What Causes Pimples? Not What Your Mother Told You

Let's dispel the myth of the cause of pimples right away: bad hygiene is not one of the causes of pimples! If you suffer from acne, chances are you've heard someone say that you should wash your face more because all that dirt and grime from pollution is clogging your pores and causing pimples. It's just not true. In fact, if you start washing your face more than twice a day, you are just going to aggravate your acne, instead of making it better.

The true cause of pimples is not on the surface, it's under the skin. Specifically, it's hormones. Let's take a look at how pimples come about so you can make smart choices about how to treat your acne.

Your face, neck, chest and back are covered in tiny hair follicles. The inside of a hair follicle is made of skin cells. The entire surface our skin is made of dead skin cells. We shed about 40,000 dead skin cells every minute of the day. All that dust around your house? A LOT of it is dead skin cells. So dead skin cells are normal. Now, usually dead skin cells shed one at a time. Inside the hair follicle, a dead skin cell might be shedded, and then leave the follicle by way of the pore at the surface of the skin. That's what normally happens. In acne sufferers, however, something different happens. These dead skin cells "slough off" in sheets. These sheets are rich in sticky keratin and they form clumps that can't get out of the pore as easily. They block the pores instead. This is where the trouble starts.

Each hair follicle contains a sebaceous gland. This gland produces an oily substance called sebum that coats and protects our hair and skin. Normally the sebum leaves the follicle through the pore but since the pore is now blocked by the keratin-rich clumps of dead skin cells, the sebum backs up, builds up and swells the area. You now have a blackhead or a whitehead. All that's needed to turn those blackheads and whiteheads into a pimple is a little infection from the bacteria on our skin called Propionibacterium acnes (P. acnes). As the bacteria eat the sebum, our bodies send in white blood cells to fight them off. As the white blood cells die, they form puss and the pimple becomes red and inflamed.

If you want to know the cause of pimples, you have to look more closely at two things: the improper shedding of dead skin cells and the production of sebum. Both are triggered by androgen hormones. These hormones spike during puberty, increasing sebum production at the same time that they mess up the hair follicle's ability to get rid of skin cells properly. It's a double whammy. These acne causing hormones can also be triggered by stress, a woman's menstrual cycle, endocrine abnormalities, and steroid use to name just a few.

When you consider acne therapies to help you overcome your condition, you should keep in mind that topical treatments such as benzoyl peroxide and salicylic acid might help to control blackheads but they aren't very effective against pimples. Benzoyl peroxide and topical antibiotics kill off the P.acnes bacteria but don't attack the real causes of pimples: androgen hormones. The best treatments are those that rebalance your hormones and there are several holistic treatments available today that do just that.