Gross question, I know. But it came to me the other day. There is definitely something satisfying about popping a zit and drawing out the pus, but is it helping the healing process? If one had superhuman discipline, and could forgo picking their dots (as my ex- wife called them), would the pimple heal quicker than if it was excised with a squeeze?
Well, it depends on the stage the infection is at. I’ve had luck with some that weren’t very developed, in trying to heal them. That is, applying medication and cold packs instead of trying to burst the skin open.
There is a surgical saying that “if pus is about, then get it out”. So if the lesion contains pus, id est it is infected, expunging pus will probably help healing. However, most zits are blocked sebaceous glands. If you are just getting rid of greasy goo, squeezing may lengthen healing and you are probably better off with a product containing 2% salicylic acid instead.
Often, though, popping a zit isn’t bursting the skin open-- It’s just pushing the sebum out of the same pore that it was supposed to come out of in the first place (possibly clearing a small clog in the process).
The principle is so ancient, it’s in Latin.
I don’t know about healing, but there are some videos I like to watch. Oddly, when I see the really gross ones I don’t mind the pus the way I do having a needle inserted to reduce pain on the big cysts.
But if you push to hard, you can damage some of the cells, potentially exacerbating the problem.
It might take longer to heal the way a doctor would define it, but if you have one that hurts, and popping it relieves the pressure that is causing the pain, and in your personal experience, you just made it “better.” If you put antibiotic ointment and a Band-Aid on it, maybe it will heal quicker. Might not look better, but again, depends on what you are going for.
In my residency, the line was “where there is pus, let there be steel”.
“Conan! What is the riddle of steel!”
“Ubi pus, ibi evacua.”
“… What?”
The corollary was ‘if you don’t cut it out, you’re just hoping it gets better’.
It’s not my personal cup of tea and I’m breaking the link due to NSFW grossness but here’s some material:
https://old.reddit[dot]com/r/popping/
Not a zit, but something similar-- I once got an infected cuticle when I was in basic training, and it hurt so fricking much, that it was keeping me awake.
There was a woman in my unit who was an RN, and a Specialist, and going straight to leadership school after basic in a “stripes for skills” program.
So I got her advice. She said don’t go to sick call for it. Get alcohol, if someone had some, and bleach as a last resort, and sterilize the area, and a needle from my sewing kit, and lance it. Then put triple anibiotic ointment (which she had) and a Band-Aid over it.
She was absolutely right. Got isopropyl alcohol, lanced it, and TMI ALERT: a pea-sized glob of pus popped out when I pulled the needle out . Immediately it felt SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much better! Used the ointemnt and Band-Aid all day and night, replaced next shower, and discarded after second day training.
No problems.
IANAD, or even an RN, or CNA. I was a Girl Scout, and did first aid in basic, but we never covered this. However, I also took Freshman biology-- I would hazard a guess that popping a zit with dirty hands and leaving it is an open invitation to all kinds of bacteria, and could drag a bad situation to hell.
But washing one’s face and hands-- maybe even in this particular case, with antibacterial soap, then putting a bit of antibiotic ointment on each zit popped, might help. And a lot, if one is experiencing discomfort.
I had a similar situation. I had an infection at the edge of my fingernail, and it was swollen and incredibly painful. And it was a weekend and i was busy. So instead of going to urgent care, i carefully cleaned everything (soap, water, and rubbing alcohol) and lanced the infection. After draining it, i soaked it in hot water for a bit, applied a little bacitracin ointment and a bandaid, and went back to my regularly scheduled activities. Mine, also, mostly stopped hurting after i lanced it.
I told my doctor, expecting to be chided. But instead, he told me it was good that I’d treated it, because untreated, the pressure in the enclosed area of the finger tip can prevent blood flow and cause serious problems, like gangrene and/or losing part of the finger.
That being said, most pimples aren’t full of puss, nor blocking blood flow.
I would qualify that if you rupture or lance a pimple/boil, you need to (with clean sterile fingers) keep expressing any pus, blood or serum that refills the cavity. This will flush out bacteria and help the cavity close without leaving an acne scar.
I would also qualify that if you are poking anything into your skin, like a needle or the point of a knife, that thing needs to be sterilized. Otherwise you can make matters worse.
Ah, good old paronychiae.
I seem to come down with one every few years. The last one was in my pinky and opened up on its own before I had to do anything about it, but I had one on my thumb a few years back that was so swollen and painful I went to the ER thinking I’d broken it somehow. They cut me open and sent me home with antibiotics and a bottle of Hibiclens.
I’m guessing military showers are a risk factor too, not to mention how dirty you can get at basic. I’ve had a few (very few) infections around a toenail that needed to be lanced, and I’m pretty sure were from clipping too closely, but that was the only fingernail infection I ever had to lance.
I once had a hangnail that was either mildly infected or very irritated, but no lancing-- antibiotic ointment and overnight Band-Aid fixed it.
Relevance to pimples is probably that if it hurts, go for it, but if it doesn’t, leave it alone.
Irrelevance: I knew a guy once whose last name was Pimple. Poor guy.
I’ve had a few of those, too (once with a finger, twice with a toe). The finger one, I wasn’t sure what the heck was going on (it wasn’t all that uncomfortable, but it was greenish), and it eventually broke open on its own (and the pus that came out was green). The two toe ones, I lanced, and was very glad I did, because those were uncomfortable.
IIRC, one of the board’s doctors (@Qadgop_the_Mercotan ?) once described a list of the five ailments for which a doctor is able to provide immediate and welcome relief, and all five involved relieving a buildup of extra fluid in some way.
As for the pus vs. sebum thing, how does one easily distinguish between pus which should be gotten out right away, versus sebum or lymph that’s supposed to be present?
I used to have semi-serious acne when I was younger, and as an appearance-conscious guy I became quite the expert pimple assessor / experimentalist.
Popping mature whitehead pimples absolutely made them heal quicker; if left to their own advice, the whiteheads would turn into hardened, very long-lived, cyst-like bumps.
Trying to pop a pimple too early, when the whitehead wasn’t quite ripe, would also result in a prolonged, painful infection site. It was mandatory to get the popped pimple empty, which was pretty impossible with the young’uns.