Why Is My Face So Red?
Your skin faces many challenges from the elements and within your body. Facial redness has a wide range of unrelated causes. Identifying the reasons why your complexion is flushed is often the first step toward treatment.
My Rosacea Is Embarrassing: Can You Help?
Smooth and even skin tone is a common characteristic of healthy skin. A condition called rosacea causes blotchy redness across your face, leaving a flushed and mottled appearance that can be embarrassing.
Rosacea often occurs in waves, affecting your skin before clearing up again. There are certain triggers that jumpstart episodes, such as eating spicy foods or exposure to environmental conditions, including sun and wind.
Dermatologist Jennifer Baron, MD, and her team can help with professional-level skin care. Dr. Baron often recommends broadband light (BBL) photo facials to reduce redness and smooth your complexion. Contact us to schedule a consultation to learn more about this powerful yet simple skin therapy that can ease the redness and restore your self-confidence.
Rosacea risk factors
More than 14 million Americans, most of them women, suffer from rosacea, an inflammatory condition with no known cause. While anyone can develop this lifelong skin disorder, it’s more common in people with light skin that burns easily in the sun and those with a family history of the condition.
Rosacea usually emerges between the ages of 30 and 50. If you have a history of smoking, you may be at an increased risk of developing episodes of redness across your cheeks, chin, forehead, and nose. Rosacea can appear in other places on your body, and it can also affect your eyes.
The importance of triggers
Often occurring in episodes brought on by triggers, the first step to reducing the effects of rosacea is knowing what starts a flare-up for you. Common rosacea triggers include:
- Hormonal events
- Hot or cold temperatures
- Sun exposure
- Wind exposure
- Alcohol consumption
- Spicy foods
- Skin and hair care products
- Exercise
- Stress
- Some medications, including blood pressure-controlling drugs
If you haven’t connected your rosacea flare-ups with triggers, start keeping a log to try to recognize patterns around the time when outbreaks start.
Treating rosacea
In addition to reducing your exposure to triggers, diligent use of sunscreen with a high sun protection factor (SPF) is perhaps the best self-care step to ease rosacea's effects. Wash your face gently with mild cleansers. Aggressive scrubbing can aggravate the redness.
Medical treatments include prescription creams and gels; some patients respond well to oral medications typically used for acne. Oral antibiotics may also help in some cases.
Dr. Baron recommends photofacial therapy using BBL. This light-based therapy stimulates the production of collagen in the dermis, your skin’s middle layer. It’s here that the skin stores hydration and nutrition, and the turnover of collagen carries away the reddening components of rosacea.
During a 30-minute BBL treatment, we use an applicator that delivers light in a range of wavelengths that the dermis absorbs, converting light to heat. This heat stimulates new tissue growth as your body recognizes the warmed older tissue as compromised.
In the weeks that follow your BBL treatment, you’ll see the redness of rosacea start to fade along with an overall improvement in the quality of your skin tone. BBL therapy can also reduce the appearance of lines and wrinkles and other photo pigmentation issues like sun spots.
Call Dr. Baron’s San Jose office to learn more about BBL treatments for rosacea today.
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