Rudolph The Scary-Nosed Old Man

My whole life, I've had rosy cheeks. It was cute when I was 5. I looked like one of those little Dutch Boy ads. Granted, I'm Swedish, not Dutch, but I had the cheeks—rosacea be thy name. (Those pink or reddish cheeks that affect millions—and can be cute in milder cases—but are often undiagnosed because people don’t realize it’s a skin disease.) I never thought about it until I started noticing some grotesque old men's noses—the kind that are always Rudolph-red, often having grown bulbous with scarlet arteries like a backwoods map. It freaked me out, because somehow I know my rosy cheeks could turn into that someday. Luckily, I've since learned that "red nose" is also caused by alcoholism and other disorders. This bothered me as a guy because guys don't have a way to hide it; we can't resort to makeup to "make up" our flaws. But the good news? Now we know the cause of rosacea. For years, doctors have been using antibiotics, sulphur, stinging lotions, or worse to treat it. This helped some, but not all. Now, a new U.S. study found that the interaction of two inflammatory proteins causes excessive levels of a third protein; it's this third one that causes the cute-when-young-fugly-when-older rosy cheeks. I’m hoping that with this new info, in a couple years they’ll completely defeat this disorder. I suffer from a very mild case, so it’s not a big deal, but I realize I’m fortunate. When I'm an old man, I should have no worries, but if I do, I'll bust out the concealer. —Cade Peterson, Sephora