Howdy,
My wife has I’m pretty sure has a case of Rosasea, but she only trusts me and although I’ve gone through 10 years of bad skin and thusly learned alot about how to keep it nice, but I’m pretty rusty now and being as how men really don’t care a great deal in regards to the uniformity of their skin tone and pore size.
I decided to target this towards the ladies of SD. It’s a bit of a GQ kind of question, but I thought I would be safer here.
So basically she has alot of huge pores and redness in her nose, cheeks and chin. Heretity gave her a forehead lines and she basically doesn’t know how to take care of her skin although she puts on daily oil of olay cream stuff. I got her to get a mud mask kind of thing, but she doesn’t exfoliate her skin much, no vitamins, no loufa, no routine really.
So there’s guy routines which is like one product and maybe a multi-vitamin and there’s what the ladies do and when I reached that conclusion, that’s when I decided I was going to need help.
So what do I suggest for her to get her pores to shrink?
Next, I know that some products can cause irratation with rosasea sufferers, so this stuff needs to be fairly gentle.
She has fairly uneven skin tone as well, any ideas? She hates make-up.
Rosacea doesn’t really respond to skin care products, much. Eucerin has a line of products specifically designed to reduce redness. There’s a face wash, lotion and a sort of pale green cream that’s supposed to neutralize the red appearance. I found they weren’t that effective and the green stuff just made the pores more apparent.
She might want to talk with a dermatologist. There are antibiotic treatments and creams that might help. Personally, my skin improved dramatically when I got a course of erythromicin after a root canal.
I hate makeup, too, but she might try one of the new mineral makeup–I use L’Oreal’s. They are light, easy to apply and seem to bring the redness down, as well as evening my skin tone.
Seconding the advice to hie her to a doctor. Untreated (or poorly treated) rosacea can get worse.
I got lucky – I used Metrocream for one winter and haven’t had any serious recurrences, at least not enough to get the scrip refilled. But the pictures on the Internet are not pretty.
If it is indeed rosacea, the doctor will want to know what triggers it. Can be alcohol, certain foods, heat, cold, any number of things. Mine is wind.
If she has rosacea a trip to the dermatologist may be in order. IANAD, so my treatment may not work for her.
First, make sure she gets a good dermatologist. The first one I went do spent maybe 30 seconds with me, and I found out from my second dermatologist that Skin Dr #1 prescribed me something that treated severe acne, not rosacea.
I use Cetaphil gentle cleanser to clean my face. I use Metrogel in the morning and Finacia in the evening, and I’ve just finished my second round of Adoxa, a steroid pill designed to clear up the redness, which it has done beautifully.
Really, she needs to see a dermatologist. She may also want to visit a cosmetic counter at one of the better department stores. They can evaluate was cosmetics would work best for her skin.
Metro cream rocks! Definitely worth her time to talk to her doctor about it. I’ve used it, and my husband uses it for his rosacea. Works wonders, it does – it’s an antimicrobial that isn’t overly harsh, but is very effective.
Oil of Olay is probably not a good product for her to use. She should check out lotions/creams with alpha hydroxy in them. It reduces oilines and gets rid of dead skin cells on the surface, which help clog pores and dull skin. I use Neutrogena’s Healthy Skin lotion, which has alpha hydroxy and SPF 15, and I love it. It’s made a real difference.
Nothing shrinks pores. The best you can do is minimize their appearance.
The best product for bad skin – the very best, of all time, hands down: WATER. Make sure she drinks her 8 glasses a day. It truly makes a huge difference in skin’s appearance and reduces outbreaks and oiliness beautifully, while helping to even out dry areas. Getting into the habit of drinking enough was surprisingly hard for me, but made the single biggest difference to my skin.