Treatments and Products
If you have acne, you’re not alone. Young people fight a constant battle with blackheads, whiteheads, and pimples, but adults can get it too.
Physically, pimples form when the pores, which are small openings in the skin, get clogged and become inflamed. To really understand where zits come from, you need to know some anatomy. There are three layers to the skin. The inner layer, the hypodermis, is composed of almost all fat cells. Next is the dermis, which is muscle tissue. Finally, there’s the epidermis, which is made up of skin cells.
Skin has millions of small openings called pores or hair follicles that tunnel from the skin’s surface down into the dermis. Sebacious glands surround each hair and produce sebum, an oily liquid, which seeps out through the pore. Although it sounds gross, sebum is necessary and maintains the life of your skin. Without it, you’d look 80 years old in no time.
Acne happens when the sebum gets out of control. At first this just makes your skin look shiny, but when the oil starts to mix with dead skin cells, it will clog your pores and make them swell up. The pore becomes inflamed, and this inflammation is what we know as a pimple.
Pimples don’t last forever. When they can’t hold any more, they burst and empty out. After a while the follicle heals up, unless the inflammation is extensive and goes deep into the skin. Then you get acne scars, which can become permanent.
When you reach puberty, your hormones go into overtime and make your skin produce oil in large quantities. Both boys and girls produce testosterone, a male hormone, in puberty, although girls’ bodies convert most of it into estrogen. Testosterone is one of the main culprits of acne in teenagers.
Nonetheless, not all teenagers suffer from zits, so hormones aren’t entirely to blame. Heredity is suspected to play a big role. If your parents and siblings had acne, chances are better that you will too.
Nowadays we’re learning more about diet and we know that diets high in the wrong kinds of fat are generally unhealthy, along with making your acne worse. Trans fats are bad, and so are the hydrogenated fats found in margarine, baked goods, and other junk foods. Stick to quality fat like olive oil and other oils high in omega 3, and then only in moderation. Sugar is another problem—even if it doesn’t give you acne, it can mess with your weight and make you diabetic. Work on cutting the sugar in your diet down to the absolute minimum.
Using harsh cleansers on your face can irritate your skin and make your acne worse. Anything that turns your skin red is probably bad, so don’t scrub or use abrasives to try to wipe out your pimples.
Along with these common causes of acne, some less familiar culprits may include medications, humidity, stress, pollutants, cosmetics, and birth control pills.