Rosacea… WOW…. What a confusing and tangled story!
At AMA Regenerative Medicine & Skincare, where we specialize in Laser and Integrative Medicine, we have treated thousands of patients with rosacea over the past 20 years.
We have used everything to treat rosacea from conventional antibiotics, to the most advanced and expensive medical lasers, to natural rosacea remedies such as exotic herbal and essential oils, to the simplest and most fundamental of all medical treatments, hyperbaric oxygen therapy and ozone therapy.
The BAD news if you suffer from rosacea:
Every one of these rosacea treatments has proven NOT to work… in some cases.
The GOOD news if you suffer from rosacea:
Every one of these rosacea treatments has proven TO work brilliantly well… in some cases.
The BEST news if you suffer from rosacea:
By customizing protocols of combining all the various rosacea treatments, virtually all our patients achieved satisfactory to fantastic results.Aside from rosacea that is associated with unhealthy intestinal bacteria (see #2 below), there are virtually no other causative conditions that have been identified as directly linked to the cause of rosacea.
Thus, without a specific underlying cause to treat, we are left only with options of targeting the symptoms. These are: the over-vascularization and chronic inflammation of your affected skin, including redness, broken capillaries, spider-veins, red bumps and pustules that look like acne, and the thickened bumpy skin that occasionally grows around the tip of the nose making it look like a bulbous scar (rhinophyma).
To treat the symptoms of rosacea, far and away the most effective way to get rid of rosacea is laser treatment.
These laser treatments for rosacea are also commonly referred to as laser resurfacing, laser peels and laser skin rejuvenation.
Depending on how severe your rosacea is, a series of laser treatments are likely to be needed. Additionally, you are likely to achieve better results from protocols that utilize more than one type of laser. This is due to the fact that more severe cases of rosacea typically affect many different layers of your skin, causing many different symptoms, each of which is best targeted by different types of lasers.
For instance, a physician that uses a Long-Pulse Dye laser along with a YAG laser is likely to achieve significantly better results than using either one of those lasers by itself. We call this a “multiple-modality” use of lasers. Therefore if you are looking for a good medical laser clinic to treat your rosacea, find one that has many different types of lasers AND that understands how to use them together in a combination protocol in order to achieve better and safer results.
Where many physicians fall short is that they focus solely on treating the vascular components of rosacea. As lasers are very target specific, specific types of lasers are very effective in removing all sorts of vascular lesions such as spider veins and broken capillaries.
However, how do you get rid of rosacea and heal skin that has been suffering from rosacea for a long time?
Repairing the upper collagen layers of the dermis is important to address. The collagen matrix within these layers will have become damaged and weak due to the chronic inflammation associated with rosacea. As a result, the skin becomes uneven and bumpy, and is likely to prematurely age, sag and wrinkle.
Therefore, as an adjunct to treating the vascular aspects of rosacea, it is advisable to integrate into the protocol lasers that stimulate the natural generation of new collagen and the remodeling of old damaged collagen. As always, these treatments should be customized according to the unique condition of the patient’s skin.
The collagen processes mentioned are similar to the protocols employed in a non-surgical face lift, and laser resurfacing. Consequently, a strong and healthy collagen matrix will not only help keep the rosacea from ever returning, the patient will enjoy smoother, tighter and more youthful skin.
One of the first therapies one should consider trying to get rid of their rosacea is oral antibiotics. The reason for this is simple. There is plausible evidence that in some cases rosacea is related to an over colonization of your intestines by unwanted bacteria. If you wipe out the offending bacteria, your rosacea could be resolved permanently.
Thus, one course of the right antibiotic could essentially cure you of the rosacea forever, or at least for as long as it takes the bacteria to come back. Though this happens in only a small percentage of cases, if you are one of these lucky patients, a single course of prescribed antibiotics would be a “quick fix” that actually solves the rosacea problem for a long time.
We still don’t understand the reasons why or how this specific bacterium in your intestines causes the rosacea symptoms on your face and only there. Hopefully someday the causal mechanism will be discovered. In the meantime, what is far more important is that those who suffer from rosacea get rid of it, so that you can have a full life unencumbered by the disease.
You might be scratching your head wondering how bacteria in your gut are causing rosacea on your face. In fact, we do not have a scientific explanation for the exact mechanism of this phenomena. However, when looking at rosacea from the point of view of oriental medicine, it’s obvious! Oriental medicine considers the skin and the intestines to be “sister organs”. They are so closely related that whatever is going on in one of them, will be mirrored in the other. Interestingly, even our western “modern” medicine concurs with the oriental assessment, because from our science of embryology we know that both organs are derived from the same line of cells while developing in the womb.
By the way, this is an opportune time to extoll the benefits of taking Probiotics on a regular basis. In addition to rosacea, having an unbalanced population of bacteria in your intestines can lead to many other ailments as well, especially those associated with poor digestion. Our digestive system is designed to host colonies of certain “healthy” bacteria that are essential to proper digestion.
When these bacterial populations become unbalanced, or when unwanted species of bacteria colonize our intestines, our health and wellbeing can be seriously degraded. Ingesting Probiotics, (capsules filled with the healthy bacteria our digestive systems need) helps keep our “intestinal flora” healthy.
Because antibiotics can kill good bacteria as well as bad bacteria, whenever you are taking antibiotics for rosacea or for any other reason, it is advisable to take Probiotics at the same time in order to protect the colonies of good bacteria that live in your intestines, thereby maintaining the health of your digestive system.
Bottom line, the health of our digestive tract has a direct effect on the overall health of our entire body including our skin. Therefore, even if you don’t have rosacea and are simply interested in a healthier body and more beautiful skin, consider using Probiotics as an integral part of a healthy lifestyle. It truly makes a noticeable difference inside and out.
Here is the key to using them: Don’t underestimate their potency and don’t take for granted that because they are “natural” they are easy, safe and effective to use any which way you try. Used incorrectly, they are not likely to help and might even aggravate your rosacea.
Understanding how when and where to use these remedies is both a science and an art. So to maximize your chances of successfully healing your rosacea with these medicines, consider consulting with a Naturopathic doctor experienced in treating rosacea.One natural remedy stands alone among the myriad of other natural therapies, both in its therapeutic effectiveness and the enormous amount of scientific study dedicated to its clinical use. Ozone.
Ozone is a completely natural element readily found in nature and that can be generated in a pure form for medical use. It is a form of oxygen (O3) that has tremendous capacity to stimulate healthy physiological activity in every organ system of our bodies, all the way down to the level of individual cells. There is so much therapeutic value to its clinical use, that I will dedicate a series of articles about Ozone Therapy.
When using for the first time a new topical formulation from any source, natural or conventional, test it first before you apply it to large areas of your skin.
Apply a small amount on a quarter sized spot on the sensitive skin found on the inner side of your arm that faces your body. Let it sit there for about 90 minutes to ensure that your skin won’t react negatively to it. Only when you are satisfied that your skin “likes” it, apply the formulation to larger areas of skin or to unhealthy skin undergoing treatment.Doctors Alice Pien, MD and Asher Milgrom, Phd are established pioneers in the fields of Regenerative Medicine and Skincare. Their expertise ranges from advanced laser systems to HCT/P – Stem Cell medicine. Their medical education and advanced certifications span from medical schools of NY State University, the University of Chicago, to Johns Hopkins, Harvard and UCLA. They approach medicine with the clinical expertise of over 85,000 successful treatments over the past 20 years and significant scientific research resulting in proprietary protocols that they customize for each individual patient.
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