About Acne

What Is Acne?

The American Academy of Dermatology classifies acne as a chronic inflammatory disease afflicting the skin and s the most common skin disorder in the US. It is characterized mainly by the outbreak of pimples or more colloquially called “zit.” It starts out as a blackhead or whitehead and mainly appears on the face, neck, shoulders, upper chest, back and arms and not in other parts of the body and ranges from mild to severe.

There are two types of acne: inflamed and non-inflamed. The latter consists of blackheads, papules or pustules and microcomedones that do not redden or get painful and may not even be readily visible but render the skin rough to the touch.

Inflamed acne is the most bothersome as they show redness and swelling along with skin irritability and even oozing pus and lesion scabbing. Mild acne attacks often go away untreated but severe cases show up as papules or inflamed lesion containing no pus or whitehead.

Pustules which are inflamed whiteheads with capped pus protruding and the most severe large cystic lumps that are often painful. All these carry the potential for skin scarring once the acne breakout is healed,

How Acne Develops?

Acne breaks out when pores around the hair follicles get engorged or plugged with dead skin debris mixed in excess sebum oils that get trapped under the clogged pores. This plug on the pores is called a comedo. The clogged condition when aggravated by bacteria, inflames the tissues surrounding the hair follicle and ruptures to push the outer skin into a papule which now appears as a pimple or zit.

Untreated, the papule becomes a pustule when white blood cells invade it. You see this as a white cap over the pimple and is pus aching to get out.

Nodules are larger inflamed lesions that can grow under the papules and can cause the pimple to be painful when touched. The nodules appear when the follicle wall ruptures under the skin and contaminated debris start to empty under the skin to infect adjoining areas.

The worst acne breakout are cysts which begin as deep break on the follicle wall and a membrane develops around the dermal infection and forces its way to the skin surface to infect adjoining skin surface areas and generally damages skin tissues and follicles with certain skin scarring after.

What Causes Acne?

A number of factors can cause acne breakouts, the most common of which is attributed to the surge of androgen hormones during puberty and early teens. This hormone over secretion stimulates the sebaceous glands under the skin to create sebum in excess of what the skin needs to moisturize itself and you now have a condition of oily face common among teenagers.

This condition can attract bacteria to infect a mix of dead skin cells that normally gets shed off and excess sebum to clog pores and you have the start of acne breakout when the trapped debris inflames the tissues around it under the skin pushing its way to the surface as papules or pimples.

Who Suffers From Acne?

Acne sufferers are mostly teenagers and preteens. It is also known to strike younger children and toddlers. It has been statistically shown that 3 out of 4 teens will suffer an acne breakout. It strikes both boys and girls but teen boys appear to get more of it and tend to suffer longer and in more severe types even extending into adulthood generally caused by higher levels of testosterone. They also have a higher incidence of skin scarring after their bout with acne.

But adults of both sexes are not immune as a late onset can happen due to hormonal imbalances known to cause acne flare ups in teeners. Adult acne outbreaks occurs more on women due to sharp hormonal imbalance that occur during ovulation, menstruation and menopause.

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