|
Our skin is made, on its surface, from millions of tinny pores, but because they are all so small, the overall appearance is the one of a smooth and well textured layer. However, if you get to watch it closer, you might be able to notice natural imperfections. We all have them and there is nothing wrong, as long as you do not start noticing tinny black or brownish bumps that often occur on face.
You might not have known anything about them, or just that they are blackheads, but you sure need to learn more before you can efficiently fight against them. So here are the basics, which you can soon enrich with your own experiences.
To begin with, blackheads are actually never black, but they do have a darker color, making the skin pores to become more or less obvious from a distance. Actually, these intruders can even have a yellow color and their dimensions vary, even though they are rarely bigger than a pin head.
If you have noticed such formations on your facial skin, it means you are already experiencing a mild form of acne , because blackheads are actually open comedones, the easiest you might get stuck with, and yet the first acne stage.
Blackheads are nothing but the clogs that form inside the skin cells when too much oil produced by the sebaceous glands gets stuck with skin debris. At first, sebum is colorless, only that when exposed to air, it oxidizes and becomes much darker. So the older your blackheads are, the darker they will become, this particular aspect giving you a clue on how much has your acne evolved.
If left untreated, blackheads have all the chances to be soon invaded by Propionibacterium, bacteria that normally live on our skin surface, making the open comedone to inflame and get infected, evolving to the next stage of acne, represented by pimples.
This would be the time when we should state that blackheads actually form on no matter what type of skin, so basically pretty much everyone has such clogs on their face, and yet, under certain circumstances, the condition may aggravate.
Children, soon after experiencing puberty, happen to have a more oily skin because hormones become overactive, also influencing the activity of the sebaceous glands. However, too much makeup and frequent usage of topical oils can also help blackheads to develop.
Besides avoiding the two above causes, you should be following a simple and plain rule: do not leave anything that you applied over the day on your face to stay over the night as well. Getting used with an appropriate skin care routine is mandatory when fighting against acne.
Finally yet importantly, pay attention to what blackheads you decide to assault with various treatments, because if you notice too many black dots that have the same size, chances are that those are not open comedones, but sebaceous filaments that naturally form on the root of every hair and that become more obvious wherever the skin is very oily.
| 
