Rosacea and Diet

Yesterday I had another visit with my endocrinologist for a check-up. She mentioned that since I am off injections (my new insurance won’t cover them without a diabetes diagnosis) and trying to stabilize blood sugar by diet and exercise, and also because I am off Synthroid and taking some thyroid supplements instead, we needed to have some further blood tests. Hashimoto’s disease does not just go away, so we have to make sure my thyroid function isn’t suffering. She ordered thyroid tests and another A1C, which I had drawn yesterday and we’re waiting for the results to decide what’s next.

She also mentioned that it looks like I have Rosacea. I have mentioned this before on my blog: for years, my cheeks have often looked very red, almost sunburned. Sometimes they look rashy. No matter what I have tried to soothe my skin, the redness and rashiness has never gone away… with one exception. When I was on AIP, it was gone. My skin finally looked normal again and that was the only time when I did not need to use makeup just to have a normal, non-reddened skin tone on my face. When I went off AIP it came right back, even when I was gluten free. So I know diet could really help with this issue but I am not sure exactly which food is irritating my skin. No doubt it’s a food that causes inflammation… maybe dairy, hard to tell. It’s not just grains and not just sugar, since I have been very low sugar and grain free in the past and still had rosacea symptoms. For now she has me using some facial wipes twice a day that have soothing ingredients and tea tree oil to see if that helps at all. But part of me also wonders if I will need to do some diet tweaking to fix this issue. I really hate having reddened, rashy cheeks (and sometimes nose and chin) so it would be worth it to me to try and figure this out.

Not much else going on. Just doing my walking, biking, lifting. Eating well and getting excited about the Farmer’s Market starting to bloom with more fresh, local foods soon. I’ve gone to some produce stands to get local asparagus, and to the local food store to get grass fed local beef. I buy my eggs now from a friend who has a yard full of chickens, so the eggs are wonderfully fresh and rich in omegas. I had a thought the other day when I wondered how fun it might be to try and eat *only* foods from the Farmer’s Market for a month. That might be a fun project to try in the middle of summer! I’m mulling that over now.

There’s only a week left in April so I’m making the most of it! Hope you are too.
(c) Escape from Obesity – Read entire story here.