Our skin condition
general free skin condition information and common symptoms
Our skin is an organ of our integumentary system, which consists of several layers of epithelia tissues that contain underlying organs and muscles. Our skin is in charge of protecting our body from pathogens, and also is the organ that regulates our body temperature and the one that prevent us from harmful situations such us insulation, there’s no doubt that an essential part of our system, even an armor against natural elements as oxigen and humidity. The skin condition can change according to the pathogens that affect it, we don’t have to forget that this organ contains melanin or pigmentation provided by melanocytes that, in time, absorb some dangerous substances and also ultraviolet radiation from the sunlight. All these facts can make our skin condition change, sometimes, for good and sometimes not. When we are going through our puberty, we experience many situations in life that lead to several changes in our body, it is developing, not only our hormones and sexual activity grow but also our skin condition varies. Here is where acne comes up; this is an inflammatory skin condition, and it may appear in many parts of our body such us back, waist and face. But this is a natural process of any teenager life, is one of the most ordinary skin condition and affects up to 90% of adolescents. |
But this type of skin condition may also happen during childhood, since by that time there is a highly activation of sebaceous glands; acne might be a persistent inconvenient; but in general, this problem gets solved after a period of 4 or 5 years, at least in 70% of the people. Only 30% keeps having acne in their adult life, the apparition or incidence of acne at the age of 35 is reported to be 2% in men and 6% in girls. If we are adults and we’re still carrying this skin condition we should see our dermatologist to give us an appropriate treatment to eliminate this anomaly from our body. |
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 blocked pore |
This severe skin condition is caused due to the overactivity of sebaceous glands; these glands get active by the hormone testosterone which is produced in men from testes and in girls from their ovaries and the adrenal gland. Although is true that the level of testosterone in people who develop acne is normal, the sebaceous glands are very sensitive to this hormone; these gland over production leads to the beginning of greasy skin. There’s also a change in growth of the cells lining the pores; instead of loading away and being carried away by the oil when they die, the cells turned sticky and get stick to the inner gland surface, building up a partial blockage. The symptoms of this skin condition are easy to see, the partial blockage of the pore is the starting point of the acne spots (left image) ; the bacteria begins to multiply inside the blockage leading in this way to several inflammatory lesions or red papules. The body recruits white blood cells in order to eliminate the bacteria but, on the contrary, leads the formation of pus; this is part the common healing process. |
In many cases the blocked pores remain full of pus and may never get inflamed, these are called blackheads and whiteheads. Some people may continue developing painful swollen cysts needing an urgent treatment since they could probably get infected. But these are not the only causes of this skin condition, there are several myths that surround the causes of acne: eating too many chips and much chocolate, the lack of skin cleaning and the idea that acne is just a teenager disturbance. Acne might be a devastating psychological illness that affects mainly the surface of the neck, chest, face and shoulders, although sounds a bit tragic, the last results of many research show that 12% of people with acne shows suicidal tendencies for having this skin condition symptoms. |
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Skin Treatment
There are many treatments we can follow to eliminate acne from our lives, the first steps of the acne treatments include gels and creams which contain active ingredients such us nicotinamide, benzoyl or salicylic acid. Topical treatments are supposed to be very effective for this skin condition symptoms since they reduce the balckhead type acne; antibiotics must be used only in urgent cases, they are very effective and can be taken on tablet form or used topically. Some of theses topical antibiotic are mixed with other anti-acne substances like retinoids, zinc and benzoyl, meanwhile other treatments include preparations which contain hormone therapy acetate, but must be take by females only.
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