Why Are You Getting So Red in the Face?

When you were young, a flushing of the skin was considered attractive. The pink disappeared as fast as it came.

As a young adult, the redness can still not be tempoary. It can now appear when you are being emotional, using irritating skincare products, eating spicy foods or drinking alcohol.

As you age, the causes of the redness grow to heat, extraneous exercise and consuming hot foods and drinks, cigarette smoke and other chemical inhalants. You may even suffer redness when stress or lack of sleep. The medications prescribed to you can be another trigger.

Also as our age advances, the redness becomes more chronic and at times seems to make our faces puffy looking.

Redness is more widespread in the summer due to the higher heat and humidity exacerbating the other triggers for redness. Summer heat and sun exposure can easily increase the area of redness and the length of time of the redness.

Puffy red cheeks may be unattractive and take attention away from the beauty of your eyes. But the real reason to act is because you want to correct the situation the redness is warning you about.


Why do we get red?

How prone we are to redness is genetic. Those of us who are predominately Pitta or have a Pitta imbalance will get red from a trigger more easily than those of us who are predominately other doshas.

The skin appears red but the redness is really in the dilated capillaries that have not return back to stasis due to inelasticity or weakness.

How do we prevent or reduce redness?

We should reframe from doing the things that cause our capillaries to dilate. Most of them are within our control. We can start by reducing our consumption of spicy and hot foods, and of stimulating foods like caffeine and alcohol. Dilated capillaries cause dehydration of the body due to poor circulation.

Avoid white sugar, cigarette smoking and stress as they can over stimulate the adrenals and cause dilation of the capillaries.

In addition to dilation of blood vessels, Cigarette smoking adds toxins into the blood stream and depletes the body of vitamin C, which helps keep skin and capillary wall elastic.

Detoxification can reduce redness as it removes toxins from the organs so that excess toxins in the bloodstream can be filtered. There are many ways to detox - from fasting (http://www.webmd.com/diet/fasting), to herbs/teas ( go to Thunas for a customized blend http://www.astoriamills.ca/thunaherbals), to manual detoxification with Chi Nei Tsang (http://www.chineitsang.com/cnti/About.html ). Also when organs are too toxic to function properly, toxins can be offloaded into bloodstream. An overloaded blood vessel can remain dilated leaving skin chronically redness and hyper sensitive to heat.

Don't use aggressive skincare. Find skincare for rosacea and sensitive skin at (http://bit.ly/ijPIwu) Too much chemical peeling and continual use of irritating ingredients like retinal or AHA in skincare products can result in chronic redness. Don’t trading acne or wrinkles for red ness.

Avoid other ingredients that cause skin irritation and allergies like petroleum derivatives like propylene glycol, sulfates like sodium laurel sulfate and Vaseline (Petrolatum) and mineral oil (Paraffidium) in cleansers and creams lotions.

Extra help for summer heat can come from your diet. Eat sweet juicy fruits like melons, papaya, and grapes. Eat salads and raw vegetables with lemon juice based dressing instead of vinegar. Eat cooled or cold foods and drinks. And enjoy sushi.

Carry an Organic Lavender Hydrosol with you to keep skin cool and inflammation away. Get a pocket size at http://bit.ly/j1h4ia. Keep a bottle of Organic Witch Hazel Hydrosol http://bit.ly/jxu2O5 in your refrigerator to give you a quick pick me up.

Exercise indoors or in shade. Cool skin down immediately with the chilled hydrosol to reduce redness.

Now you can enjoy the warm weather!