Q & A: Beauty Question, Eczema & Rosacea Sitting in a Tree
By Nora Zelevansky / January 21st, 2009
QUESTION: (posed via “Ask Lifestyle Questions!” by anonymous, 1/21)
Nora, I have eczema (and maybe a little rosecea) on my face. It’s driving me crazy and so is the thought of taking medication for ever. Are there any good skin products for those conditions????
ANSWER: Wow–I’m playing beauty expert today, so I guess I should mention that my opinion is purely experiential and definitely NOT based on real medical or even esthetic knowledge. But, yeah, dry skin totally tends to appear either during cold weather or in super dry heat: fire weather, they call it here in LA. Not sure if that’s better or worse than earthquake weather?
ANYWAY, you may need something prescription, if it’s serious. But, in my purely observational experience, for very mild cases or for preventative purposes, deep shea butter HAND lotions like Mistral’s Creme Mains can really help dry skin on the body (and these smell like heaven). Hand creams just tend to be richer than body lotions; especially in concert with powder like Gold Bond (yup, the jock itch stuff) and even OTC Cortizone Cream in small quantities.
For the face, I would also search out shea butter products cause it really is a miracle ingredient, not an irritant (for me at least) and, well, I’m just OBSESSED. A heavier night cream like Kinara’s Intense Moisturizer with peptides could be good too, but, if you’re acne prone, use it only as a spot treatment on dry areas.
As for the redness prob, an esthetician recently told me that rosacea is the most over-diagnosed problem in skincare. These days, it seems like everyone is lactose intolerant, wheat intolerant, ADD and covered in rosacea. You may just be having a sensitive reaction to a product. Try being really gentle with your skin: DEFINITELY do not use grainy exfoliants in those areas. Glycolic acids can be too extreme for a lot of people too, so don’t overuse that either.
Another esthetician once told me not to be afraid to use different products on different parts of my face, depending on the areas’ needs. It seems obvious, but it never occurred to me and I think it’s actually genius advice.
Also, a good friend in NYC uses a bunch of rosacea products she likes: Lucrece Innovative Skin Technology Rosacea Creamy Cleanser by Physicians Aesthetic Research (though she says their products can be pricey), B. Kamins Chemist‘s Rosacea line (which includes a blue concealer to counteract the red appearance) and (her fave) Eau Thermale Avène Antirougeurs Apaisante SPF 25 (which she uses over her normal moisturizer for both sun protection and its blue tint).
That’s all I got for now.
xo – N.