I’d just like to start this week’s blog with a BIG THANK YOU to everyone who has been reading, sending me comments, watching my videos, and following me/commenting on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and YouTube.

I started this blog with the goal of helping other people to speed up their own ability to treat their rosacea by learning what I’ve discovered over the last 15 years of trial-and-error with the condition, but for some reason, it never occurred to me that I’d get this much attention.  Still, after only 6 weeks, this blog already has more than 950 followers!  Holy macaroni!

There is No Rosacea Cure.

The number of followers on this blog really shows how many people are struggling with the same battles in overcoming rosacea symptoms.  There are far too many websites and products out there that claim that they have a “cure”, when that just doesn’t exist.  Yes, you can heal your symptoms and prevent them from coming back, so it can feel like you don’t have a skin condition anymore, but it never actually goes away.

If you’ve been batting with your rosacea treatment for a while, then you know this, deep down, no matter how much you might want to believe that a rosacea cure exists.  Sorry.  If it’s out there, it hasn’t been discovered, yet.

But when you learn about the right kinds of rosacea treatment for your own unique case of this condition, it can be very helpful in keeping it under control.

For me, it has been a matter of:

• keeping out of heat and humidity as much as possible,
• reducing the temperature of showers that I take,
• waiting for my food to cool down a bit before I eat it,
• avoiding caffeine and alcohol (sort-of 😉 ),
• finding the right gentle skin care products (an ongoing mission),
• keeping out of direct sunlight,
• and avoiding trigger foods such as spicy ones and ones containing histamine (I’ll do a blog on that in the future).

For you, it might not be the same as me, but I hope that you’ll learn from what I have tried so that you can decide whether or not it is worth it for you to try it, too.

My Experience with Red Light Therapy as a Rosacea Treatment

As you’ve been reading (if you’ve checked out my other posts), one of the central components of my natural rosacea treatment has been non-laser LED red light therapy.  I’ve been showing pictures of my progress as I use it. It is still clearing up the redness (my case has been a problem for 15 years, so it will take a while for me to clear all of the redness).  The bumps are gone, and all of the “discomfort” rosacea symptoms have been gone for weeks.

Many people who don’t have the condition don’t realize that a lot of the struggles with the symptoms aren’t just a matter of the redness and pimply-looking bumps.  This skin disorder has a lot of uncomfortable symptoms, too.  Itching, tightness, and burning are the ones I used to deal with, the most.  For me, those are gone.  I mean completely gone.

The only symptom that I have left is the redness.  It has been fading over the last six weeks, to the point that it now looks like I’ve had too much sun, but it no longer looks like I have a raging skin problem.

How to Use Light Therapy to Heal Rosacea Symptoms

The most common question that I’ve been getting from this blog and over Twitter has been exactly how I use the LED red light therapy as a part of my overall rosacea treatment.

I guess it’s true that I have talked about it a lot but I’ve never really demonstrated what I do to make it work.  I think the reason I’ve never really gone into it is that it is pretty simple and self-explanatory.  There are quite a few different devices out there, but after doing research I chose the Peak 630 LED Red Light Therapy kit from Light Therapy Options.

Here is a video that I’ve created to illustrate exactly what I do to use it:

The reason I chose that device is that while I was tempted to go for one of the cheaper “mask” style or tiny hand-held devices that I’ve seen in a few stores and on eBay, the Peak 630 had the following advantages:

• Once you buy it, nothing ever needs to be replaced.  Even the bulb.  It essentially lasts a lifetime. So it’s a one-time purchase with nothing that needs to be replaced.  Other products, like the masks last about 1 month and then need to be replaced.  I’m not sure about the tiny handhelds other than the batteries that need to be replaced.  Devices that have replacement parts get expensive over time and are not eco-friendly. So I went for the Peak 630, instead.
• It’s powerful enough to actually work. After looking into the cheaper little handhelds, I found out that they are way less powerful, which means that they aren’t as effective. They need to be held very close to the skin to do anything at all.  That leads to the next benefit of the one I chose.
• It barely takes any time at all.  Since this device is powerful, it can be held 6-12 inches from the skin.  That means that the whole face can be done in 3 sessions (left, right, an centre).  Each session is 90-180 seconds long (depending on how long you want to do it and what is most effective for your skin and unique condition).  So it takes only 4.5 minutes for me to do my whole face if I do the minimum time, or 9 minutes if I do the maximum time.  As far as I can tell, the mask products take 15 minutes or more.  The little handhelds take a very long time because they cover a small area of your face so you have to do way more sessions.
  I don’t know if you’ve ever had to sit still for more than 5 minutes doing absolutely nothing with your eyes closed, but it’s BORING.  Also, I’m busy!  If it takes a long time and it’s boring, I’m not going to keep up with it every day.  I know myself.  I won’t follow through.  But a handful of minutes can be squished into even my busiest days, so the Peak 630 works for me.  I just do it directly after I shower and then move on with the rest of my getting-ready.
• The company has great reviews/reputation. I read a lot of the reviews on this device, the other devices sold by Light Therapy Options, and on the company, itself.  It’s got a great reputation and it promised that if I didn’t like the product, it could be returned in 90 days for a full refund.  Considering that I saw my first early benefits within 24 hours and it has continued to work for 6 weeks, that’s really not going to be an issue!

Full disclosure – my above reasoning for choosing this product may sound kinda salesy, but I am NOT being paid to make those statements.  I am not using this blog to make any promises or to sell anything.  In fact, to make sure that we’re all on the same page about how I am not making money through this website, I have created a “Full Disclosure” page that you can check out what this is all about.

As of 2 weeks ago (four weeks into my own red light therapy), I was asked by that company to keep up their own new blog.  I was asked to do it because I am a writer and because I have personal experience with rosacea treatment and with their own red light therapy device.  That said, I am NOT being paid by them to write the blog.  I keep it up at my own pace to give general rosacea skin care information that is backed up by science and by reputable organizations like the National Rosacea Society, among others.

If you want to see what I have to say on their blog, I welcome you to visit their blog site, here: Light Therapy Options Rosacea Blog. Again, I am writing for that site on a voluntary basis and it won’t change the honest opinions that I share here on this site.

Plus, I’m still backing up everything that I say with pictures of my own skin!  No filters or alterations are ever made to these images (I wouldn’t know how to do that even if I wanted to!).  They’re taken with the same device (my tablet), in the same place in my home (guest room), in the same lighting (probably not great, but it’s the best I can do 😉 ).

Here are this week’s progress pictures:

 

I welcome you to compare them to my “before” pictures from The Beginning.  Big difference, wouldn’t you say?

That’s all for this week.

If you have any questions or comments about red light therapy and rosacea treatments, I welcome you to share them in the comments section, below.