What Is Acne And Why Do We Have It?
By
The Beat Acne Team
The question, “what is acne?” may be annoying and serious especially for those people who suffer from it. We may have the perception of as something that we only experience and have during our teen years, but it is a skin disease that people often experience even in their adulthood. Some people may be too embarrassed to come out and reach out to other people, affecting their self esteem and their relationship with others. What is acne? Why do we have it and is it necessary that we must undergo through such embarrassing suffering? To the question, “what is acne?”, it is generally characterized by our skin having whiteheads, blackheads, and inflamed red pimples or what is popularly known as, zits. What Is Acne, Commonly? Probably, the most common form of is the “acne vulgaris” and is brought about by changes in the hair follicle and our skin’s sebaceous gland. They say that the condition is commonly known to occur in teenagers during their puberty stage. Due to the excessive secretion of oils from our sebaceous glands combined with the dead skin cells or corneocytes, it blocks the hair follicles making it infected. The oil secretions build up at the blocked pore giving way to a perfect environment for the bacteria Proponibacterium acnes and oil-loving yeast, Malassezia to breed and multiply. The face, neck, back, and the upper arms are the parts of the body that are greatly susceptible to acne. Besides the pain and scarring, the effect of to an individual is mainly psychological and can lower the self-esteem of a person. What Is And Why Us? Usually, when we suffer from acne, the most common question that enters our mind is, “why me?”. There are many factors and contributing causes as to why we get affected with it. Though theory also suggests that is also partly hereditary, there are many possible causes in our environment that leads us to it. One is hormonal activity like menstrual cycle or when we are in our puberty stage. Another may be stress due to the increased output of hormones in our adrenal glands, hyperactive sebaceous glands, or excessive accumulation of dead skin cells. Bacteria in our pores and other skin irritation that we could experience may lead to acne. Also, the use of prescription medicine that we may be taking could result to like anabolic steroids and any medication that may have halogens, androgens, lithium, and barbiturates. Contact to high level of chlorine compounds may also contribute to particularly dioxins which could cause a long-lasting type of which is called, chloracne.