Rosacea

Rosacea video

• What is it?
• What causes it?
  • The ‘flush’ reflex
  • The ‘bugs’ within
• How can Rosacea be treated?

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What is it?

Rosacea is a common and chronic skin condition that usually begins as an increased redness in the central part of the face (nose, cheeks or forehead) but it can also show up on the chin, scalp, ears and neck.

Rosacea is three times more common in women than it is in men and most commonly starts after 30 or 40 years of age. There is no special blood test or other laboratory study that can diagnose Rosacea and it is usually come to simply through a detailed physical examination.

One quirk of Rosacea is that most skin rashes at least temporarily improve when you put steroids on them whereas Rosacea, if anything, tends to get worse after using steroids.

Rosacea can cause considerable distress. If you who are reading this already have it then I don’t need to say much more about that, if you don’t have Rosacea and are reading this for interest or for someone else then just think back to the last time you had a visible problem on your face and remember how much it was in your thoughts… these things strike very close to the ‘home’ of who we are.

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What causes it?

This is obviously a very important question and there are some thought-provoking leads in the scientific literature about what causes Rosacea.

There are quite a few different theories about this and rather than wade through all of them I would rather discuss what I consider to be the two leading explanations for Rosacea and why they seem to fit the best.

• The ‘flush’ reflex
• The ‘bugs’ within

The ‘flush’ reflex

The ‘flush reflex’ is at its most extreme and most familiar to us when we are acutely self-conscious (and blushing) but it actually occurs all the time for much less dramatic reasons. Simply getting a little too hot, too quickly, causes the tiny blood vessels in the face to rapidly dilate, fill with blood and so quickly dump some excess heat. If the blood vessels are not sturdy enough, then in the process of rapid swelling they can get tiny tears and ruptures, leading to the broken blood vessels of Rosacea.

It is not just heat and embarrassment that cause the facial blood vessels to fill up so quickly though. Caffeine containing drinks can do it, strong winds against the face can do it, vigorous exercise or excess sunlight can certainly do it, hot foods or drinks can start it off and in fact any kind of strong emotion can set the process in motion again.

Strong feelings, sunlight, exercise, hot drinks etc are not the cause of Rosacea. They are triggers whereas the deeper cause is the flush reflex working overtime and the capillaries not standing up to the strain.

The ‘bugs’ within

We all contain astonishingly large amounts of microbes in and on our bodies. For the large part these ‘residents’ are harmless or even helpful, for some people and for some of the time they can cause much mischief.

The evidence supporting an overgrowth of harmful bacteria in people with Rosacea is compelling and you will quickly find referenced studies showing these connections if you are interested in doing further research online. For example Hydrogen breath tests (something I am familiar with as I use these in my work) show that people with Rosacea are much more likely to have an overgrowth of hydrogen producing bacteria in their digestive system. The stomach infection H.Pylori has likewise been strongly implicated in Rosacea.

It has long been known that some people’s Rosacea improves with antibiotic therap. It was long thought that this was because there was a kind of surface infection, generally thought to be from the Demodex mite, but this has given way to a wider appreciation of a general microbial imbalance and overload.

The improvement of some cases of Rosacea with antibiotics has led to them being widely used for Rosacea as a primary treatment but, frustratingly, antibiotics only work for some people and even more frustratingly the problem can still come back after initially getting better. Bugs are likely a vital part of the Rosacea picture, but for most people it appears to be not quite as simple as killing them off and hoping for the best; a more comprehensive approach may be required.

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How can Rosacea be treated?

I mentioned that antibiotics form a large part of the conventional treatment of Rosacea. Drugs that reduce the blushing/flushing reflex have also been used with limited success but they come at a high price in terms of side effects. Conventional medicine makes pretty depressing reading when it comes to Rosacea and most people will come away with a fairly gloomy outlook as to their prospects of really getting better. You see a strong theme in the literature that of using cosmetics to cover it up and ‘learning to live with it’, (which is a lot easier to say when you aren’t the one with the problem).

~ A herbalist’s approach

There are two areas of treatment in particular that I have seen help with Rosacea.

~ Strengthen the blood vessels.

People with Rosacea have more delicate and easily damaged blood vessels than average. 
Fortunately we have some natural substances that are effective at strengthening the blood vessel walls. The two that lead the way in doing this are the herb Horsechestnut and the extract from foods ‘Quercetin’. I have my own prescribing habits of how I like to use these two but both of them are very popular in the natural health world and I am sure it would be possible for anyone to find and use then both without a prescription. The most important point is that these substances must be taken over a period of many weeks and even months to get good results, it is not the physical amount of each that matters so much (though you should get as good a quality supplement as you can) but it is more so how long you use them that determines success in this instance (I think three months is a minimum proper trial period).

~ Reduce bad bugs, encourage good

It can take a strong push to get bad bugs to leave; they literally hang on for their lives. You may choose antibiotics for this but Garlic, Echinacea, Myrrh and Golden Seal can be just as powerful with far less side effects.  Encouraging the good bugs is much easier but you won’t go far with it unless you have taken that first step of eradicating the bad guys to start with.

If Rosacea is your only health problem then, unless you have access to something like the hydrogen breath test or some other reliable diagnostic method then you may have to patiently follow a good ‘weed and seed’ protocol somewhat on faith. That said you may well have some other symptoms that will help you to know that you are working in the right area and that your treatment is working. For example people who have excess bad bugs in their guts often have digestive symptoms such as bloating and irregular bowel motions.  Another connection that is worth noting is that people with a too high level of unhelpful microbes often get noticeably hotter, especially in their gut region and especially at night. It may be that this is part of the connection between dysbiosis and Rosacea, the increased heat that comes with the chronic infection is another factor that leads to an excess amount of blood flushing into the facial blood vessels.

This complex subject is discussed in some more depth in this article on dysbiosis.

Rosacea is a tricky problem to have, a holistic, broad minded approach is more likely to succeed than any program or protocol, I strongly encourage you to find a good herbalist to help you on your way.

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