What is worse for rosacea, beer or wine?
Monday, December 13th, 2010While the consumption of alcohol is generally not recommended if you have rosacea, in light of the holidays I wanted to write about the question “what’s worse for rosacea, beer or wine?”
As I wrote in the post about the histamine content of foods, beer has a higher histamine content than wine, but the question remains whether that also correlates with more rosacea symptoms if you drink exclusively beer vs. wine.
This summer when the weather was so hot, on a few occasions, I chose to have a beer instead of wine. Up until that point, I did not have a beer for over a year, but a day or so after I drank some beer, I noticed that my rosacea symptoms had worsened. I admit that this observation isn’t totally scientific, but I thought this was quite remarkable in itself.
Although alcohol has a (temporary) calming effect on the brain through its interaction with GABA receptors, alcohol has been suggested to be responsible for increased anxiety in people and can therefore be considered one of the trigger factors for rosacea.
The fact that beer may be worse for rosacea than wine could also be caused by other factors such as a high gluten content. Whatever it may be, I thought that it may be interesting to hear if some of my readers have similar observations.
Nevertheless, many people with rosacea still choose to consume alcohol occasionally and therefore it would be helpful to know what is worse for rosacea, beer or wine? For me it’s beer, what is it for you?
Zhou, R., Wang, S., Zhu, X. (2010) Prenatal ethanol exposure attenuates GABAergic inhibition in basolateral amygdala leading to neuronal hyperexcitability and anxiety-like behavior of adult rat offspring. Neuroscience 170: 749-57.
