A few months ago I posted a request for help and advice about a chronic problem I'd been having with my face...severe acne, burning blotchiness, etc. I went to the dermatologist who prescribed tetracycline, which made me violently ill. So I was unable to continue with that treatment, which pretty much left me to deal with my face on my own!

After some great tips from the women here, I embarked on a very long hunt for the culprit. Since the blotchiness was only on one side of my cheek, it seemed to point more to a specific irritant than general rosacea/acne. After MANY months of avoiding and fasting from one thing after another, I think I may have found the culprit. Earl Grey Tea...specifically, the bergamot oil in Earl Grey Tea. Once I had narrowed the search down to a few items, I researched them and found out that bergamot oil can cause severe skin irritations...the descriptions matched my own burning blotchiness.

I drink quite a lot of Earl Grey tea...it wasn't the drinking of it that caused the irritation, it was handling the tea bag and then not washing my hands! Who would have thought!!! I wash my hands after handling meats, veggies, fruits, etc, but it never occured to me to wash them after handling a tea bag. So for the past two weeks, my hubby's been the one to handle the tea bag, and you wouldn't believe how clean my face has been! Isn't that just too bizaare?

One of the tips that Chatty Lady gave me early on has proven to be a huge success. While my face was at its worse, the only thing I was able to put on it was olive oil. Anything else only made the itchiness worse, but the olive oil seemed to relieve the itching and diminish the blotching. So now it's a regular part of my regime...wash with a gentle cleanser, moisturize with olive oil, and then top it off with the special rosacea cream the dermatologist gave me.

I'm quite delighted to say that my skin hasn't looked this good in years...and I just wanted to pass this along for anyone else who might be experiencing the same chronic problem.

Bergamot oil isn't the only food oil that irritates the skin...if you Google-search on "bergamot oil", you'll get information on that one as well as dozens of others that you might not suspect would cause such havoc.

[ November 29, 2005, 05:26 PM: Message edited by: Eagle Heart ]

Eagle, that's cool that you figured it out!

Eagle, wow, this is some very interesting information you gave us! Although I'm not a tea drinker I do have Earl Grey tea around. I never knew it contained bergamot oil.

Thanks for the really interesting facts.

Sometimes I think we know better than our doctors.

Great news news Eagle Heart. I had to do the same thing with my foods etc. because something was killing me, almost. I had heart irregularities and no breath to speak of. Found out through trial and error it was the Splenda I was putting in my many cups of tea daily. Once I stopped using it, after 2 days all was back to normal, heart fine. That was months ago now and I use raw unprocessed sugar in my tea now. So I guess we need to be very mindful of anything we eat alot of. Glad you're better. The olive oil will also keep your skin young and soft...

[ November 29, 2005, 10:14 PM: Message edited by: chatty lady ]

Chatty,
You mean Splenda was doing that? I use it everyday in my coffee....eeek!

JJ

Yes but in its defense I have to say I drink 8 to 10 cups of tea in a 13 hour or so period and used 2 packs in each cup. That was apparently more than my system cold take for some reason and 'blamo' I actually made sure my things were in order because I thought I was a goner. I can't tell you how sick I really felt. My doctor said my heart was out of wack. I tried cutting out the tea and felt better. It was herbal tea and several different kinds so knew it wasn't the tea. Plus I put Splenda in my oatmeal or dry cereal and on and on and on...I'm pretty sure its okay in moderation but I won't touch it now. I tried real raw sugar and love it and its not bad for my diabetes at all either...my heart is fine and so am I.

Eagle, I was thinking about oil of bergamot last night and it dawned on me that bergamot is also called Bee Balm, Monarda didyma and Oswego tea.

This is all the same plant which I have tons of in my gardens everywhere all around my house. The flowers of it are beautiful. I use it to attract hummingbirds because it's their favorite nectar plant. The Indians made a tea out of it, thus the name Oswego tea.

I handle it all the time and maybe it's why every summer I get a terrible red, itchy rash on my waist line area. I never could figure out what gave me this rash because I've got other plants that could've been doing it too.

Ladybug, I read quite a bit about bergamot oil, but of course, can't remember much of it anymore. I'd have to go back and read everything all over again. I seem to recall that it's used for a few things, all of which are supposedly good and even healing/soothing. But I guess some of us must have this skin reaction to it, although drinking the tea does not give me a reaction, only handling the actual tea bag. Weird.

I remember as a child getting a fairly severe rash from sumac trees. We had them all around the cottage, so it was hard to go exploring through the woods and waterfalls without trampling through the sumac. I've had poison ivy rashes, but even those weren't as severe as the worst of the sumac rashes or the bergamot rash when it's really hot and burning on my face.

Eagle, we've got poison ivy all over our property simply because the house sets in the woods.

One year (while I was still working) I got the rash from poison ivy on each inner thigh. I'd scoot myself under my desk to itch the rash through my panty hose. It was so severe that my skin turned purple where I had itched it. The ladies at work had fun teasing me about how I got it there. The best I can figure is that while digging up some wild violets I touched the poison ivy roots then scratched a mosquito bite with that hand. The weird part is that I can go into my gardens and pull out any poison ivy in late winter or early spring and have no reaction to it all. Of course I always wear protective gloves.

Sumac is very poisonous and also will give most people a skin reaction.