oh frickin'...frick.kin...hell!!!

[stuffandstuff]

After being diagnosed with rosacea types I, II and IV a week today, I went paleo. To my joy, day by day I was seeing a slight improvement with the permanent ruddiness and a tiny improvement with flushing when consuming hot (in heat) food or drink. Indoor heat, however, continued to affect me as badly.

Then yesterday I accidently drank some tea with lactose milk in it, and became slightly flushed but not to the crazy extent that I would before. Then today... well I'm obviously on a roll of FAILness right now because I accidently confused a gluten(+soy+dairy) bread roll with a gluten free one (oh the perils of house share). Within several hours my face became tomato red again, and it's still like that now.

I'm wondering - if it's even possible to answer this - if I've undone all the hard work I'd done for a week?

[fanny]

Very frustratingfor you, but no I do not think you have undone all your good work. The flush will subside and you will be more vigilant.
Keep the faith
Fanny

[spencer]

Don't worry about it! In the whole scheme of things, this event will mean nothing to your progress. If anything, it will just further reinforce what foods you should avoid. Unfortunately, sometimes we are all exposed to triggers and sometimes they effect us and sometimes they don't. Try and go with the flow and recognize that this is just a passing phase. You'll be back to where you were before this all happened in no time. It might take a bit longer than you would like, but your symptoms will get better soon enough.

[stuffandstuff]

Thanks for the kind words and encouragement

The redness is calming down again now, but now I've got a mini eruption of papules and pustules, gah!
Oh well, indeed you are right, at least I am aware now that lactose, gluten and soy are triggers. I'm wondering if one of them causes the permanent redness, the other the papules, and the other the pustules, which obviously increase my succetibility to flushing anyway? This has probably been researched already but I've not done any searching for it myself yet.

[spencer]

It could be anyone of the three problem foods causing all of those symptoms. All of the symptoms you mentioned are due to inflammation, so I wouldn't necessarily attribute it to any one food (it could definitely be all of them!). It may feel like you're reacting to everything right now, but there may come a time in the future when you won't be as reactive. This usually happens when you have not been exposed to the offending food or foods for a long period of time. It may get to the point that you can tolerate these foods every once and a while. The papules take a long time to go away, unfortunately. That's when I pull out the mineral makeup.