Not Washing My Face For Several Days

[jb0450]

My Rosacea began not too long ago and before that my skin was fine until I went to the derm for psoriasis on my scalp and showed her this small pink area on my chin. She told me it was Seb Derm and gave me a topical steroid. This didn't do any thing and after 2 days of noticing it was making it worse I stopped and visited my old Derm. He said it may be Rosacea and gave me metro-cream. Since then I've tried Metro-Cream, Finacea, Jojoba oil, and OTC products. Every single one irritated me. So for the past week my face has gradually gotten worse until this point where it exploded. All i was doing is washing morning and night with Neutrogena extra gentle face wash and applying this ultra calming bamboo redness reduction cream I got from kohl's(which started out good but ended here). In the morning i applied all calm sunscreen afterwards. Prior to me being diagnosed with Rosacea All I did was wash my Face with the neutrogena and apply aveeno daily moisturizing lotion. My skin was awesome doing it this way. No sunscreen or topicals. So after my face exploded i realized washing twice a day and applying all this junk to my face was only making it worse and I'm just gonna wash it not put anything on it and leave it alone for awhile. I've read of people not washing their face for 10 days and then washing only with water every 3 days or so after. They say that the skins natural oils will heal the damaged layer of skin and that repetitive washing for long periods of time have destroyed the skins natural barrier and that this is a way of rebuilding it. But if you go straight back to washing it twice a day it will just ultimately break down the barrier. So I'm gonna try this and see what happens because I have nothing to lose. I also lost my health insurance. If any of You guys have tried this let me know your experiences. i will post my progress periodically. Thanks

[nataljaoo]

Good luck jb0450!

I had very good skin too untill my 19th. I had some minor eczema around my mouth and got hydrocortison (steroid) creme prescribed and after a week rosacea hit. I have experimented with so many creams afterwards, all to try and calm it down again. My skin got ultra sensitive from the rosacea. Finally, after some years, a dermatologist ordered me to not use anything on the skin for 6 months. No moisturizers, no sunscreens, no nothing. Not even washing gel, just plain water (bottled water for me, with as little chlorides and minerals in it as possible and cotton pads). It took months before the extreme dryness of my skin lifted a bit, but you are right in saying that the skin will ultimately restore it's own oil production. My skin is still on the verge of dry, but feels not dry and smooth. I did find that my skin was less irritated with this regime, and I never changed it afterwards (for almost 5 years now). It didn't lift all the flushings though, rosacea just went on with it's behaviour, but at least there were no creams irritating my skin even more now.

An academic and big studie from Durch dermatology hospitals showed recently that 90% of Dutch women actually age there skin more with the cremes they use. Most use the wrong cremes, that irritate the skin and gives it slight inflammation, thereby aging it much quicker then it would otherwise have done. This is due somewhat to the 'anti- aging' cremes, which are pretty agressive and not meant for teenagers and twenty somethings (who also buy them), but it was best according to them to use something natural and very minimal only to maintain the souplesse of the skin. I can only imagine what the wrong creams would do with already inflamened rosacea skin...

Good luck and keep us posted!

Natalja

[raly]

I always intend to try this, but always end up washing my face after a couple of days.

However, I do think washing it less has a positive effect - I try to do as little as possible to my skin nowadays.

Here's a thread I read in the past from someone who had acne who had a similar idea: http://www.acne.org/messageboard/WAS...H-t194108.html