What is acne?

Here i want to explain in detail what is acne and how it is caused. This knowledge is particularly helpful for you to pick up a correct treatment for your acne. Did you know that blackhead and whiteheads are acne too ??

The skin has three layers :

• Top most layer, Epidermis
• Middle layer, Dermis
• Fat cells layer, Subcutaneous tissue.

You can identify the hair follicle, Hair shaft in the diagram. The trouble maker is the oil gland near the hair follicle. This is also called the sebaceous gland. That’s where skin makes its oil. When oil gland makes the oil, through a little duct it conducts the oil into the shaft of the hair follicle, it comes up the shaft and onto the skin.

The real problem here is the oil, because if you don’t have the oil, you can never have the acne. But we all do have oil, this oil combined with bacteria will cause inflammatory acne (i.e. pus pimple, red tender pimple and cysts) down in dermis ( place in Dermis marked as circle in diagram). The oil when moves up in the epidermis combined with the dead cells from the hair shaft will cause non- inflammatory acne which is blackheads and whiteheads( place marked in green circle in Epidermis layer).

The bacteria in the dermis split the oil and make a compound called free fatty acid. Free fatty acids are very irritating to the skin and cause an accumulation of pus in the dermis, and this where red tender pimple, pus pimple and cysts come from.

On the other hand, having nothing to do with bacteria, the lining of the hair shaft (mostly in the epidermis) has dead cells which fall off, and as they fall of they are conducted out of the shaft by the oil onto the surface of the skin. What if this mix of oil and dead cells make a mix like cement and gives you a clog?  That clog doesn't knows that more oil is being made in the gland below the clog, and body doesn't knows that there is a clog in the shaft, so it makes more oil below the clog and that’s how we get a blackhead or a white head.

Basic Solution:

• Antibiotics kill bacteria that are acting on the oil; you will not get pus pimples and cysts.
•  Exfoliation will remove the dead cells in clog and allow the oil to flow, this will help treat blackheads and whiteheads.

Now that we understand what are different acne and how they are formed we can opt for correct way to treat them.

Stay Beautiful :)

Shweta