The Impact of Diet on Your Rosacea
Let’s be honest…we all love sugar. After all, there is something so comforting about a rich piece of chocolate or a cone of our favorite ice cream at the end of a long work day. Even if we skip the sweets and instead opt for a piece of fruit or glass of juice, we are still satisfying our cravings for sugar. In fairness, this love affair is justified, as the body cannot function without it. Glucose (sugar) is needed by all the cells in the body to create energy and enable cells to perform their respective functions. To aid in this process, insulin helps move glucose from the blood into cells, as shown in the Exhibit to the right.
But as rosacea sufferers, the amount and type of sugar we ingest, as well as our body’s ability to regulate it, can have a direct impact on our rosacea symptoms. Whenever the glucose level in our blood is either too high or too low, it can cause inflammation and damage to blood vessel walls and surrounding tissues. Since rosacea is a vascular condition at its core, anything that damages our blood vessels or leads to an inflammatory response is not only bad for our overall health, but also serves as a trigger for our rosacea symptoms.
As such, this article will discuss the role of glucose, sugar and carbohydrates on rosacea, and specifically focus on the dangers of Advanced Glycation End-Products (AGE’s), a fancy term for the blood vessel damaging oxidation that results from unstable glucose levels in our blood.
To learn more about an exciting new rosacea treatment that fights AGE’s and has other beneficial effects on your rosacea, click here to visit the Rosadyn website (Visit Rosadyn Now).
High Blood Glucose Levels Exacerbate Rosacea Symptoms and Rosacea Triggers
The problem with too much glucose in our blood is that it can attract and bind to free radicals. Once a free radical is bound to glucose, it no longer functions as fuel for cells. Instead, it becomes a toxic molecule that binds to the walls of our blood vessels and causes damage. This process is very similar to the way oxidation on your car’s metal frame results in rust. Oxidized glucose or Advanced Glycation End-Products (AGE’s) change the way the blood vessels function by making it hyper-reactive to triggers, explaining in part why rosacea sufferers have such sensitive skin and flush so easily.
If enough AGE’s build in the blood, they will cause the veins to rupture, resulting in the small, broken vessels that we see on the nose, chin and cheeks of rosacea sufferers (e.g. telangiectasia). AGE’s make rosacea telangiectasia more prominent and intensifies the chronic inflammation that leads to rosacea getting progressively worse. This dynamic is shown in Exhibit 2, which shows how AGE build up results in ruptures. Even in non-rosacea skin, we can see how AGE’s bind to the blood vessels within a few hours of a high glucose meal (Exhibit 3 below).
Exhibit 2: AGE plaque build-up causes vessel rupture Exhibit 3:Four major AGE plaques form on vessel wall after high glucose meal
To learn more about an exciting new rosacea treatment that fights AGE’s and has other beneficial effects on your rosacea, click here to visit the Rosadyn website (Visit Rosadyn Now).
How to Have Your Cake and Eat it Too
While eating a sensible, well balanced diet that is not overly carbohydrate dependent is first line of defense against excessive AGE formation, supplements can also help. In fact, sulforaphane, a nutraceutical extracted from broccoli, has been clinically demonstrated to block AGE formation and reverse long-standing vascular damage. Indeed, a recent John Hopkins School of Medicine study (as published in the Journal of Diabetes this year) found that sulforphane had a unique ability to protect blood and repair damaged blood vessels
This unique supplement works in three key ways:
1. Sulforaphane protects glucose from being oxidized by free radicals. Scientific and clinical studies have demonstrated that Sulforaphane is one of the most potent free radical scavengers tested to date. When sulforaphane is added to isolated blood vessels or to blood serum in human clinical tests, oxidation-induced damage is almost completely inhibited (inhibition levels average 73% for all known free radicals). No other nutraceutical comes close to this level of free radical quenching. Moreover, Sulforaphane’s effects are long-lasting, as it remains active in blood vessels and tissues for 72 hours after consumption.
2. Sulforaphane helps glucose enter cells by increasing insulin sensitivity.
3. Sulforaphane reverses long standing AGE damage as illustrated below
The remarkable photos below show the powerful impact of Sulforaphane on AGE formation. Recall the photo above showing AGE plague build-up in a healthy vessel after just hours after a high glucose meal. Now compare that to the same vessel six hours after a clinical dose of Sulforaphane was ingested. Note the significant clearance of AGE plaques, and with them, the potential aggravation of rosacea skin.
Before sulphoraphane treatment (4 AGE plaques) Six hours after sulforaphane treatment
Rosadyn contains Pharmaceutical Grade Sulforaphane at a Clinical Dose
For all the reasons listed above, Rosadyn, an advanced non-prescription rosacea treatment that targets the facial redness, facial flushing, skin inflammation, and ocular irritation of rosacea, contains the same dose of Sulforaphane found effective in various clinical studies. Moreover, Rosadyn also includes 12 other ingredients demonstrated beneficial to rosacea skin in over 50 independent clinical studies. Importantly, unlike taking these supplements separately, the ingredients in Rosadyn act synergistically together, enhancing their beneficial impact on rosacea skin. To learn more about the beneficial effects of Rosadyn on your rosacea, click here to visit the Rosadyn website (Visit Rosadyn Now).
Rosadyn with Clinical-Strength Sulforaphane
(400 mgs Broccoli Sprout Extract: 40 mgs Sulforaphane per serving)
What Makes Rosadyn’s Sulforaphane Special?
While you could simply purchase Sulforaphane on a stand-alone basis, it is not nearly as cost effective and may actually be of a lesser quality of the pharmaceutical grade version found in Rosadyn. In fact, most companies still use harsh chemical solvents, alcohol and high heat to extract and purify Sulforaphane, all of which reduce its effectiveness. Please keep in mind that there are many poor quality, but high cost versions of Sulforaphane on the market. As such, many sulforaphane supplements are not even biologically active… which means you are buying extremely expensive fiber. Even so, these products, which contain only Sulforaphane of questionable quality and none of the 12 other rosacea beneficial ingredients of Rosadyn, sell for the same price or more.
In contrast, Vascular Health Specialists (Rosadyn) purchases its sulforaphane from a company that specializes in sulforaphane extraction and purification. They are able to extract 99% of the oil from the Broccoli Sprout seed using Super Critical Fluid Extraction and liquid Carbon Dioxide as the solvent. This process is “GREEN”, the product is considered “All Natural” and the liquid carbon dioxide is food grade and is consider GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe). No residue remains in the finished product and no harsh chemicals, alcohol or high heat is required. Super Critical Fluid Extraction is a new process for the extraction and purification of active medicinal plant components. In general, it can usually extract 300% to 400% more active ingredient than any other extraction method. Because it does not use harsh chemicals or high heat, the purity is also much better… it reaches Pharmaceutical-Grade levels with 99% purity.
In addition, the company that we purchase from has performed extensive testing on Broccoli Sprouts and Sulforaphane for nearly a decade and has determined that the best time to harvest sprouts is between days 3 and 5 of their growth cycles because that is when sulforaphane is at its greatest concentration. Most companies use adult broccoli sprouts because they are larger… but adult sprouts contain very little sulforaphane. Notably, we buy this important nutraceutical in large bulk orders to cut the overall cost significantly and pass these savings onto you.
Lastly, please keep in mind that there are a lot of poor quality, but still high cost versions of Sulforaphane on the market. As such, many sulforaphane supplements are not even biologically active… which means you are buying extremely expensive fiber. All companies should disclose: (1) How they isolate the active ingredient, (2) How they extract the ingredient, (3) How they purify the ingredient and (4) How they concentrate the ingredient. If they cannot provide this information, If they use harsh chemical solvents most of the active ingredient will be inactivated because peptide bonds that hold Sulforaphane together will break. If they use alcohol to isolate the ingredients, this will often render a great deal of active ingredient biologically inactive. And if they use high heat to concentrate the ingredient they will denature the Sulforaphane protein and render it useless. They can still put it in a capsule, place it in a supplement bottle and list “400 mgs of Broccoli Extract”, but if it does not get absorbed by the body, is not bioactive in the blood stream, and is not biologically active in the tissue, then it will not have any effect on AGE-induced damage, rosacea symptoms, and blood vessel protection.
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