Clogging your pores and narrowing the hair canal

Every day, millions of skin cells die off. You continually make new
skin cells and get rid of dead ones. Your body has ingenious ways of
getting rid of these dead cells. In the case of your skin, sebum carries
the dead skin cells to the outside of the body where they flake off.
Sometimes, though, as sebum ferries dead cells from the inside of
your hair follicle along the oily sebaceous ducts and out through
the hair canal, the exit route of the follicle is blocked by the excess
oil. This blockage causes the opening of your hair canal to narrow,
and your pores, the tiny openings in your skin that serve as exits
for your hairs, get clogged (see Figure 3-3). The exit of oil is also
often impeded by a process called abnormal follicular keratiniza-
tion. That’s a fancy way of saying that instead of flaking off with the
sebum when they reach the skin’s surface as they normally do, the
dead skin cells and keratin clump together with the oil to further
clog the sebaceous ducts and hair canals.
Acne is not caused by forgetting to wash the oil off, or even by
eating loads of greasy French fries and junk food. It’s not the oil in
your tummy or on your skin; it’s the oil in your skin.