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!

How to be Radiant without Redness

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How to Survive Summer Heat when you have Sensitive to Rosacea Skin.

While summer is a welcomed reprieve from the long still cold of winter, it is not so true for those who suffer from the heat.

For those of us with Pitta imbalances, the heat makes us tired, irritable and it can be seen in our red and puffy faces. And to really make summer life more frustrating the redness can be the accompanied with acne.

What causes this Pitta Imbalance?

In Ayurveda, Pitta is heat. We all have this in our individual make up. Those of us who genetically have it in abundance can claim to be a Pitta - secondarily or primarily.

It is only an imbalance when we suffer from unhealthy or unwanted symptoms of this heat energy. Any one can suffer from a Pitta Imbalance. And a primary Pitta does not necessarily suffer from a Pitta Imbalance

Over abundance of Internal heat that imbalances Pitta can be caused by a stress out or aggressive lifestyle, an unbalanced diet of too many heating foods, medication, alcohol, caffeine, smoking, menopause, extreme exercise, a high level of toxins and aggressive skincare and over sun exposure.

Air conditioning can give us some reprieve as it cools down our bodies but the dehydration just worsens the appearance of our skin.

So how can we improve our plight in such an otherwise delightful time of the year?

From the list of causes, it is wise to start with diet. Any book on Ayurveda will list the foods for Pitta. They are cooling and alkaline foods which are great for any summer meal. Star foods are cucumbers and melons. Substitute coconut oil for your salad oil. You can cook with it but eat as much raw food as you can. Favour lean light proteins like white fish. If you want your omegas then eat either low salt smoked salmon or go for sushi. Avoid high oil foods including meats, salt and acid foods like vinegar. Replace it in salads with lemon or lime juice.

Raw foods can be a challenge as Pitta imbalance can come with digestive problems. Usually if you suffer from rosacea or redness in the cheek area your body is telling you,”you do”. Pittas are also more sensitive than other Dosha dominant types so are more prone to allergies. Make cucumbers more agreeable by removing the seed section.

The best solution would be to get advice from a naturopath or an alternative allergist. I am currently experiencing great reduction in my food allergies and great improvement in my digestion with Dana Zangari, a Registered Holistic Allergist and Nutritionist. You can find her at http://www.pandechiropractic.ca/Dana-Zangari/dana-zangari.html

To decrease stress and other extreme behaviors, find relaxing exercise like Yoga or Tai Chi and find time to do daily meditation.

Try to avoid excess sun and heat exposure by choosing shadier and greener paths to your destination.

Once you have lessened the macro causes of your internal health, you can start to repair the visual damage this energy has caused by reducing the redness and puffiness in your skin.

Redness in the skin is an indication that your capillaries are dilated and your circulatory system is not working properly. This is due to the capillary walls being dry and inelastic.

This compromised circulatory situation results in less moisture and nourishment being delivered to the skin cells in the area- in turn this causes more inelastic capillaries and more redness.

The puffiness and acne is caused by the inactive circulatory and lymph system. The result is excess toxins and fluids left in the area which causes localized edema and breakout when stress or body heat -as in PMS- is increased.

The ideal solution is a facial treatment that will turn around the situation. The best facial to quickly reverse the dehydration redness spiral is our Deluxe Lumi-Lift Facial. It will stimulate circulation and drainage with micronized current while improving skin hydrating with galvanic current improving the effectiveness of our own collagen gel mask . While you may breakout after the first facial due to the increased circulation and hydration - the end result is both less redness/puffiness and less breakouts. Another bonus of this facial is better facial tone and less wrinkles. It is not a one off deal though if you want long term effects. Depending on your skin condition and the results you want you will need to have a series of the facials weekly. It can vary from 3-10 per week. http://www.pureandsimple.ca/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=103&Itemid=42

For those who are more timid to try new things you can choose any facial treatment that will clean your pores, hydrate up your skin and include a good face massage like our Super Hydrating Facial. The hydration effect of this facial is pumped up with a collagen sheet mask and oxygen treatment. Again if you are doing these facials with results in mind you will probably need to do a few of thsi facials weekly for 3 weeks or more. http://www.pureandsimple.ca/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogsection&id=5&Itemid=42#SuperHydratingFacial

Then get advice from a knowledgeable skincare expert on creating a daily care routine. Beautiful healthy skin comes with a seasonally adjusted daily regiment that includes gentle cleansing, hydration and protection. A must-have item for all that want hydrated skin throughout the year, is our facial serum Collagen Elastin Plus. It is not only our best selling item but it has the most loyal client following.

This serum with a suitable moisturizer for your skin type will keep your skin hydrated without a lot of fuss throughout your day. http://www.pureandsimple.ca/index.php?option=com_virtuemart&page=shop.browse&category_id=553&Itemid=27

For more detailed advice on the above please feel free to contact me or any of our professional staff.

Sun Drenched Beauty

Summer can be a boost to our feeling of attractiveness.

When I was a teenage, a suntan covered up blemishes and as I grew older and less plagued with acne, the tan evened out my skin’s blotchiness.

Now I am noticing women my aging using a tan to camouflage signs of skin aging from brown spots, redness and even wrinkles. Yes, this is just one of the examples of how irrational our pursuit of beauty can become.

So what are better ways of looking our best with positive long term results? Most anti aging technologies like Intense Pulsed Light and exfoliation like Microdermabrasion and Chemical Skin Peels make our skin more photo sensitive so are not advisable for most of us in the summer. Only the most meticulous of us will avoid more sun damage with proper sunscreen application.

While the consequences like sun burn, hyper pigmentation or dehydration are not irreversible when tended to right away, it is still wiser to accommodate our behaviors along with our aspirations.

If there is a need for improving your skin’s appearance from a special occasion to lifting self esteem, there is a safe and effect anti-aging treatment. Micronized Current can take years off your face by reducing the appearance of brown spots, chronic redness and wrinkles. It does it by stimulating the production of collagen and elastin while toning up facial muscles.

Our experience with Micronized Current for anti aging has not been all up hill. Our first machine required operator skill along with operator knowledge of the clients muscle placement to attain good results.

Our new machine has eliminated the disappointment of both the esthetician and the client by allowing the current to be dispersed over a larger area. It has the added benefits of red LED to support better collagen production and another current type to help dehydrated skin cells to absorb moisture. We have developed a special lifting gel that doubles as a mask to plump skin cells with skin protein, seaweed and aloe vera .

If some one my age has a special wedding coming up – our children’s or our own – to get our faces camera ready in a pinch – we need only to do three of these treatments a week before the date.

For those of us looking for long term rejuvenation, weekly treatment for two to three months (really depends on your expectations and the condition of your skin) with monthly treatments after can do the trick.

There are smaller ways to look more youthful in these summer months. A gentle exfoliation with jojoba beads at night can give you a fresher look without making skin more vulnerable to sun damage.

Of course using sunscreen, a natural one, with a suitable moisturizer daily will do much to help you avoid the “crêpey” look now and slow down the visible signs of aging long term..

When I wake up disappointed with what I see in the mirror I usually pile on the collagen serum to quickly plump up skin cells and rejuvenate my face. This also helps get circulation in my face going so puffiness in the face or eyes are gone before I walk out the door.

If you have stayed in the sun too long and are worried about the long term consequences, apply a collagen gel mask to hydrate up and repair on skin cells immediately then book a hydrating facial for major repair.

My person favourite is to constantly have your face photographed so that you grow to love the changing beauty that wisdom and life experiences have shaped. I believe some of us want to look eighteen because our emotional needs have not matured. After all we only need to look eighteen if we want to attract an eighteen year old J