respective career, but forward thinking CEO's see you as a risk. "This guy drinks or just doesn't fit our corporate image." So they hire the guy with the pure white face and clear eyes and drinks like a fish, but no rosacea. Alcohol does NOT cause rosacea, but can trigger it. So can stress, sunshine, heat, many foods and you might just be at a permenant stage of redness with ocular rosacea.(I will talk about ocular rosacea in a later blog).

And what about you single guys? Do you think women like red, glowing or flushing faces. I think you already know the answer to that one.

So what can men do? First and most important get over your fear of doctors. We are here to help you. That's it! Second, we have NO torture machines in our offices. Those are just unfounded rumors. IPL or intense pulsed light works very well on most all men and can take the redness out of your face and in a lot of cases, clear up bloodshot eyes and ease flushing.

What does IPL feel like? Well, it does hurt a little. We do apply some numbing cream beforehand that takes the sting out, and cool gel during the treatment. In some cases, we can premedicate the patient until many of the rosacea targets are gone. For the most part, it feels like a snap of a rubber band(not a fully stretched out one) or a very brief hot poker feeling. Just kidding.

So guys, don't let your rosacea progress, get it treated and I think your entire life will improve. Visit my website if you like, http://www.tennesseelaserandskinrejuvenation.com.

Treatment For Rosacea

Rosacea has had many treatments in the past-some work and some treatments just make your face much worse. The standard treatment for the past few years has been tetracycline and a metronitazole cream such a metrogel, metrocream or noritate. Other creams on the market work about as well, but the problem is most rosaceans can not tolerate anything on their face without causing it to flare or breakout. Avoiding triggers has always been popular, but heat and stress top the list of known rosacea triggers, making it extremely hard to avoid rosacea triggers.

Steroids such as cortisone is a known trigger for patients that have to use this class of drugs. Most rosaceans know that alcohol will cause them to flush and most do their best to avoid drinking, if they know they have rosacea. Certain spicy foods can set some of us off, and it does not take long to learn to stop eating things that turn your face bright red.

The sun is a definite no-no for most rosaceans. We must cover up, use sun screen lotions if our poor wretched faces can tolerate them, big hats, visors, etc.,etc. Most of us seem to just end up avoiding the sun altogether. This is where crimping of life-style really starts to hit home!

Once lasers started hitting the market such as the V-beam and Yag, some rosaceans started to get results, probably the best use was for spot treatment of visible blood vessels on the face. Then IPL or Intense Pulsed Light came out about 8 years ago, and things really started to happen!

IPL was the first real thing rosaceans could hang their hat on. The main reason is it really reduced background redness or erythema of rosacea. Plus, it curtailed the harmful flushing attacks most of us were having. The first machines were slow, 9-10 seconds between pulses. There were not a lot of options with the machine, most did not have the wavelengths or filters to pick from as we do today. Now we can split the energy in one pulse to 3 pulses milliseconds apart. I do not want to start to get technical here, only to say machines on the market today such as the Lumenis One are highly advanced and really work in the right hands. Rosacea can finally be really treated!!

Dr Steve Johnson