cea or Seborrheic Dermatitis

[Guest guest]

I've seen a couple of posts to this group about this subject; I have

a slightly different question. I'm a 34 year old white male,

somewhat fair complected. I've suspected I've had cea for some

time. My sister has it, as do several of my aunts and other family

members. I've noticed that I have a tendency to flush.

Over the years many people have remarked about my red face, and how

I get a tendency to get red marks on my forehead, especially under

emotional stress. Currently, the face on my skin seems hyper-

reactive; if it touch it fairly lightly, the skin goes red (I

understand this sort of hyper-reactivity is typical). Cold weather,

hot weather, alchol, all seem to cause an excessive amount of

blushing (when I got out of a hot shower once and looked in the

mirror, I could not believe how red my face was).

Over the past three months, I started a new intense exercise

program. I also starting spending *a lot* of time in the steam room,

sauna, and hot tub. I noticed that even several hours afterwards

getting out of the sauna, my skin was still very red. At first it

looked sort of healthy. The redness, however, seemed to keep getting

worse. Eventually I had semi-permanent area of redness extending

under the " cheek area under my eyes, " sometimes extending in a solid

band out to the side of my face. Other times, I should just have the

redness on the cheek area under my eyes, and then up near my

cheekbone and down my cheeks.

Sometimes I also get redness on my temples and above my eyebrows.

However, I tend to touch these area a lot; I rest my head that way

when I'm working.

Also, I seem to have had eye problems before the onset of cea. I

often experience eyes that felt extremely dry, and even now I almost

always squint, because otherwise my eyes feel dry. (The seems to be

causing wrinkles, already. I can't seem to relax my face.)

I'm in between health plans and will be changing once again. I

recently went to see a new doctor, but instead was seen by a

physician's assistant. I said I thought I had cea, but he said

he thought it might be seborrheic Dermatitis. The main reason he

gave is that he did not see any papules. (I do seem to get these,

but I also get acne sometimes, so I'm not sure. Some of them never

seem to develop whiteheads/blackheads). He looked for flaking and

scaling but did not find any. I think he might have thought it was

seb. derm because of the slight redness in the area above my

eyebrows.

I've found that if I rub very very hard in the area between my

eyebrows, I can sometimes bring up some dead skin, but it does not

really seem like scaling. I don't seem to have any redness in the

area under my nose.

Other symptoms: after working about and doing the sauna one day, I

developed swollen patch of skin in the area under my eye (not my

eyelid). It did not feel solid, more like an accumulation of fluid.

I've read that this can happen in cea but I have not heard of it

happening with seb. Derm.

Also, I have developed a patch of 5-6 seemingly permanent small red

papules (mostly flat, discolored areas of skin) towards the side of

my face.

So, I realize it's impossible to diagnose these things over the net,

but it will be a while before my new health plan kicks in. Any idea

if this could really be seb dermatitis? Or some combination? Seems

to me as if it's only certainly cea.