Walking around with red skin all over your face is annoying. In fact, it is no one’s idea of a good time. Unfortunately, rosacea is a chronic skin condition that affects millions of people with varying degrees of severity. Even if it is just on your cheeks, there is such a thing as “too rosy”. Even more problematic is for those who suffer from the swelling, acne-like bumps, and redness can’t find relief through color correction or other options.
They just have to deal with it.
However, the best way to deal with something you can’t treat is to try to prevent it from happening in the first place. While rosacea can’t be prevented forever, there are some steps you can take to make flare-ups much less frequent.
Control Your Temperature
If you suffer from rosacea, then cool weather is your best friend. However, just like hot weather, when it is too cold, that can cause flare-ups too. There is really no winning with either extreme. This is why it is extra important to keep your temperature mild no matter what time of year it is. In the summer, minimize your time outside, but at least in winter, you can spend a little bit more time out as long as your cover up with a scarf.
Keep Cool
While the excessive cold can trigger flare-ups too, it is still preferable to hot. This means if you want a little face soothing, always choose the cold compress over the hot one. This also means that you will want to wash your face with lukewarm water instead of hot or even straight up cold water.
Control Your Diet
Some things that people say about your skin are kind of hokum, but there really is no denying that what you eat has an effect on your skin. For people with rosacea, there are actually specific foods that can trigger an outbreak.
If you have rosacea, avoid:
- Spicy Foods
- Hot Beverages
- Caffeinated Beverages
- Alcohol
This doesn’t mean you have to skip your coffee all the time, but you should have less and less frequently. Know that every time you eat a spicy curry or drink some hot cocoa, you are tempting fate to trigger a rosacea flare-up. All things in moderation, but if you really want to avoid flare-ups, not at all.
Shield Your Skin
Just like in winter you need to wear a scarf to protect your face from the cold, but if you go out in the summer, you need to protect your skin with sunscreen. Actually, the truth is, sunscreen is just as important in the winter as well, even if you don’t have rosacea.
That SPF is doing more than preventing skin cancer, sun exposure is a hugely common rosacea trigger. Prioritize natural UV blockers like zinc oxide or titanium dioxide, since they tend to be less irritating to skin unless you have a specific allergy.
It is also important to note that while cosmetics with SPF are helpful, they should not be relied upon. You don’t get the same coverage with cosmetics as you do with specific sunscreens, so you will want to use a gentle facial sunscreen as well as cosmetics with SPF.
Avoid Wrinkle Creams
It is tempting to fight to age early, but if you have rosacea, you want to avoid the anti-aging products altogether. Wrinkle creams and other anti-aging products often use alpha hydroxy acids to prevent wrinkles, but if that acid is above 2% it is going to trigger your rosacea like nobody’s business.
Treat Skin Gently
No matter what age you are, if you have rosacea flare-ups, you need to treat your skin like that of a baby. If you have had a lifetime of living with rosacea, you probably know already, but any rubbing, scrubbing, or massaging is a major no-no if you are trying to avoid flare-ups.
You should be cleaning your skin with a gentle facial cleanser, but you should also just be using your fingertips to gently clean it. Exfoliating is still important, but you need to use a gentle exfoliate that isn’t harshly scrubbing your face.
Choose Cosmetics for Sensitive Skin
The unfortunate reality for you is that if you have rosacea, you are counted among our ranks – the ranks of women with sensitive skin that is easily irritated by cosmetics. If you pick the wrong cosmetics, your rosacea flare-up symptoms are pretty much the symptoms of everyone else with sensitive skin.
This means you will want to prioritize cosmetics with natural and gentle ingredients that won’t trigger your skin. What you want is cosmetics with a small list of ingredients and very little chemicals. For people with rosacea, in particular, you want to be very careful with cosmetics that are high in any kind of acids since those are particularly triggering.