Blackheads?
What are blackheads?
My little niece is the inquisitive type of kid that could ask the silliest questions. She traced the spots on my face and asked why this only occurs on mine.
I couldn’t bring up a logical yet simple explanation that she could understand how I got my blackheads.
But I promised her I will show her how I can get rid of it.
So today, I’ll be doing a local and pocket friendly DIY on eliminating blackheads on one’s face.
But before that, literally, we can all explain, at least what a blackhead is or what it looks like.
My little niece would call it ‘black spots' because she can’t wrap her head around why a ‘spot’ is being called ‘head’. Teaching her that some nomenclatures(biological in this scenario) doesn’t really depend on the literal state of things in languages, can be tasking for me and heavy for her, I guess.
However today, I’ll be defining ‘blackheads’ the biological way.
A Blackhead is a comedo, a skin blemish or a type of acne vulgaris, where a pore becomes clogged with a dark, hard, cheesy keratin-filled substance forming a hard black "head" on the skin's surface.
A comedo is a clogged hair pore in the skin. A comedo can be an open (blackhead) or closed (whitehead) skin pore or hair follicle clogged with oil, dead skin cells and bacteria.
Now,
Occasionally, we all have pores and those pores do become filled with debris, oil, or dead skin cells, that’s when we get blackheads. It is pertinent to know that, it looks black because of the oxidation of the oils in the pores.
Notably, it is not the dirt that is black, it is just the oxidized oil.
Unlike blackheads, a whitehead is when the pore is blocked and you then get a pore filled with pus, commonly called pimples, whereas with blackheads, the pore remains open with a blackish outlook.
Doesn’t sound nice right?
But then you could ask yourself, why don’t I just check into a hospital and get this over with?
Thing is, hospitals have solutions but sometimes they might not be comfortable and pocket friendly.
.
.
So let’s start the DIY right?
Now, this DIY needs only three basic things, which are;
An Egg(just the egg white actually)
A serviette or tissue paper
A medium sized lemon or lime
Step I:
Crack open the egg and do not mix or turn the content. This is to prevent the egg white from mixing with the yolk because, the egg white is what is really needed here.
Separate the egg white from the yolk.
Step II:
Boil at least 2 liters of water.
When fully heated, pour over the content into a bowl, put you face half way into the bowl and cover your head and the bowl with a heavy towel.
This is to prevent the heated vapors from escaping.
This process is called Exfoliation and is needed to open up the blackheads a little bit for the treatments that will come afterwards.
Step III:
Pick up the tissue and place it on the egg white. Let the tissue paper absorb the egg white for sometime but don’t allow it to get to the flip side of the tissue paper.
Step IV:
Place the tissue on your face and watch it stand and form a white mask.
Repeat Step III to get enough tissue to cover your face.
Step V:
Remove the mask after 1-2 hours.
Step VI
Cut the lime or lemon into halves and squeeze the juice out while scrubbing it on your face.
Lemon or Lime has antibacterial properties and they fight against acne. Thus, they help to brighten and remove blackheads permanently.
*Aloe Vera can be substituted for lime here.
You may need to repeat this processes after some weeks if blackheads still appear again.
Another method of removing blackheads is using grinded tumeric mixed with honey to apply on the face to form a mask.
Aloe Vera can be used to clean spots on the skin.
Thanks for reading
Cheers!
