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 ]