Rosy cheeks are a sign of robust good health, but when rosiness turns into redness, you’re right to wonder what’s causing it. Your skin’s hue is largely a product of naturally occurring melanin—the brown pigment that’s responsible for a tan—combined with healthy blood flow beneath the surface of your skin. Increased blood flow means increased redness. Fair skin shows redness more readily than darker skin tones because there is less melanin to conceal visible red tones.

A number of factors can cause this increased blood flow; everything from a fleeting blush to sun damage leaves your skin noticeably red. However, all of these causes boil down to one thing: inflammation.

Environmental Skin Inflammation

The elements can be cruel to your skin. Cold can leave your face chapped and reddened. Heat makes you red-faced and splotchy. Sunburn may redden your skin in the short term, but over time, harmful ultraviolet rays damage your skin at the cellular level. Those fine lines and discolored patches that used to be considered inevitable marks of aging are actually the visible signs of cumulative sun damage.

Sometimes environmental irritants, not harsh weather, cause skin inflammation. The same smoke, pollen and other allergens that make you sneeze can also redden your skin if you’re sensitive to them. If a jog in the park leaves you red-faced even before you start, it may be a mild reaction to an environmental allergen.

When the environment leaves your skin an angry shade of red, soothe it with SkinMedica’s Redness Relief CalmPlex. This calming cream contains ingredients that combat redness at its source by relieving visible inflammation.

Intrinsic Causes of Facial Redness

Your skin may not need any outside influences to redden. Rosacea, a spontaneously occurring condition that causes mild to severe redness across your nose and cheeks, worsens when you’re exposed to the sun or are feeling stressed. Burst capillaries leave networks of fine red lines that look like a flushed face from a distance. Active acne and past acne scarring may also leave your skin discolored and red.

Skin reddening and discoloration from these causes used to have no treatment, but new technology at AlluraDerm MD Med Spa allows you to treat the underlying cause instead of concealing redness cosmetically. Intense Pulsed Light therapy is one of the most effective treatments for rosacea and burst capillaries. During an IPL treatment, the red regions in your skin differentially absorb light rays. Strong light lessens the discoloration, producing a measurable improvement in skin redness.

AlluraDerm MD Med Spa also offers Omnilux® therapy that employs LEDs to deliver bursts of light that diminish visible signs of inflammation. Like IPL treatment, Omnilux® light therapy is painless and effective. Combined with SkinMedica’s Redness Relief Calmplex, you’ll say “bye-bye” to redness and “hello” to calm, even skin.

Stop seeing red and visit AlluraDerm MD Med Spa to give your skin a smooth, even tone without makeup. Call us at 505-821-9630 today!