When you pop a zit, whats that white stuff? Or more precisely, what is the stuff in a zit?
A zit is basically a pore in your skin that has become clogged with dirt and infected. The white stuff is pus, which is mostly made up of white corpuscles whose function is to fight infection.
Sometimes when you pop a zit you expel the pus and the original infecting matter and it heals nicely. But sometimes you drive the pus and the infection deeper into the skin and cause further problems.
In other words, sometimes you win, sometimes you get a hideous, unremovable scar?
Exactly. Look at Seal, that musician. He lost. The battlegound was his face. Very prominent.
Uhhh Derlath Seal has Lupus.
Keith
</begin pretentious rant>
Don’t people do biology/science in school anymore? I learnt about this crap years ago in school. It just baffles me when people don’t know simple facts. shrug
</end pretentious rant>
DAMN! I was always told he had very bad acne and got keloid scars. Just goes to show, not checking up on your sources bites you right in the ass.
It is not always pus. Some zits have mainly waxy sebaceous material in them. Some do have pus. Some have a plug mainly made up of dead skin cells. Often they have a comniation of these materials and also a hair or two.
They are white blood cells doing their job fighting bacteria in the pore.
pus "pes\ noun [L pur-, pus — more at foul] (1541)
: thick opaque usu. yellowish white fluid matter formed by suppuration and composed of exudate containing white blood cells, tissue debris, and microorganisms
©1996 Zane Publishing, Inc. and Merriam-Webster, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Isn’t the word “pore” related to the word “porous”, as in “leaky, full of holes”?
Where does the skin on top of the zit come from, without which the pus would leak out of the skin and get easily washed away?
Keeve, as you surmise, the pores in your skin are little holes that allow moisture to leak out. It’s called sweating. Sometimes dirt will get trapped in the oil your skin secretes, or maybe it will be some dead skin cells instead of dirt, and they plug the pore. That is the clog. Then the bacteria build up, and the body rushed white blood cells to the pore to fight the infection, and you get pus. The “skin on top of the zit” is the skin surrounding the pore that is swollen because the pus is backing up, like a balloon.
This happens in puberty because hormones kick in and your skin gets oilier. That’s why washing regularly helps prevent zits. Also why astringents are effective. They strip the oils off your skin, and also take dead skin cells and dirt. Takes the main factors away from your pores.
Popping zits can push the pus and clog out and clear up the pore, healing nicely. You can also bruise the surrounding tissue while trying to pop, or otherwise create more damage that leads to the formation of pock marks and scars.
Zits are not always so simle as that. They just discovered that new skin can grow from hair follicles. They did not know that before this year. No one seems to have studied the exact mechanisms from the cell level up about how different types of zits start, grow, and end. If anyone has access to research on this topic I am very interested.
There is a disease called hidradenitis suppurativa that as its main symptom is boils in the groin and or the armpits. Basically zits from 1 cm to the size of your fist. It has no cure and no real good treatment other than cut the worst ones out. It is fairly rare, but just reading about the treatment for this disease gives you insight into how little they know about zits.
Ok, this is gross, but is there any way to tell which ones are the “heal nicely” kind and which will scar?
There’s something SO satisfying about the heal nicely kind, especially when the stuff hits the mirror.
Place a hot compress on those not yet to a visible head. This will help draw it to a head. I find this helps more of the tight, bruised feeling zits come to a nice head that I can pop rather than the kind that just hurt like hell and don’t pop but do scar.
It also depends on your type of skin. Some people scar more easily than others. I have very few scars from zits.
This isn’t the first time you guys read my mind and posted a topic I was about to post myself.
My question is, how much of the pus is white blood cells and how much of it is bacteria? Does the growth of bacteria cause swelling even before the arrival of white blood cells? Does the bacteria population continue to increase even after the arrival of the white blood cells?
I had my share of pimples when I was a teen (thank God that’s over now), and I learned some tricks.
First, never pick at a zit (i.e. digging with your fingernails). That is the best way to get a nice bloody scab, and then a lovely scar. In fact, don’t touch the thing, except to cover it with makeup (if you’re female or an actor). My mother still picks at hers and I have seen some doozies.
Wait until it comes to a head (with the big ugly white bump). Don’t jump the gun on this; if it is a small whitehead, wait for it to get bigger (I know, it’s gross, but bear with me here). If you pop it before it’s through cooking, it will just form another head later on, instead of going away.
OK, now it’s really nasty. At night, just before you go to bed, pop the sucker. Then apply an astringent (like Sea Breeze) directly onto it. It will sting. But by morning it should have faded quite nicely, and it won’t leave a scar.
The above applies to all zits, even those that are deep and painful. You may want to try to get it out, but just wait, and follow the above instructions. Sometimes these just go away on their own anyway.
I also know a surefire way to cover zits (if you wear makeup), and how to keep eyeliner from smudging under your eyes.