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IT AFFECTS UP to one in ten people in Ireland, but not everyone will have heard of it: Rosacea.
The HSE describes it as “a common but poorly understood chronic skin condition”. People with rosacea may experience spots and persistent redness of their skin.
Small blood vessels in the sufferer’s skin can become visible. In the most severe cases, the skin can thicken and enlarge, usually on and around the nose.
It predominantly affects fair-skinned people and is twice as common in women, but tends to be more severe in men.
The symptoms – which can be triggered by stress, sunlight or certain foods or alcohol – usually begin between the ages of 30 and 50 years, but it does affect younger people.
There is no cure for rosacea, but treatments are available to control the symptoms, some of which are reimbursed by the HSE.
Professor Martin Steinhoff, Director of UCD’s Charles Institute of Dermatology, said the negative impact of rosacea “should not be underestimated”.
If the condition is not managed appropriately it can have a severe impact on a person’s quality of life, and unfortunately people can be judged negatively as a result of its visible nature.
Steinhoff told TheJournal.ie many of his patients have had embarrassing encounters because of rosacea.
He said job interviews can be a particularly stressful situation as the person may give the impression they are not telling the truth.
“If the person is going red sometimes the interviewer thinks they are lying because flushing is associated with lying.”
Avoiding social interaction
Steinhoff said some people’s sex life is also adversely affected as they avoid social situations and meeting new people.
“Many patients have stopped socialising because they don’t feel like they are attractive,” he noted.
Eoin Kennedy (37) knows this scenario all too well.
“If I start off with a flush in the morning, I’ll sit at my desk for the entire day. I won’t mingle with people. I’ll cancel events … It does look as though I’m angry or like I’m going to have a heart attack.”
Eoin gave up gaelic football in favour of golf – so he doesn’t have “to mix with anybody”.
My whole face gets very red, not just a certain area. I’ve seen people staring at me when that happens. For no reason, when I walk down a corridor I light up like a Christmas tree … It’s one of those embarrassing conditions because it’s on my face, directly in front of people.
Eoin said people often assume he’s hot-tempered or has been drinking, because of the way he looks.
Bullying
Eoin had his first bout of roascea when he was 16 years old. He said the bullying he experienced as a result has had a huge impact on his life.
He recalled how “everyone had acne” in school but his condition was much worse, leading to him being picked on.
“People would kind of look strangely at me or not talk to me in school because of it,” he recalled.
“I didn’t get help at the time, I thought it was just part of acne … for me it was just part of being a teenager.”
The condition “came back quite strongly” when he was about 22 years old. At the time, he had just started his first job in IT and said some of his colleagues slagged him because of his rosacea, while others ignored him.
I had just started working, I didn’t want people to think I was somehow deformed … It was very difficult.
Eoin was initially diagnosed as having dermatitis before a specialist realised what the real problem was.
“Literally as soon as he saw me he said: ‘That’s rosacea.’”
He said a course of steroids “improved things but it never cleared up”. He used make-up to help cover up the redness but said this made him uncomfortable.
Eoin’s father has psoriasis but no other skin conditions run in his family.
Overcoming depression
About a year and a half ago, Eoin began taking anti-depressants – largely due to unresolved issues caused by the bullying he endured.
The anti-depressants are calming me down, I don’t have the same reaction.
Eoin has also cut down on alcohol and tries to go outside as often as he can.
He said it was very difficult to meet someone because he rarely socialised, and met his girlfriend at a dungeon-themed party where the lights were very low
“We couldn’t really see each other and I was comfortable with that.”
Eoin said because she intially got to know him without noticing his rosacea it was easier for her to realise “it’s just a skin condition, as opposed to me”.
More information on the treatment reimbursed by the HSE can be viewed here, while an app for sufferers of rosacea is available for Android here or Apple here.
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Inevitable when ya invite 1.2 million people from an isolationist intolerant culture into your modern libertarian society
@Tony Hardwicke: isn’t that sentence a complete contradiction?
“Founded in 1964 as a successor to the neo-fascist German Reich Party, the NPD calls for “the survival and continued existence of the German people in its ancestral central European living space” — or simply, “Germany for the Germans”.”
You can forget about that one lads, Angela Merkel saw to that by throwing the doors open. Auf Wiedersehen Deutschland.
Mikhail
Do you understand what was meant by Germany for the Germans?
@Mikhail Valtazar: Just wondering where you live especially as you seem to believe in one nation, one indigenous population.
Anne Marie
I wonder if he believes in Ireland for the Irish
@Anne Marie Devlin: Don’t be deceived by my nom de plume, I’m as Irish as they come.
@Anne Marie Devlin there is no problem mixing people of different nationality the problem arises when you get a large influx of people who dont want to integrate with the existing population as is what is happening at present, look at sweden which it is estimated will be an islamic state within 20 odd years, will you welcome islamic laws when they decide to swallow the rest of europe with their ideology ?….
@Mikhail: if you are Irish as they come, I assume you will then share, like most of us, genetics from every wave of migrant that visited these shores and came to call this place home over the past millennia from the first settlers to the Bronze Age builders of Newgrange to the Celts and the Romans, Picts, Vikings, Normans, Welsh, Angles, Scots, Saxons, English, Dutch etc to the Huguenots and German Palatines. This place has always had immigration and the Irish people are the inheritors of all that have come here before us and made this place our home.
@Peter – There are fewer than 200,000 Muslims in Sweden, a country with a population of almost 10 million. What do you understand will happen in the next twenty years to cause this to change so drastically?
Nice list of european tribes there, not quite the same as the current situation is it.
@Nick Allen:
If you do believe in Ireland for the Irish, or in any other European country, then you should be allowed to say so in a free society. The the opposition can debate with that view instead of shouting abuse and shutting down opposition views.
Something the Left refuses to learn, indeed is reacting even more loudly and stupidly against, despite recent events.
@Bernard Cantillon: The vast majority of Irish people are direct descendants of the original inhabitants of this island. The invaders and others who came here have made very little of a genetic imprint on this island.
“DNA testing through the male Y chromosome has shown that Irish males have the highest incidence of the haplogroup 1 gene in Europe. While other parts of Europe have integrated contiuous waves of new settlers from Asia, Ireland’s remote geographical position has meant that the Irish gene-pool has been less susceptible to change. The same genes have been passed down from parents to children for thousands of years.
This is mirrored in genetic studies which have compared DNA analysis with Irish surnames. Many surnames in Irish are Gaelic surnames, suggesting that the holder of the surname is a descendant of people who lived in Ireland long before the English conquests of the Middle Ages. Men with Gaelic surnames, showed the highest incidences of Haplogroup 1 (or Rb1) gene. This means that those Irish whose ancestors pre-date English conquest of the island are direct descendants of early stone age settlers who migrated from Spain. ”
It’s hilarious that you’re trying to push a “nation of immigrants” myth.
“genetics from every wave of migrant that visited these shores and came to call this place home over the past millennia from the first settlers to the Bronze Age builders of Newgrange to the Celts and the Romans, Picts, Vikings, Normans, Welsh, Angles, Scots, Saxons, English, Dutch etc”
LOL The Viking “migrants”!!!
The poor creeathures couldn’t stand the cauld up North, shure it was the least we could do to take them in and be raped and slaughtered, our villages pillaged and destroyed.
Shure, aren’t we all the better for it now!??!
Ye are some laugh altogether.
Whether the party has significance or not is secondary to the fact that in a proper democracy everybody is entitled to representation. Banning a political party that doesn’t align with your political views sounds very undemocratic.
@Jeffrey McMahon: Interesting. Just to go straight to an extreme, do you think a political party whose only goal is poisoning children should be banned? I think there are sensible limits to political representation. This has nothing to do with censorship or silencing opponents, and everything to do with keeping destruction and hatred at bay. I believe in free politics as I believe in free streets, but if you see protesters looting and threatening bystanders it might be time to call the guards, no?
@denisj:
“This has nothing to do with censorship or silencing opponents”
This has everything to do with censorship or silencing opponents. The moment you start to seek an outright ban on a political party, you are censoring their ideas and silencing them.
@Jason Culligan: Do you see any limits whatsoever on what people agitate for? If it’s explicitly violent and hateful do you still regard it as legitimate? I see far more contradiction in the idea that you would extend tolerance to the intolerant, or political legitimacy to those who have consistently sought to rob others of theirs.
Hi Denisj, well yes. I wouldn’t see a party like that getting many votes. Which goes back to my point that significance shouldn’t be the issue. As you say it is an extreme example and highly unlikely. There should be no limits to political representation. Political power is a completely different matter. To use another example, if a right wing party were in power and introduced a ban on parties who believed that social security nets should be in place would you agree with that ban? Talking of banning political parties that don’t agree with your own political ideals is straying into authoritarian behaviour no matter whether your ideals are right wing or left wing. It just proves that authoritarianism is not a defining characteristic of the right wing and blurs what is meant to be a distinction between ideologies. I agree with freedom of speech but I do not condone criminal acts. In your example I would say that party can say whatever it likes. If it acted on that then it would be a criminal offence and an entirely different matter, likewise with looting protestors. Keeping destruction and hatred at bay is the responsibility of the electorate, not the elected.
@Jeffrey McMahon: I think you’re right, fortunately a party like that would not get many votes. We’re not really talking about something on the left or right spectrum here, we’re talking about fascism – an ideology that has proven with 100% predictability that it will attempt to sweep away everything opposing it. I immediately went for an extreme, but let’s try something more realistic. ISIS claims to have a political outlook. They are a movement, with supporters from many backgrounds. If they want to preach their message without acting on it on the streets of London, Paris and Dublin do you think they should be free to do so? If the contention is that the left opposes anyone who doesn’t agree with them, my answer is that fascists has been one of the very few factors that unite left and right in opposition because fascists don’t simply ‘disagree with the left’, they want all of us, left, right and centre, to shut up because they believe that they alone are correct.
I would agree with you on that, both sides can be authoritarian. Which is kind of my point, we should avoid authoritarianism whichever side of the political spectrum it comes from. If either side begins enforcing it then the time comes to switch sides. It’s like a pendulum. Always the side that is being silenced will call for freedom of speech, in the same way left and right can both be authoritarian, both can also be calling for freedom of speech. As to ISIS, sure, let them preach what they will, the majority of humanity is logical and rational enough to dismiss their preachings. Sure you will get a few who will be swayed by their calling and who will commit acts of terrorism, but you don’t use those people as excuses to silence their voices, you use them to discredit them and hold them responsible for the actions they promoted. If you silence them then they just go underground and form their own echo chambers reinforcing their beliefs. Regardless if you make it illegal people will still think and advocate what they will, by making it illegal you only cause them to hide their beliefs rather than have them give voice to them and be challenged on them.
Populists appears to have lost meaning with the left
@denisj: Not only would such a party never gain election, they could not legally carry out their goal.
This is why a strong constitution and Rule of Law are more important than Democracy.
Its interesting how the left deals with movements like the NPD. They cannot argue with them and lose almost every single argument based on solid facts. Then they turn to ridiculous bleeding heart emotion based arguments. When they get trounced in these they’re solution is to ban the party they’re arguing with.
For people who preach love and tolerance for all the left is very intolerant and hateful towards others with views that challenge theirs.
Yeah, cos the right are so reasonable. Points designed to polarise are just boring.
@John Fergus: I disagree. Social democrats and conservatives have managed to deal with each other constructively in the past. Socialists and libertarians have even found common ground. It’s not about people you disagree with, it’s about a common spaces where people who disagree with each other can engage in mutually respectful debate to arrive at solutions or compromises to the problems we collectively face, thus not advantaging one group over another and keeping reason at the core of our decision making. This means that everyone from right libertarians to left anarchists can just about be accommodated by a representative democracy. Of course, some people seek to destroy that space on the basis that they and they alone are correct, their heritage is superior and their strength trumps all. That’s where the ‘left’ gets intolerant and in my opinion rightly so – might is not right, no ethnicity or nation is inherently superior to any other.
@denisj:
“That’s where the ‘left’ gets intolerant and in my opinion rightly so – might is not right, no ethnicity or nation is inherently superior to any other.”
So you respond to that by using the weight of the law to ban their opinions from being expressed? Isn’t that utterly contradictory?
Hey, lets stop this group that wants to destroy our open marketplace of ideas by banning their ideas!
@Jason Culligan: Mmmm, not exactly. What opinions do you think they want to express? Nativism and white supremacy and leidcultuur aren’t really opinions and they’re certainly not rooted in truth. They are useful vehicles for inciting violence and mobilizing support for hate, usually by peddling propaganda and lies. It’s an assault on free speech and the free market place of ideas and I think we should protect the free market place of ideas. Apartheid and fascism demonstrated that these ideologies are utterly hollow and destructive. Are we really not going to learn these lessons?
We are always going to have the dilemma between ‘freedom of speech’ and racism. Too few show a balanced argument and blindly follow one or the other to the extreme
@Nick Allen: Where’s the dilemma?
“Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government supported the case”
Why are people not making a more significant issue of this? The German government is currently working with Facebook to shut down ‘fake’ news online and they supported a bid to outlaw a political organisation.
So in trying to look progressive and shake their fascist past, they’re stamping down on uncomfortable news and political opposition.
@Jason Culligan: Sure, or stamping down on propaganda and fascism. Just depends how you look at it.
@denisj:
Stamping down on propaganda and fascism by banning political opposition and censoring content which doesn’t conform to your beliefs?
Yeah, where have I heard that one before?
@Jason Culligan: No. Tories, socialists, christian conservatives, anarchists, libertarians, direct democracy advocates and free marketeers don’t conform to my beliefs but they reflect the priorities and needs of groups of people, expressed to varying degrees in bodies of thought that can be consistently challenged and subjected to intellectual rigor. You can’t – or can’t honestly – say that for fascism.
@denisj: Mate, we have actual Communists sitting in our parliament right now. Why aren’t you up in arms? Communism has killed hundreds of millions of people worldwide. Can you honestly say that Communism “reflect the priorities and needs of groups of people, expressed to varying degrees in bodies of thought that can be consistently challenged and subjected to intellectual rigor”.
Communism!
I don’t think any political speech should be censored regardless of its legacy and near evil intent. The free market of ideas will distill the good from the bad and strong Rule of Law will prevent the bad from doing bad things.
As a civic nationalist I oppose any far right ethnic nationalist party. At the same time it baffles me how the far left oppose the indigenous far right but yet ally themselves with far right Islamist groups and individuals. The Irish left and the media’s uncritical support for Ibrahim Halawa and his family is one example as is the Stop the War coalition in the UK which is comprised of supposed anti fascists on the far left alongside Islamist far right theocrats. http://ardevine.blogspot.ie/2017/01/moderates-in-extreme-islamist-spectrum.html?m=1
Very good article.
@AndrewDevine:
Excellent piece.
Chapeau.
“the party was deemed to insignificant to pose a threat” thats what they said about hitler`s party…
Whoop whoop. Leaders argue with eachother over power and go to war with eachother. Ordinary people and refugees bare the worst brunt of it. Can’t wait to make the same mistakes all over again!!
” …banning a party does not equate to banning an ethos or a world view.”
Actually, it does. Free speech is free speech. And any restriction outside an imminent threat to physical harm is as anti-democratic a force as fascism was.
The Nazi party was deemed harmless by a judge in the 1920′s and see what happened then.
If there is a swing to the right, they can blame themselves. They refused to listen and handed the lot over the the commie, liberal, green elites. Now they has a mess
have your say