The use of herbal remedies and garlic for rosacea
Antibiotics
People with rosacea who are treated with antibiotics for an extended period are more prone to yeast infections. Using antibiotics over a long period of time can decrease normal bacteria populations and increase yeast counts.
Most treatments have side effects, these vary from person to person and depend on a number of factors including diet. A treatment that works for one person with few or no side effects will not work for another person. Dosages also vary from person to person and are also affected by a number of factors.
Diet:
Typically, a person can enjoy or eat a type of yogurt, which helps maintain the bacterial balance in their diet and thus may help decrease the bacterial population of the gut. Another person may be able to eat small amounts of herbs and spices that are known to have antibacterial properties. Garlic is well known as a natural antibiotic and antibacterial with reports going back through history. It has been suggested that it may help fight acne, and a report of its use for rosacea also suggests that it may.
HERBAL REMEDIES WORK FOR SOME PEOPLE: It is suggested that a significant problem with herbal remedies for rosacea sufferers may be the variable “natural dose” if the herb or spice does not is not made into a tablet with a known dosage.
Garlic
A person who had severe rosacea for about 5 years had IPL treatment, antibiotic treatment, and eliminated gluten from their diet. Eliminating gluten got rid of most but not all rosacea. The person then got a nasty infection and started taking nine garlic pills a day for about a week, then cut back to 6 a day. They say “The rosacea is pretty much gone and they even went on a gluten binge on Thanksgiving – and drank red wine without having a flare”
Analyze why it worked for this person: The Gluten-Free Diet: Various articles on the Internet suggest that a gluten-free diet helps where the digestive system has been affected by antibiotics. Therefore, it may have helped because the person was on antibiotics. A gluten-free diet is suggested to help return the gut to normal after antibiotic treatment.
Garlic tablets.
Use caution if trying garlic, it’s reported as a trigger for about 10% of people who suffer from it.
It is suggested that the garlic tablets worked for a number of reasons:-
1) Use of garlic tablets following antibiotic treatment and gluten-free diet may be important. Maybe after the other treatments had an impact but not cured the rosacea. Using antibiotics would not have been a long-term solution.
Perhaps the garlic tablets were then the equivalent of the “straw that made the camels recoil”. Alone before other treatments, they may not have cured rosacea. This is speculative, they could have been effective. Clinical trials are needed to answer this question and also to determine if garlic produces lasting healing, which it should have.
Garlic, like many natural herbs and spices that are antibacterial, does not affect “good bacteria”, which is why most people can eat and enjoy herbs and spices. Therefore, the person who was now going to take the garlic tablet long-term should have been able to do so.
2) The dose of garlic was controlled by the use of tablets. Consider eating slices of garlic pizza; having 2 slices instead of 1 will double the dose. This would be equivalent to the person taking 18 tablets instead of 9.
One chef can add three times as much garlic as another. This combined with the above would be the equivalent of a person taking 54 tablets instead of 9
One chef may use concentrated garlic in a tube, another may use pressed garlic cloves. Again, the amount of garlic in a slice will vary greatly.
The active ingredient in garlic cloves will also vary depending on when and where it was grown and the ‘variety’. All plants and fruits have different varieties, for example, consider the different varieties of apples.
The use of garlic tablets allowed to maintain the dose accurately for the first week, then to reduce it precisely by 1/3.
Garlic seemed to help with rosacea which affected the eyes: the person had very bad rosacea and horribly bumpy cheeks at the worst, it also affected her eyes and she used moisturizing eye drops five or more times a day. Since the garlic tablets, they hardly needed to use the moisturizing eye drops. There may be a reason for this related to how the smells of onions and garlic can make your eyes water.
If a person eats a lot of garlic, the smell may actually “come out of the skin” and that person may smell “garlic”.
Therefore, it is likely that garlic from the body manages to penetrate the skin of the eyelids and possibly the tears or tear ducts, in which case the sensitive nerve ending at the surface of the eye (which reacts when you peel onions and that smell touches them) sends a message to the brain which “moistens the eyes”.
Addendum: Another rosacea sufferer who has been warned that garlic could be a trigger says, “I feel like garlic doesn’t really bother my skin. I may eat it mostly as part of a olive oil dressing. Anyway, I “was wondering if garlic might actually help, as it’s known for its antibacterial, antiviral, and antifungal properties.”
