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Pimples - What Actually Causes Them?

The next time somebody tries to tell you that you have pimples because you don’t know how to wash your face, don’t believe it. Poor complexions aren’t caused by poor hygiene. In fact, too much scrubbing will only irritate your condition and make it look worse. You didn’t do anything to cause your pimples. What we call a poor complexion is actually the result of a complex process that began in your genes. You might have gotten pimples because your mother and father had zits. Thank them. They might have passed their acne prone skin to you.

What actually causes zits? To find out, we have to look beneath the skin surface. Tiny hair follicles cover the skin on your face, neck, back and shoulders, each of which has sebaceous glands. These glands produce a thick oily substance called sebum. Blackheads and whiteheads form when sebum, which usually flows out of our pores to cover our hair and skin, gets clogged inside, backs up, and inflames the area. If the P.acnes bacteria that lives on the skin manages to infect these blackheads and whiteheads, we get pimples.

What is it that blocks the pores and traps the sebum inside the hair follicle? Improperly shedded skin cells from inside the hair follicle. Being dead skin cells is not the issue since we are constantly shedding dead skin cells every minute of the day. The problem is how we shed these dead skin cells. When they fall off one at a time, we don’t notice them at all. But they don’t shed one at a time in acne sufferers, they “slough off” in sticky sheets instead. These clumps get stuck in the pores at the top of the hair follicles.The process is not well understood, but androgen hormones cause this improper shedding. These hormones max out during puberty and gradually taper off for the rest of our lives. We can say that what causes pimples is, in the end, androgen hormones and how our bodies deal with them.

Since this hormone imbalance is the actual cause of a bad complexion many people experience acne when their hormones are out of control during adolescence, pregnancy, menopause, and when they are under stress. So don’t worry about your dirty skin. If you have acne it’s not because you’re not as clean as other people, blame your hormones. All acne treatments are not created equal. If you ignore your hormones, you probably won’t be effective with your pimple treatments.