So I’ve heard this myth, well, I call it a myth because I haven’t found any truth to it, that if you pick your scabs (the dried up blood) from your wounds, it will cause scaring. Keep in mind I’m talking about scrapes, scratches, and cuts that aren’t of a “life threatening” proportion. I always have picked my scabs, but only when they look ripe enough for picking, though sometimes painful, yet enjoyable, and I have no visible scars on my body, except the remains from my appendectomy. It seems that scaring only occurs when the skin is more deeply penetrated or removed.
This goes for acne as well. People say “don’t pop it, it’ll cause permanent scaring”. Nope, no scars yet. And I rarely get acne. I just hate that disgusting feeling of having a puss filled volcano emerging from my face. Popping it. immediately after letting it hit the whitish stage, seems to be painless, enables quick healing, and causes no scars. But maybe that’s just me.
There must be a lot of old medical wives, for they have a multitude of tales for the rest of us. “If you pick it, it won’t heal” was originally a banjo-player’s joke. Another old wife says, “If the scab itches, that means it’s healing.” So, if it’s healing, why can’t I pick the scab off?
The scab is your body’s own Band-aid®. The skin fends off infection by keeping most bacteria out of what’s inside…and blah, blah. You know all that. It’s hard to know when the scab is no longer needed, even when it’s your own, and the damn thing itches! I think the old wives are worried that you’ll go all OCD, and pick your scab all day, which gets messy.
Acne is a mysterious thing. Everybody gets it. Some come through with no scarring (though there may be some scaring.) Some arrive into adulthood looking like they were beaten with a cactus. I was a teenager forty years ago. We were told, just as you were, “Don’t squeeze pimples!” They hurt and burn, and they look back from the mirror with their big white eyes :rolleyes: , pleading, “Pop me, for the love of Og! The pressure is killing me!” So we squoze 'em, and washed our faces afterward. (And wipe the goop off the mirror!)
Listen up. This is important. Zits are nothing to be ashamed of, or worried about. They’re merely annoying, and your friends all get them, too.
Yes, I know “squoze” is 3 kinds of wrong, but I like it.
Scabs can be hard to resist, particularly for the young. A counselor at the camp where I used to work was bitten by some kind of nasty but nonlethal spider, and after the angry red bump went down it left a big scab. This guy was always picking at it, and it never fully healed. He loved to do that - it was like his hobby. One day he fell while going down a rocky hill, and the scab was scraped clean off. Within a week or so, it healed over completely, leaving healthy, unmarked skin behind. Strange.
There are times when picking at scabs is an absolute no-no.
In what is one of the most embarassing episodes of my life, I developed impetigo, normally an early-childhood condition, in adolescence. Not knowing better, and being an inveterate scab-picker, I picked at the crusty little scabs endlessly. The problem is, the little bug that spreads the condition lives right under the crusty little scabs. I soon had it everywhere, including my face. The doctor was so astounded by my advanced condition that he actually at first didn’t believe it could just be impetigo and biopsied one of the little pustules to be sure.
If you take off the scab too soon, you can disrupt the migration of the epithelial cells, who are marching in from the undamaged areas to replace the cells that were lost when you hurt yourself. Do that bad enough and you’ll end up with a visible scar.
But just how speedily a given epithelial cell can migrate, and how much underlying basement tissue they need to migrate on, depends on several factors and is, therefore, open to individual variation. There is also an age component. I didn’t scar when I was young, but I’ve got marks up and down my arms from working in a cat clinic 3 years ago.
If leaving the scab alone will work for everyone, I don’t see the problem in perpetuating the wives’ tale.
Beats me, but I remember when I was in the Navy, I fell and had a pretty bad scrape on my knee as well as a twisted/cracked ankle. When I went into medical for it, then scapped the abraded part of my knee fairly well to clean it out and gave me a cast for the ankle. When I went back two or three weeks later to have the ankle looked at, they insisted on scrubbing my knee until the scab had all come off (Yes, it hurt just as much as it sounds like it did) and told me that leaving the scab there would cause a scar to form. shrug…so I have no idea. Although this was military medicine…where 10 motrin will cure just about everything.