How To Treat Rosacea In Edmonton
Hi, and welcome back to the Edmonton Dermatology Center YouTube channel. We’re so glad you joined us Today. We have another hot topic, Rosacea.
Yay. So, my name is Karen and I’m here with Andrea, who is a licensed LPN here at the Dermatology Center, Edmonton Dermatology Center. And today, like she said, we’re gonna be talking about rosacea, the causes, the types and the treatments. We all wanna know how to treat that rosacea. So invest in your skin. It is going to be, it’s going to represent you for a very long time. And that was said by Lyndon Tyler, a new study by the National Rosacea Society states that 415 million people worldwide are affected by this skin condition. It’s
A big number. Rosacea is a skin condition that many people don’t even realize that they have it. Some patients come to us concerned that their skin is just really dry on their face and they have a tendency to flare up with very little help with moisturizers.
Yeah, that’s true actually. Yeah. A lot of dry skin out there. Yeah.
So let’s again, get into the fundamentals here. What exactly is rosacea?
So rosacea is a condition of the skin where you have two problems. You have dryness and you have vascularity, vascularity meaning blood vessels. So they tend to be quite right in the middle of the face. So there’s two ways of rosacea presents essentially. So you have the butterfly, so it’s across your nose and your cheeks, or you have just the full face. There’s also different forms of rosacea. So you have the regular rosacea where you’re just red and you have maybe tiny little vessels all over in your cheeks. Or you even have just straight vascular. So you have large vessels that you can see.
Usually when you’re sitting across a table from somebody, you can actually see a blood vessel. There’s also papular, pustular, rosacea, which kind of looks a little bit like acne sometimes. But they don’t have the kind of white heads. They’re just a little bit more bumpy, red, inflamed kind of all over the face. It’s not necessarily painful, it just dry feelings. So it has kind of a tightness to it.
The next question is, how do you clear up rosacea?
So rosacea is important to clear up because it can cause a bit of discomfort, like I said, the tightness, stuff like that. To clear it up, you really need to make sure that you have good skincare. That’s the main factor with rosacea, is making sure that you keep your skin hydrated. It needs its proper balance to keep, make sure that it has a good barrier on your skin so you’re not producing any sort of inflammation, which is redness and causing irritation, stuff like that.
So usually mild cleansers really good moisturizers no exfoliation whatsoever because it can be harmful for rosacea. So it’s really something that to get a better understanding, you really need to come in and kind of talk to someone directly be referred to a dermatologist if things are really severe and over the counter stuff is just not quite working. Oh, Wow. Yeah, what is the main cause of rosacea?
So again, it all depends on the, the type of rosacea that you have. A lot of it is genetic actually. Oh. So mother, father, somebody in your family has rosacea. The likelihood of you having rosacea is actually quite high.
Also it can be environmental factors. So if you’re living in a dry climate, you have a tendency to be a little bit redder, drier skin. And it’s just a, again, a vicious circle of dryness, redness your body, trying to compensate by growing extra blood vessels into your skin. And the top layer where you actually don’t really need it. That top layer being an epidermis, you have plenty of blood vessels in your dermis to feed your skin, but with rosacea, because it’s so dry, your body’s trying to compensate for it.
So it’s growing these extra vessels. So like I said, when you’re sitting across the table from someone or some, and you can see the like vessels on their face, that’s their body trying to fix the dryness. So when there’s more vessels means there’s more blood in this top layer of the skin, which then dries out the skin some more. And then it’s just this back and forth of dry red, more vessels, dry red, more vessels.
Wow. It sounds com it sounds, yeah. It’s a
Little complicated and yeah.
Yeah. Not fun either. No fun either. So can you tell us what all the different types of rosacea are?
I think I might have talked about that
Already. You did talk about the butterfly and the, was that kind of the rose, that little pustular and then all over? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So you kind of talked about all of them. Oops. So there’s really not too many. There’s just more and more and more. How do you treat rosacea?
So again, the key things with rosacea is making sure that you have balanced skins, your skin’s not too dry. Also making sure that we try and reduce the, the amount of blood vessels that are growing into the skin, into the epidermis essentially. So there is a couple of different ways to treat rosacea. It all depends on how you present to us. So again, you go see your family doctor. If your family doctor is unable to help you, or it’s to the point where you are really severely dry and you’re having real, a lot of trouble trying to control the flare ups of rosacea.
Ask your family doctor to give us a get view, a referral to a dermatologist so you can speak to them directly and try and figure out with your dermatologist exactly how to fix this and what steps you need to take. And also, like I said, skincare is really important. So coming in to speak with someone like myself or us, any of us here at Edmonton Dermatology, we can certainly kind of sit down with you and figure out what is the best plan of action to help moisturize your skin better, reduce any extra irritation reduce the redness, stuff like
That. Okay. So who’s most affected by rosacea?
Most effective is actually is pretty equal between men and women. And it’s actually more skin types one through three, so those being more Caucasian. Background. so in dermatology we always factor everybody into different skin types, so they’re usually the lighter skin. So like myself and Karen we have tendencies to be a little bit more red especially when we get in the sun. We go red instead of darker, stuff like that. So it doesn’t really affect skin types fourth or higher simply because their skin is a little bit more protective.
And also, like I said, environmental factors so the sun can trigger it a little bit more. Irritants like pollution, just stuff like that can really harm the skin and dry it out actually.
Wow. Yeah. So how do I take care? Like how do I care for my skin with rosacea? What tips do you have?
So obviously trying to minimize your sun exposure. Mm-Hmm. The reason being is the more dry your skin is, the more likely to burn. So keeping your skin hydration, which of course keeping your skin hydrated. Yeah, of course is the number one important thing with rosacea. Also making sure that you’re not using skincare that’s causing irritation. The other things too is keep mind of what triggers your rosacea. So flareups, what triggers your flareups. So some people eating spicy food can actually cause a flare up. Having alcohol can actually cause a flare up. Yeah. Even just like scratching or even talking about your rosacea, well comes a
Flare up. So it just kind of being mindful of your day to day, like what makes it flush a little bit more that it’s, you know, it’s very apparent. Even stress can actually cause rosacea to flare up even more. So maybe kind of think about like what exactly is going on in your day that’s making your face redder and redder.
Yeah, for sure. Now you said hydration. Does that mean something topical you put on your skin or is it also drinking water?
It’s both actually. It’s important to get that balance both ways. Obviously we all know that drinking water is good for your health as it is, but it actually does help your skin too. So the more hydration that you take in orally is great also topically, and that goes for the entire body. There’s other conditions that people suffer for, for their body that don’t show up on the face. But moisturizing is very important. And the best time to do that is actually as soon as you wash your face tone you put on your moisturizer right away.
Oh, good. Good tips. So are over the counter or drugstore products effective in treating rosacea?
So over the counter medications or drugstore’s products, they usually are again, meant to be able to treat everybody. So no matter what type of skin type you are, you can use it, but then is it really helping you not normally. So the thing is with rosacea, you also need to factor in what type of rosacea you have. So I do believe I mentioned before that there’s the vascular part of it, which is a little bit more fuzzy.
There’s also pustular, papular, rosacea that actually has all those like little pimply things that kind of looks like acne, but not quite. Those are the type of things that we really need to figure out if that’s what you have, there’s different creams and stuff that needs to be applied to the skin to avoid having extra flareups or calm down those little pimples, stuff like that.
So again, it’s really important to have a consult with a dermatologist or even us here at Edmonton Dermatology as a cosmetic consultation to really figure out what it is, what type of act rosacea that you have and try and figure out what best products to use over the counter. Like I said, again, is kind of a variable. We’re not sure what’s really in it, what’s not in it. And it’s also created so that everybody can use it and nobody’s going to react to it, which means it’s not really gonna help people either. Right?
Yeah. How do I minimize the flare ups ofa? Like what, you know, what are the triggers that I can
Avoid? So yeah, the triggers is, like I said, you need to be mindful of what you do in your day to day. If you find that your stress level is really high all the time, maybe it’s time to consider a lifestyle change. So if you tend to flare up when you’re really angry, then maybe it’s time to take a step back, maybe invest in yourself. Also spicy foods. I know everybody likes spicy foods, but keep in mind if that makes you flare up, you might have to cut back a little bit. Pollution, unfortunately, we can’t all fix that.
We’re all trying. Essentially it’s just making sure that you protect your skin when you’re outside from pollution and sun. Sun exposure is huge. The sun really dries out the skin, especially depending on where you live. It can really dry the skin out. So making sure that you’re wearing sunscreen is quite important when you have rosacea.
Oh, good to know. Is rosacea a lifetime skin condition?
Unfortunately, yes. So rosacea because there’s a genetic component in it. Now, whether research, there’s some researchers that say, yes, there’s genetics. Some researchers say no, there isn’t. It’s one of those things that it’s like, well, most of your family members have it. The likelihood of you having it is going to be there. So unfortunately, genetics, we can’t fix genetics. We kind of need them to be the way they are. So essentially it’s just one of those lifetime things. It’s a matter of getting it controlled.
That is the main goal with rosacea to reduce those flareups. Keep the kim skin calm and hydrated just so that it’s happy and healthy. And it’s not that flaky, dryness, redness, angry, all that kind of stuff.
Wow. Thank you so much for breaking that all down with rosacea and how to treat it and the types that there are. Thanks for joining us here on our YouTube channel at Edmonton Dermatology Center. Don’t forget to subscribe and like our video. If you liked what you heard and it helped you, let us know in the comments as well. And stay tuned for more great tips and treatment ideas. Thanks everyone. Bye bye.