Fed Up with the Sunscreen Situation

[flushedbean]

Just a short introduction: for the past 8 years or so I'v had periodic red eyes; sometimes they would be perfectly fine even for years. I thought it was allergies and in fact, I still believe those are responsible to an extent. Last year around April I got sick of the sore eye bull and decided to chuck my skin care routine and try an all natural mineral baby sunscreen. Eyes remained irritated. In May, I decided to try an all chemical Sunscreen (Anthelios), thinking maybe minerals did not agree with my eyes. Big mistake. I'm not sure if that was my first rosacea outbreak, but I ended up with bumpy red skin for a week or so. Shocked by my normally great skin's horrible reaction, I stopped using anything and started applying "healing" oils. Nuther big mistake.

Long story short, my face has not been the same since. It's annoying because I was trying to help my eyes and ended up with BAD flushing rosacea. Looking back, I believe I've had this for about 10 years, but somehow, it just never bothered me or was painful at all, except for my eyes, but again, that came and went to a degree. Now, it is painfully awful and my triggers are numerous. I used to be an avid gardener, outdoor person, creative, athletic... none of that exists anymore and I hate this has stolen the things I love to do. I feel like a shell. My family has suffered, I suffer, everything is suffering. I've researched and tried everything over the past year; Oracea, Cetaphil, 3 Vbeams, allergy tests. The Oracea seemed to help my eyes a little, but my sensitivity to light seemed worse and I ended up having horrible dandruff. I believe I've also developed Seb Derm. The Vbeams were painful and I believe made things a little worse. I'm almost 3 months out from my last one. Don't think I'll go back for more.

Back to the sunscreens. Heaven help me I have a closet FULL of failed attempts at wearing this crap. No lie, 50 maybe. Vanicream, Cotz, drugstore, specialty, all natural... blah blah blah. Granted, they are all mineral based. I have a PHd in freakin sunscreens now and you know what? I don't want a PHd in sunscreens!!! I even tried mineral makeup and found one brand I thought was working and really liked, but recently I realized it's like brushing (no matter how lightly I do so) Soft Scrub cleanser on my delicate skin and I have shiny, eczema-like patches and ginormous pores I guess from the abrasiveness? Who the hell knows. It is after all, ground up metal and rock and no matter how much moisturizer I put on, it manages to grind right through it. When I think about it, I realize the insanity of using this stuff on your face... it's oxidized metal!! Isn't that like, rust?!?! If I rubbed finely ground oxidized metal on my dog everyday, he'd be bald. Same with any other animal out there.

I'm too scared to try another chemical one, and really after reading the safety profile and effectiveness of the chemical agents, what's the point? Reapply every 2 hours because they breakdown into carcinogens in sunlight? Really!?!?! What... do they think there's a timer on the chemicals and at 2 hours on the dot they BEGIN to breakdown? That stuff starts breaking down the minute it's exposed to the light. At two hours it's completely decomposed into who knows what? And what is with the waterproofness of EVERYTHING? How in the world do you get this stuff off your face? I had one of many derms I've seen tell me it doesn't matter if you get it all off as long as it is specifically made for your face. What if you wake up at 3 in the morning with a sunscreen teflon coating lighting your face on fire? Does it matter if I can get it off THEN?!? Seems like it's pretty urgent to do so at that point!

So I guess my question is, anybody else like this or am I some kinda freak? How does one function without sunscreen? How do you live a life? Hats can't keep the blazing sun out of my car window. Do I worry about the reflection of the UV rays bouncing to my face off the sidewalk? Am I just brainwashed? Am I doomed to becoming a giant red flaming pimple because I can't rub metals and toxins on my skin? My Scottish/Celtic ruddy faced, but tan husband uses nothing on his skin. He's fine and looks at me like he just can't understand how a person comes to believe their life stops without sunscreen. As I type that, I can't understand it either!

Sorry for rant. Hopefully it was ( if you made it through the whole thing) mildly entertaining to some degree. I'm just excited I can actually clean and moisturize my face after many failed attempts. Turns out when you're not trying to remove teflon and metal, it's a little easier to do and you don't have to do it as often.

[arb161]

I can fill a truck with sunscreens I've thrown out. The "organic" ones always seem to have some kind of flower oil, aloe or lavender or whatever in them that my face reacts to. Plus the thickness, chalky texture and the smell are awful. About a year ago one of my derms recommended Elta md. It was a little pricey at about $40 but i figured what the hell. To my surprise I love it. Light, doesn't smell, active ingredients are zinc oxide & titanium dioxide. It comes in tinted and untinted. For some reason my face doesn't like the untinted. Anyway, you can't even really see it once you put it on. Purchased it on ebay. It lasts a very long time. Think I'm on my origional tube.
Arlene

[rcb67]

I can fill a truck with sunscreens I've thrown out. The "organic" ones always seem to have some kind of flower oil, aloe or lavender or whatever in them that my face reacts to. Plus the thickness, chalky texture and the smell are awful. About a year ago one of my derms recommended Elta md. It was a little pricey at about $40 but i figured what the hell. To my surprise I love it. Light, doesn't smell, active ingredients are zinc oxide & titanium dioxide. It comes in tinted and untinted. For some reason my face doesn't like the untinted. Anyway, you can't even really see it once you put it on. Purchased it on ebay. It lasts a very long time. Think I'm on my origional tube.
Arlene

ive tried this, and it seems ok until i am actually a little hot and my face naturally reddens, then my cheeks look purplish or blue from the white zinc over my red skin. shoot me

[flushedbean]

ive tried this, and it seems ok until i am actually a little hot and my face naturally reddens, then my cheeks look purplish or blue from the white zinc over my red skin. shoot me

Thanks for the advice Arlene. I have, in fact tried that one. Reaction is exactly what rcb67 says. Fine until I get warm or ironically, am exposed to the sun! HA! Too bad because I really like the texture and the way it looked... although it did bug my eyes.

At this point, I doubt anyone can mention a sunscreen I have not tried and I think it's just a no go for me. So my main question is, have others concluded this as well and if so, how do you cope? Do you have a life? Is your rosacea worse better the same? Or, were you unable to wear sunscreen for say, a year or so and then suddenly able to?

I read they're developing a sunscreen pill... they can not come out with that fast enough for me. I wouldn't care if I grew a third nipple on my forehead as a side effect. I'd take that over this any day.

Ditto on the shoot me.

[flushedbean]

Oh and just another side note, I'm in my early 40s right now and wore sunscreen of some sort, probably mixes of chemical and physical, since I turned 20 every single day of my life. I also wore hats pretty darn frequently, although, probably not enough looking back. My brother, who has skin exactly like mine and lives in the hot south on a farm, has never regularly used sunscreen. He's fine. In my opinion, I would've been better off not wearing the sunscreens available back then because all filtering UVB did was lower my body's ability to create melanin, nature's sunscreen, while allowing every damaging UVA ray right on through. That false sense of security made me believe I could walk on the sunny side of the street during a cold day and be ok. Hindsight in science sucks.

[Ghost]

flushedbean,

I use 2 things -- a very high-end moisturizing sun screen (or to put it the other way, a moisturizer containing sun screen) and a product called Zinc-o (which I happened to order more of today, b/c they sent me an email saying they were having a sale. Sale! My favorite word.) Zinco comes in translucent (which is actually white and melts into your skin and tinted. I am very fair and can use either or both.

I find the high-end moisturizer is totally non-reactive on my skin. It's 30 SPF.

The zinco is only 20 spf, that's why I layer.

I buy the moisturizer at duty-free.

****************

I also use other products -- serums and such. But since you were asking about SPF I wanted to stick with that. The zinco is very calming. When it's humid I do put some (high end) powder on top. In crisp weather this isn't needed.


G

[nat007]

Hey, that's interesting, I had the same thing happening to me a few weeks ago.
I was sup[posed to meet up with an old time uni friend who I had not seen for 10 years, and who I never told about my rosacea.
At the time I could hide it but not anymore now. So i started to stress out and thought now would be the right time perhaps to finally try mineral make up. Found a brand that's supposed to be rosacea friendly, with only natural minerals, my skin tone and although it highlighted the dry skin structure, from a safe distance it looked pretty swell actually. No extra flushing, I was happy. After an hour one cheeks started to burn and it was only when I tried to take the pancake off that all hell broke lose. You are right I think when you describe it like little rock particles, it felt like I exfoliated my already ultra skin and sensitive, skin barrier missing skin with rough sand paper. I only used luke warm bottled water and cotton pads, gently removing it, but my cheeks looked bright red, shiny, swollen, eczema like and basically like they were stung by man size bees for about 6 days. I never made it to the reunion
Gave him a lame excuse and I don't think he bought it. After a week and some anti inflammatory medication things normalised again slowly but surely.
Never again!

With regards to sunscreen, it's the same story as well. I bought countless brands over the years, all suposedly rosacea friendly, little or no chemicals or extremely skin friendly, but they all played havoc on my skin within minutes or hours. I am best off I find with a big hat, avoiding mid day sunlight in the summer, walking in the shade when possible and just sunbathing up till my neck. Beware of reflection sunlight when on the water or beach with the hat on. It's a pain to take all such things into consideration, but my skin behaves kind of ok when I go by these rules, relatively.

Best wishes Natalja

[nat007]

Oh and I don't have a hell of a life because of those precautions, I go on travels, spend time in sunny regions, I do everything I want when my skin isn't flaring too much from other triggers. Like I say, mornings and later afternoons and evenings are all fine for me, although always the hat on, but there are some really nice and fancy hats out there, it's not a punishment to wear one. Say between 12 and 4 pm is the toughest time when it's summer and the sun is full out, I just try to work around those hours, take siestas then when on holiday, or lunch in the shade or something. Or walk in the shady sides of the streets. Also have a little parasol, 1900's style, but that's only sort of not rediculous on the coast I find, don't have the guts to wear it very often.

The less things I put on my skin, the best I am doing, I tried everything, also moisturizer wise, for the last say 10 years and in my case everything else makes it worse sooner or later.

Best of luck

[Melissa W]

I'm sorry so many of you cannot comfortably wear sunscreen/sunblock. In that case I agree with Natalja and a hat can act as your protection. I love hats- as Natalja wrote there are some very attractive ones. In fact, I bought a few sun hats from Solumbra for my dh as well and though he thought he would hate wearing them he doesn't. He was diagnosed with melanoma last autumn so I am pretty vigilant about him protecting himself from the sun so there was no arguing with me re the hat LOL.

Sun Precautions (Solumbra) makes a lot of nice hats and so does Coolibar.

http://www.sunprecautions.com/shop/all/hats

http://www.coolibar.com/?s_kwcid=TC%...%7C12021897974

Coolibar is having a 20% off sun hat sale right now through July 29th so you may want to take advantage.

[flushedbean]

thanks Ghost but yep, I tried the ol' zinco. It was ok for a few days and then, wammo... bumps esp. on my nose.

I'm starting to wonder if it is actually the minerals themselves that bother me, as one makeup I tried was pretty much only titanium and zinc and it was the worst as far as mineral makeup. The one I did ok with had a bunch of botanicals including tea and licorice, not as much titanium and zinc, but again, after a few months it became apparent it was no good either.

Natalja, I've followed your posts in my research and I think we have very similar skin... very fair, light eyes, rosy cheeks... well now mine are blotchy flaming red cheeks! thin dry skin too... like desert dry, even when I was a kid. I do wear a ton of hats but always worry there's a little light sneaking in under the brim, but what else can we do? And yes, the man size bee stings!! Exactly! It took my skin a little while to develop those, but once the shiny started, the swollen redness was quick to follow. Like an idiot, I piled on more powder when I got shiny, thinking wow this powder is really moisturizing! DUH!

I tell the derms that the minerals are really drying and they look at me and say "Really?!? Hmpf" Like they've never heard of that before. Looking on the web I see a good amount of folks complaining about dryness with mineral sunscreens. And I've watched some youtube on how to apply mineral makeup and all I can think watching women scrub away (or "buffing" as they call it) at their skin is, youch! Hope you don't have skin like me because in a few years, you're going to be really red! I just can't believe there's not better options to protect us from the sun... or better yet, a cure for this stinkin' disease!

Melissa I'm so sorry about your dh... I hope they got it all out and he listens to you about the hat. I finally got my huz to start wearing a hat as well... he will never wear sunscreen... and I'm not much of a role model on successful use of it! Yes I love Solumbra! And I'll check out Coolibar, thanks so much.

I just wonder how many people wear sunscreen regularly. When I'm in the grocery store I check out people's skin and wonder if they even think about it. I know I just put on my spf 15 tinted moisturizer and was happy as a clam until I decided to try to fix my eyes last year. Now I can't wear anything and it's all I think about. Geesh.