Getting out of the red

The rosacea business is booming for cosmetics companies, but the products they’re selling won’t solve the underlying problem…

In high school, I had an English teacher whose face was so red that we barely noticed a difference when the boys throwing miniscule paper wads from the back of the room would send her into a fury. Of course, we all thought she was just hopelessly clueless when it came to makeup application, and had let her desire for a “rosy complexion” get the better of her.

But when I started working with Dr. Wright, I learned about rosacea, and realized that my teacher had suffered a pretty severe case. Unfortunately, she’s not the only one. In fact, according to a recent article I read, sales of cosmetics promising to alleviate the redness associated with rosacea increased by 35 percent between 2002 and 2007, and sales of the only patented drug “approved” by the FDA for rosacea are projected to hit $60 million this year (up from $9 million just two years ago).

That same article also claimed that “no one knows what causes rosacea.” But that’s not entirely true.

Over the years, Dr. Wright has found that rosacea is very often associated with low stomach acid production. And if testing shows you do have low stomach acid, you can often reduce or even eliminate the rosacea just by taking replacement hydrochloric acid with pepsin along with vitamin B12 and B-complex injections.

Recent research has linked a high percentage of rosacea cases with a bacterial stomach infection called Helicobacter pylori (or H. pylori), which is probably best known for its role in stomach ulcer formation. But H. pylori also causes low stomach acid. So if you have rosacea, you should also get tested for H. pylori. If the test is positive, there are several effective natural remedies to clear it up. In fact, herbalist and regular Nutrition & Healing columnist Kerry Bone devoted an entire article to natural remedies for Helicobacter in the March 2005 issue of Nutrition & Healing. Subscribers can download this issue for free by visiting www.wrightnewsletter.com and logging on to the Archives with the username and password listed on page 8 of your most recent newsletter.

Source:
“Skin deep: In a perfect world, rosacea remains a problem,” The New York Times (www.nytimes.com), 4/24/08