Can someone explain the sorcery, or science, behind the small acne stickers that teenagers everywhere swear by now. Thanks!
In: Biology
Hydrochloride bandages have been used in wound care for ages. They contain a gelling agent that absorbs liquid from wounds. Many years ago we would buy Tegaderm or blister patches and cut them to size. I still prefer those to the made for acne ones. They seem to absorb more gunk than the cute ones do.
Acne is a mini-infection in a pore, causing it to swell and close up. There are medications that accelerate the turnover of skin cells on the face. If you use the stickers as a spot treatment, with medication to turnover the cells in the area, and apply acne medication to the infected area, you can more quickly target and address individual pimples.
Kids still get regular acne, but these are for those times when you have one big one on your chin or nose that’s prominent and even painful. In the past you’d just try to cover it up and then clean your face and it’d be gone in a week or so. The spot treatments with the stickers shorten that to 2-3 days. (or are supposed to)
I think it also doubles that it can be fun-shaped and therefore you can have a little quirky star on your chin or by the brow instead of an unsightly pimple
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I’ve been told by dermatologists that they aren’t good for your skin, but I can’t remember exactly why. Or if the point they were making is that it actually doesn’t do anything to help get rid of the pimple faster, and most are a scam.
What does work (and what I’ve been doing since high school), is to just dab on a little bit of tea tree oil. It’s antiseptic, so it makes the area super clean, and also seems to bring all the oil to the top. It’s mostly good for those pimples where you can see a whitehead trying to form, but it’s impacted.
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Others have given reasons why the patches help speed healing due to their ingredients. For many people they have another benefit: They stop you from picking at/popping the pimples. Damaging the skin will delay healing, so anything to prevent that will help a lot.
Hydrocolloid bandages (which is what those stickers are) absorb pus and other gunk from wounds, which makes them very useful when you’re trying to flatten a pimple or drain a cyst. But there needs to be some way for the drainage to escape, i.e. an opening in the pimple. Just sticking a sticker on top isn’t going to get any of the gunk out.
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