Category: Acne

Acne

Overview

You might have heard about acne or even had it before; but what is it all about. There are different types of skin conditions that you are likely to experience in life. Most of them are due to how you get to take care of your skin. It is then important that you understand what acne is all about. Once you get to understand more about acne, then you can always pick the right type of medication or method to deal with it. Let us get right into it below.

What is acne?

Acne is described as a skin condition that will occur when the hair follicles on your skin become clogged with dirt, oil, and dead skin cells. The clogging can be of many other things, but these are the commonly used to describe the condition. Once clogged, you can find the skin form whiteheads, blackheads, and acne.

Acne will usually appear on the face, chest, shoulders, and upper back. The acne appearance is common in teenagers. This does not mean that adults would not face pimples. Depending on the skin care, sometimes you end up with acne either way.

There are some effective methods for treating acne, but you will always find it reoccurring. This is what drives many people crazy. When you think you have handled one, another one pops.

Causes

As discussed above, acne will occur when there is clogging of the hair follicles. The main causes, therefore, include the following;

–    Having excess oil production

–    Bacteria

–    Clogged hair follicles with dead skin cells and oil

–    Excessive generation of a hormone such as androgens

Certain medication could also lead to having acne. This is mainly due to the different types of building blocks of the medication. If the drugs contain corticosteroids, lithium, and testosterone, then you can expect to have such effects.

Diet also plays a role if you can have acne. This is when you consume foods rich in carbohydrate such as bread, chips and more. Chocolate has also been found to worsen acne at some point.

Having stress is another trigger for acne. If you have stress when you already have acne, it will make it even worse.

Types of acne

There are some acne types that you can have today. We get to check them out below.

–    Blackheads

Blackheads occur the moment the pore of a hair follicle gets clogged by sebum and additional dead skin cells. Since the pore remains open at the top, it leads to the turning the colour of acne to black. This is where the name blackhead comes from.

–    Whitehead

For whiteheads, the formation is the same as those of blackheads. The difference is that the top of the pore remains closed. The closing of the pore makes it even harder to treat the acne. It will always look like a small bump from the skin.

–    Inflammatory

This is the kind of acne that can get red or swollen. This is mostly due to the addition of bacteria. Sometimes you may the acne being sensitive. You are also likely to feel a bit of pain when you have pimples. Common categories under inflammatory acne include papules, nodules, pustules, and cysts.