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Welcome to the Rosacea Research and Development Institute [RRDi] official web site. The RRDi is a 501 (c) 3 non profit organization. If you suffer from rosacea you are a rosacean. Join us to find the cure.
We are rosaceans. Our non profit organization for rosacea patient advocacy web site is a digital data repository of rosacea information. You can add more information to our web site by joining and posting in our member forum becoming a part of 'finding the cure' for rosacea if you join. Our goal is 10,000 members. You can help us reach our goal by joining.
Where to Begin Your Search
Community Support • About Us • What Causes Rosacea? • What Should I Ask My Physician? • Rosacea Newbies • Famous Rosaceans • Rosacea in the News • Tapatalk • Contact us
Suggest you read our FAQs for at least a half hour. After that browse our member forum for another half hour.What is Rosacea?
Rosacea is a chronic and sometimes progressive disorder of the face, characterized by some or all of the following symptoms:Extremely sensitive facial skin with blushing, flushing, permanent redness, burning, stinging, swelling, papules, pustules, broken red capillary veins, red gritty eyes (which can lead to visual disturbances) and in more advanced cases, a disfiguring bulbous nose. Men and women of all ages can be affected, with over 415 million estimated rosacea sufferers worldwide.
"Rosacea is probably a collection of many different diseases that are lumped together inappropriately." Zoe Diana Draelos, MD.
Dr. Draelos is a member of the ROSIE [ROSacea International Expert] Group that says the subtype classification of rosacea is controversial. Dr. Draelos is also a member of the RRDi MAC. Just because you have a red face might mean you have another skin condition instead of or with rosacea, since other skin conditions may co-exist with rosacea, mimic rosacea or you might have a rosacea variant (a dozen variants to differentiate)."Rosacea is a multifactorial, hyper-reactivity, vascular and neural based disease with a broad range of facial manifestations where normal vasodilation is greater and more persistent and involves an autoimmune component of microscopic amounts of extravasated plasma induce localized dermal inflammation that may induce repeated external triggers, vasodilation, telangiectasias, redness with eventual fibrosis and hypertrophic scarring of the dermis." Sandra Cremers, M.D., F.A.C.S., RRDi MAC Member.
If you note, there are different definitions of what constitutes rosacea which is common. Clarity with phenotypes (see below) helps in a differential diagnosis.
Phenotypes
In November 2016, the RRDi endorsed the phenotype classification of rosacea which was announced by the ROSCO panel as a better approach of diagnosising rosacea than using subtypes.Rosacea Differential Diagnosis and Misdiagnosis
Your physician should differentiate rosacea from a plethora of other skin conditions. If you need photos of rosacea click here.Sometimes rosacea is misdiagnosed.
Treatment
'There are a number of topical, oral and systemic treatments available. Yet, treatment for rosacea remains difficult." Expert Opinion Pharmacotherapy“There’s no one treatment that’s going to work for everybody, but we evaluate each patient individually and try to select the treatments from our armamentarium that we think will be the simplest and safest for long-term control.” John Meisenheimer, MD, Orlando, The City's Magazine
""Ultimately, rosacea is a subjective and entirely individual experience." Rosacea: Beyond the visable
Cause of Rosacea
No one really knows what causes rosacea and there are a number of theories for your consideration. Our latest article on this subject, Rosacea Theories Revisited is worth your time to consider.What will the RRDi Do For Me?
You can view the list of prescription treatments prescribed for rosacea. There is a list of non prescription treatments for rosacea to consider. We have an affiliate store dedicated to rosacea books, treatments and odd and ends. You can browse our public member forum and learn about rosacea. The digital medical revolution can assist you in your search for a treatment to improve your condition. Your rosacea is an individual case and you need to find what treatment will work for your rosacea and not a treatment aimed at the masses. Individuals can come together and share data, using collaboration tools that the RRDi offers for free. If you have the volunteer spirit and want to become part of this innovative non profit, learn how you can volunteer and be part of this digital medical revolution. You can post in our member forum if you join and register simply with an email address. If you have concerns regarding your privacy, please consider this post.Once you join you have a number of tools to collaborate with other members. You can create your own rosacea blog, with easy step by step directions on how to do this. Our Gallery application lets members share photos and videos with the community. Volunteers who contribute their time and energy may receive a free G Suite account through a generous contribution of Google, one of our sponsors.
You may receive a free ebook, Rosacea 101: Includes the Rosacea Diet as a gift from the founder/director if you mention in your registration application that you want the free ebook (write in the volunteer box you want the free ebook).
You can post in our member forum about your rosacea experience. However, we want real members, not spammers, hackers or trolls. We provide a safe, secure forum for our members, so our membership registration is very secure requiring your accepting our terms for membership.
Our 2016 Rosacea Survey is completed and available for public viewing. You may review a list of our education grants. Finally, ask not what the RRDi can do for you, ask.....
What Can You Do for the RRDi?
Your joining and registering with our organization will increase our membership. All that is required to join is an email address (your email address is private and members never see your email address nor does the RRDi give your private email address out to anyone). Our goal is to reach a membership of 10,000 members. Think about that, 10,000 rosacea sufferers joined together as a non profit organization and you are member. We need you to join to help us reach this goal!The RRDi is a volunteeer member driven organization and invites rosacea sufferers to become involved. Volunteering is the force that drives the organization and is an integral spirit of the RRDi philosophy. The RRDi warmly invites rosacea sufferers to participate in this non profit which you can become a part of. You are not required to volunteer when you join, since we still want you to join even if you can't volunteer. If all you can do is become a member, that will increase our membership which is helpful in itself. So if you can volunteer, let us know on the application. Please join.
Please carefully read the next subheading on how to join and if you have concerns about privacy.
How to Join
Members may now join with just an email address and a display name (your first and last name is no longer required to be a non voting member and you can set up a anonymous or cryptic display name so that no one knows who you are). To post in our Member Forum or submit articles for publication you must register to join to become a member. The RRDi no longer requires that you provide us with your contact info and mailing address to be a non voting member. However you still need to agree to our policies, rules, etc., since you become a member of the RRDi whether a voting member or not. If you want to vote, simply include all the profile contact fields. We have over 1000 members who are voting members, so we have plenty. It is your choice if you want to vote or not.If you need assistance contact us. Our volunteers will be happy to assist you.
Your privacy is our utmost concern and we will take precautions to ensure your privacy will never be violated. Our Privacy Policy is solid. If you have concerns regarding your privacy, please consider this post.
Once you have joined you can post in our secure members forum which will allow you to post questions to the Medical Advisory Consultants (MAC) and to fellow members or to submit articles for our journal. Yes, members may have an article published on our web site or in our journal. You may receive a free G Suite account with our organization if you have the volunteer spirit.
Charter and Mission Statement
The Charter of the Corporation states the purpose and Mission Statement which clearly outlines the goals of our non profit corporation. If you are interested in the history of how and why this non profit organization was formed click here for more information.Of course there are expenses to keep this non profit organization going. Any donation you give will assist us to continue to keep this web site going, publish our journal, and sponsor education grants. Mahalo for your donation. even if it is small. Every dollar helps us keep going.
The RRDi is registered at GuideStar
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Skin Pharmacol Physiol 2007;20:199–210 DOI: 10.1159/000101807
Beneficial Long-Term Effects of Combined Oral/Topical Antioxidant Treatment with the Carotenoids Lutein and Zeaxanthin on Human Skin: A Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled Study
P. Palombo, G. Fabrizi, V. Ruocco, E. Ruocco, J. Fluhr, R. Roberts, P. Morganti -
From 1998 through 2005 there was an incredible volunteer spirit that drove the formation of the RRDi. Since 2005 the force that motivated so many to bring together rosacea sufferers into a non profit organization has dwindled to just a flickering wick. Why is it that rosaceans (rosacea sufferers) don't volunteer anymore? Andy Seth, an entrepreneur, has a blog post, The Way We Think About Volunteering Is Dead Wrong, states, "research shows that the happiest volunteers are those who give 2 hours per week. That’s it. 2 hours." If the RRDi could get any rosacean to volunteer 2 hours a weeks, that would be miraculous. Are there volunteers who actually volunteer that many hours a week? There must be, otherwise the study is bogus. If we could get any RRDi member to just post their thought or experience with rosacea for 15 minutes a week that would be incredible. We have dotted the RRDi forum with requests to RRDi members to simply post anything and the 1200 plus members as of this date are simply miniscule when it comes to posting. Getting our members to post is a challenge. If you have some insight how to get our members to post, we are all ears. You can reply to this post and comment to your heart's content. Of course, that is the issue, the RRDi members' hearts are not content to post. Why is that? The research Mr. Seth referred to may have been the study commented on by the American Psychological Association that reports, "Volunteers lived longer than people who didn't volunteer if they reported altruistic values or a desire for social connections as the main reasons for wanting to volunteer, according to the study." This same study, Andrea Fuhrel-Forbis, the co-author concludes: "It is reasonable for people to volunteer in part because of benefits to the self; however, our research implies that should these benefits to the self become the main motive for volunteering, they may not see those benefits." One of the benefits is what is called 'helper's high' which has been scientifically confirmed. [1] Of course, if a RRDi member who has rosacea helps another rosacea sufferer that would be the basis for receiving the 'helper's high.' Rosaceans supporting rosaceans. In trying to understand why volunteering amongst rosaceans has continued on this downward course, and googling this for an answer, The Guardian has an article about this subject and concluded, "But while the benefits of volunteering are clear, there is worrying evidence that the people who could benefit most from giving their time are precisely those least likely to be involved." Volunteer Match (which the RRDi has joined) has an article on this subject and states that the Bureau of Labor Statistics Report shows "that volunteer rates have been steadily declining for over a decade," [2] and comments, "There’s an endless supply of reasons that could explain why volunteer rates are falling. Last year, upon seeing the results, VolunteerMatch President Greg Baldwin argued that volunteer rates are falling because we as a nation don’t invest enough resources in the nonprofit sector. Without resources, nonprofits simply don’t have the capacity to effectively engage volunteers. Someone in the comments of that post argued that the falling rates can be attributed to the fact that more people are overworked with less time on their hands. Others say people are simply lazier than they used to be. I personally think it could be attributed to a shifting trend away from community involvement, due to the emergence of online communities, young people moving more often, and other factors." [3] In the above article mentioned [3] there are a number of comments and I think Ron from Florida's [April 16, 2016] comment is insightful:
"When I was younger, volunteering and giving back was part of life. It was something that we did and didn’t think twice about it. I don’t see that same philosophy these days. It’s to the point that schools here require some level of community service to complete your graduation requirements." Stem Learning reports, "It is suggested that stagnating volunteer numbers and in some areas, reducing numbers of volunteers, along with cuts made by local authorities falling disproportionately upon the volunteering sector funding, suggests a potential fall in people volunteering per se. Furthermore the 2015/16 Community Life survey, highlighted 14.2 million people formally volunteered at least once a month in 2014/15 and although rates are mostly unchanged, it appears irregular volunteering appear to show a 5% drop!" Carey Nieuwhof lists 6 REASONS YOU'RE LOSING HIGH CAPACITY VOLUNTEERS. I don't see how those six reasons are related to the RRDi, but I am all ears to anyone who can point out to me what the RRDi isn't doing or not doing with regard to Carey's six reasons. Our page on volunteering covers most of what Carey is discussing. Without a doubt this explains the situation. Any thoughts on this subject would be much appreciated. Online Volunteering Dr. Natalie Hruska says that the studies indicating a drop in volunteering over the past decade "do not factor in kinds of volunteerism today, like virtual volunteering" and writes there is "a necessity to redefine what volunteerism is and how we understand it today." [4] End Notes [1] Helper's High: The Benefits (and Risks) of Altruism, Psychology Today [2] According to the 2015 report, 24.9% of the U.S. population over the age of 16 volunteered at least once in the past year. In 2011, this percentage was 26.8%, and in 2005 it was 28.8%. [3] The U.S. Volunteer Rate Is Still Dropping. Why?, Tess Srebro | March 25, 2016 | Industry Research | Engaging Volunteers, Volunteer Match [4] Dr. Natalie Hruska, April 12, 2016 POST to the article in end note 2. Dr. Hruska has a video below that discusses online volunteering: Dr. Hruska has written a book on this subject, Managing the First Global Technology: Reflections on a relevant application of the Internet, in Kindle or Paperback. -
Dr. Ben Johnson, RRDi MAC Member, discusses a holistic approach to treating rosacea in an interview with Lori Crete, Licensed Esthetician, Spa 10.
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I had a mole on my forehead that I was told that 3% Hydrogen Peroxided might remove, so I dabbed a little on the mole and after some weeks it did indeed remove the mole. However, I noticed that the rosacea or seb derm on my forehead that was near the mole also cleared up. So I experimented and began putting 3% Hydrogen Peroxide on my red spots on my forehead and after some days they began to fade away too! Since then I have been putting 3% Hydrogen Peroxide on all my facial rosacea red spots and letting it dry, then adding the ZZ cream, just before bed and this regimen seems to really work for me. I also have taking the Lutein/Zeazanthin 40 mg capsule each day. I also avoid sugar as much as possible and eat very low carbohydrate.
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An interesting article in The New York Times Magazine states, "Enough people reported good results that patients were continually lined up at Mesmer’s door waiting for the next session." Dr. Mesmer is where the word mesmerize comes from. The article explains how 'double blind' placebo controlled clinical studies originated and why drug companies have to differentiate between a drug's actual pharmaceutical effect and the placebo effect. I particularly like this paragraph in the article:
"What if, Hall wonders, a treatment fails to work not because the drug and the individual are biochemically incompatible, but rather because in some people the drug interferes with the placebo response, which if properly used might reduce disease? Or conversely, what if the placebo response is, in people with a different variant, working against drug treatments, which would mean that a change in the psychosocial context could make the drug more effective? Everyone may respond to the clinical setting, but there is no reason to think that the response is always positive. According to Hall’s new way of thinking, the placebo effect is not just some constant to be subtracted from the drug effect but an intrinsic part of a complex interaction among genes, drugs and mind. And if she’s right, then one of the cornerstones of modern medicine — the placebo-controlled clinical trial — is deeply flawed."
What if the Placebo Effect Isn’t a Trick?, The New York Times Magazine -
Rosacea Diet Triggers always come up in a discussion of rosacea. Just about every dermatologist parrots the NRS list of proposed rosacea diet triggers, especially physicians explain to their patients to avoid "spicy food and wine." There is a much longer trigger factor list that include other proposed food and drink triggers. An interesting read is Liver, Yogurt, Sour Cream, Cheese, Eggplant, and Spinach that discusses this subject.
There are some who can eat anything and their skin looks great. This is probably due to genetics. There is a theory that rosacea is genetic and we have simply been dealt with a bad set of rosacea prone genes.
Whether diet really does affect rosacea or acne, do you think that eating a diet with the proper proportion of protein, fat, carbohydrate and essential nutrients improves health? If a person has a poor diet without a proper proportion of the three food groups and lacks the essential nutrients, would that effect the skin?
The Rosacea Diet that I have proposed since 1999 you can obtain for free if you join the RRDi and mention when joining you want a free copy and explains in detail what to ingest and what to avoid for just 30 days to see if this improves your skin. Most rosacea sufferers will not do this because it means reducing your carbohydrate intake to 30 grams a day for 30 days, a task that very few are willing to undertake because sugar is addictive. Also due to a misunderstanding on what carbohydrate actually is, many think that carbohydrate is an essential nutrient which is far from the truth. The Rosacea Diet is simply a short test that clearly shows whether reducing carbohydrate for thirty days helps clear your skin. After this simple test one can modify carbohydrate intake according to one's individual situation and may be able to use this method to help control your rosacea, because in RF you will find that the majority will tell you that diet does indeed affect rosacea and acne. While there are a few who claim diet doesn't have anything to do with rosacea, these are definitely in the minority. It would be good to substantiate this in a poll, but the NRS has already done that with its survey asking what food and drink triggers your rosacea and came up with the 'official' diet trigger list which all the dermatologists parrot, namely 'spicy food and wine.' Did the NRS even mention sugar or carbohydrate in its poll? No. The NRS avoids mentioning sugar or carbohydrate as a rosacea diet trigger. The RRDi does list sugar and carbohydrate as rosacea diet triggers.
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