Rosacea: Stay calm and carry on

Anyone who suffers from rosacea knows it's a tough taskmaster.
I've always had a bright red nose and chin, made worse every year by the sun. But in recent years, the rosacea has spread to my cheeks making me look flushed, a little like an over-refreshed Santa Claus.
Most of us simply live with rosacea. We slather cream on it, then mask it with a thick coating of cover up, making us look that much older.
But did you know that there are aesthetic treatments for rosacea that calm the redness?
The first step in my rejuvenation was a daily regime of Vivier treatments which include a cleanser, a toner to smooth and even out the blotchiness, an eye cream, and redness relief. The entire regime takes less than five minutes twice a day. (Cost: $271)
After just two weeks, I noticed a big difference in my rosacea, even on the chin and nose areas. For the first time in many years, as a result, I was able to apply just a light smattering of mineral makeup.
This is terrific in my world.
I hate wearing makeup, and prefer the natural look.
But rosacea had made it impossible to pull off a nice, natural look. Now I can just apply a light powder and I'm good to go.
Here's picture of me two weeks after the treatment.
You can learn more about Vivier products and other medical grade skin care products at www.face.ca

 

Visia Skin Analysis provides a "wakeup" call to tanning bed devotees

For years, I've been trying to caution my daughter Marissa about tanning beds.
I know they aren't safe. I've read the stories, seen the literature.
It always seems senseless to me to expose your skin to UV rays at least without the other benefits of sunbathing -- the swim-up bar, the lapping ocean or a championship golf course.
My generation didn't listen, either. We slathered baby oil on our backs, we exposed fish belly white skin to the elements -- all towards chasing that perfect tan. I played club tennis for years without sunscreen and even got sun poisoning in Cuba when I was 18.
Who was I to tell my daughter, the girl with skin so porcelain, she could have been a cast regular on Downton Abbey, that sun worshipping was a bad idea?
Well, thanks to Dr. Antoniak's Visia skin analysis machine, Marissa got her wake-up call.
Visia is a tool that doctors use to identify the good, the bad and the ugly of a patient's face by analyzing all elements of the skin: the size of pores, sun damage, texture, bacteria, rosacea and wrinkles. It compares your skin to 99 other women, of your age, to give you a baseline from which the doctor develops a personalized skin strategy using products and interventions that give you the best result.
As part of our treatment plans, Marissa and I both took the Visia test and the results were revealing.
I'd been given the Visia analysis three years ago and I tested badly in many areas. Since then I've taken measures to improve my skin, such as avoiding the sun and adjusting my lifestyle so my results were less shocking. Compared to other women my age, I have better skin than more than 80 percent of them, fewer wrinkles, better texture. Still my sun damage was up there for the world to see. I had a 66% score meaning that my skin was better than slightly more than half the women analyzed.
That is not a good result, in my mind.
Marissa didn't fair nearly as well as I did. Thanks to tanning beds and early sun exposure without sunscreen (the downside of co-parenting) she scored better than only 33% compared to other women her age (24). She also had clogged pores and a high level of bacteria on her skin from not utilizing a correct cleansing technique.
Based on our Visia results, Drs. Antoniak and Bonaparte have crafted treatment plans for both of us involving the use of medical grade skin care products from Vivierskin to arrest the bacteria (Marissa) and the rosacea (Rose) and put us on a path for skin care recovery.
Using the Visia is a great first step towards getting the skin you've always dreamed about. Even if you don't have the budget for Botox and dermal fillers or chemical peels, an investment of $60 in a Visia session will show you what you need to work on. And the Vivierskin treatment (a full skin care product package for under $275) will help arrest the damage and improve your skin in just a few weeks. My rosacea, caused strangely by my new addiction to physical fitness, was gone in two weeks. My skin is now getting the cleansing and moisturizing regime it needs based on the evidence provided by the Visia. Not bad for an investment of just $400.
The real take-away for Marissa is that tanning beds are death to good skin and that using sunscreen is a must in ensuring she keeps her beautiful porcelain skin much longer than I did.
And that, as they say, is priceless!

Visia and Vivierskin: A great gift for Mom on Mother's Day!

 

The skin we're in: Facing the music

 

You know what they say: the camera never lies.

I've been working in the video business as an online presenter and coach for more than 10 years, so I have a pretty good idea what my 57-year-old face looks like. And I always made sure that my husband Scott, who is our videographer, shoots me head and shoulders and never on an angle. Did I mention I always make sure that I wear makeup, and lots of it and have my hair done, right?

But not today. Today, my daughter Marissa and I are attending our skin care consultation with Drs. Greg Antoniak and James Bonaparte from the Facial Surgery and Cosmetic Centre of Ottawa. We're doing this to make sure we get our best look for Marissa's upcoming wedding season.

A consultation with the docs means one thing: you have to be bare-faced. In your case, if you are considering any sort of cosmetic treatment or enhancement, you do this in the safety of the doctor's office where all your warts and freckles and sunspots and wrinkles can be evaluated. In our case, Marissa and I are doing this in a

public forum in hopes of providing education for consumers as to what is possible for faces old and young.

Let's be clear, we don't want to look like Joan and Melissa Rivers. Or Lisa Minnelli and Kim Hunter at the Oscars. We want to look like Rose and Marissa, superwomen, fresh-faced and looking good for our ages. So that's why we're meeting with the doctors -- to come up with strategies to make us look our very best.

Boy, was I shocked when I saw this video. Straight on camera, I don't have a double chin, but Scott shot me from the side with my waddle wiggling for everybody to see. I looked tired, beat-up really, especially sitting beside my 24-year-old lovely daughter who looks as good without makeup as anyone her age.

For me, sitting with Marissa, it was Dickensian. She is the ghost of my Christmas past; I am the ghost of her Christmas future.

Hopefully, she will learn techniques and use products that will make her look a little less like Ebenezer Scrooge. Hopefully, I will find means to make me look, well, just like a better Scrooge.

Here's the deal.

After meeting with the docs, Marissa and I will be given a plan that we will be following for the coming months, including a skin analysis, a new skin care regime and we will be undertaking a variety of procedures -- some invasive, some not-so -- to ensure that come the Big Day, we'll both be rock stars.

Marissa might even get a solution to get her bikini-ready, and undo the effects of too many Energy Drinks and President's Choice chocolate chip cookies.

I'm very excited for the future.

Hope you enjoy the video.



 

 

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