After curing my acne, I think I've acquired seb derm. Certain patches/regions of my face, (around my nose, chin and now my cheeks) are so red and flaky. The worse is around the creases of my nose which even though it's red, it's infact oily and it can flake. These flakes around my nose are greasy flakes and often yellow? The difference with the patches on my chin and my cheek and my eyebrows is that these flakes are incredibly dry and does not take up any moisturiser. Having read up on Seb Derm leaves me feeling deflated. I'm getting the impression this isn't going anywhere, and it's practically incurable. I've read that it may have been courses of antibiotics I've taken in the past for my acne that has started this. It makes me mad that doctors are so willing to hand out antibiotics to teenagers who's self-esteem is so dampened they are willing to try anything. What makes things worse is I just had surgery and had to take a 7-day course of antibiotics afterwards so this is probably going to get worse. I'm wondering if anybody has any particular recommendations to begin with. I've given up dairy at the moment to test if it's any intolerance to that? At the moment I use cetaphil facial wash, cetaphil moisturiser for my "non Seb Derm patches". For the seb-derm I use Aqueous cream and sometimes vaseline, but it doesn't seem to be working. I had some success with a 1% hydrocortisone but after finding out about the complications with rosacea I decided against it, immediately. If I can defeat acne, I *will* defeat this. Ha.
I know how you feel. I had the some skin problems since I was five, and docs were clueless. A year ago I decided to research everything I needed to know to treat this, and my write-up is here: Sorry it's such a long write-up, but I found the that there's a lot of worldwide research in the past five years that allowed me to figure out what was going on -- there's no magic bullet or quick cure.
The key principle is that the yeast/fungus malassezia is lipid dependent, which means it must consume oil to grow. You can't eliminate all skin oil to defeat the problem so you have to treat it with topical ketoconazole, or topical climbazole, the later of which is a more effective drug.
The only practical oil product it can't consume is vaseline or Aquaphor, but those are so sticky and greasy I use a regular Cetaphil lotion and add climbazole to it in the tiny concentration of 0.07%. You can use ketoconazole to make a lotion to but it's not effective at less than 1.0%. So, you can mail order some Hegor 150 shampoo (which is 1.5% climbazole) and mix it into any lotion. I don't think it will be too sticky.
Currently Im using this very effective lotion:
180 ml Cetaphil lotion
20 ml distilled water
0.4 ml Propolis
0.4 ml Farnesol
0.6 grams Citric Acid
4.0 grams Xylitol
4 grams Aquaphor
0.14 grams Climbazole (equivalent to 10 ml of Hegor 150 in 200 ml of lotion)
Good luck!
My Review of OTC products (in the link) discusses all the options, and also shows how I wasted time and money using ineffective products for about six months. I have a drawer-full of useless products. Also, you can read all the medical articles cited in the footnotes to see that my opinions are supported by medical research. Your question is valid though, and all I can suggest is to read the research articles. I am very confident about treatment. Climbazole shampoos are easy to buy at Amazon or eBay, but effective lotions are very hard to buy -- that's why I posted about the lotion, because it's the most important item.
The equipment is simple -- a small plastic funnel and a food thermometer from a grocery store, a mail ordered electronic scale accurate to at least 1/10 gram, but 1/100 gram would be better, and then a chem lab supply store will sell a 50ml Erlenmeyer flask with a rubber stopper, the climbazole powder, 99% Isopropanol alcohol, and a 1.0 ml glass pipette would be nice but it isn't absolutely necessary.
I also was a little uncertain about this at first, which is why I wrote everything down so I could keep track of what I was doing. Now it's fairly easy. About every three to five weeks I make a batch of body wash, shampoo, or lotion.
CItric Acid is critical to lower the pH, which doubles the effectiveness of the Climbazole, and it costs about $6 for 7.5 ounces. Climbazole at retail costs about $94 for 25 grams, which is nearly a year's supply.
All the other specialty items are optional. For example, there's not much research to support the use of Xylitol, but there is a good inference from dental biofilm studies, and the product is so cheap, and easy to add to everything because it's water soluble. As a starter-kit item, do not buy Farnesol because it's somewhat expensive, $48 for 5 grams, and the research supporting it deals with candida biofilms rather than malassezia. Propolis is not expensive but it's not supported by much research, so it's optional too. Keep a written record of whatever you use. You will start to see results in a month, but please keep us informed about how any of this works out for you.
Im only 23 and have suffered with rosacea and seb derm for five years. It has ruined my life and derms are clueless. Ketoconazole lotion is a temporary solution but is a pain in the ass to keep applying. My skin burns in the winter and is also very dry and flaky and in the summer it is very oil and flaky/red. I have It all over my face and it is expecially bad around my mouth and nose. It is hard to talk sometimes since it is very dry/cracked around my mouth. I have depression because of this nasty disease but hopefully things will get better sooner rather than later. By the way I also tried natural approaches but nothing seemed to work. This disease is incurable:(