What Causes Spots?
Ordinarily spots appear when the skin is producing too much oil AKA Sebum and if it’s not cleansed off in a timely fashion a pore opening gets plugged up and hey presto another spot!.
The usual factor here is puberty, when there are more hormones in the skin as more hormones racing around mean a stimulation of the sebaceous glands that produce oil. These glands are attached to a hair follicle.
Hormones also cause skin cells in the epidermis (the top layer of the skin) to overgrow which can cause a slightly thicker layer on the top that can block a pore preventing sebum escaping normally.
This can also happen in later life leading up to and during menopause again when your hormones go a little crazy.
Even if you have dry skin an unwanted little spot can arrive – they are however more common in people with oily skin, and don’t knock that as oily skin ages more slowly!
But when older, wearing make-up , not cleansing properly pore openings clog up with skin cells and make-up residue. So sebum can’t escape and it builds up. A chemical reaction with the sebum occurs, your skin pigment and air forms a black coloured plug– a 'blackhead'.
If the opening of the blocked gland is so small no chemical reaction takes place as there is no air reacting with the sebum and so the spot doesn’t go black – is stays white – hence a white- yellow head.
What happens next is up to you. With regular cleansing, millions of bacteria live happily on the skin causing no problems. But, without cleansing the bacteria now has something to feed on – yep the oil in the sebaceous glands and so this triggers an inflammatory reaction.