Debunking Dirt and Grease Theories

The appearance of acne — the black color of blackheads and facial
oiliness — suggests that if only you rubbed and scrubbed your
face really hard and often, you could get your acne to go away. Not
so — in fact, before all of the effective acne treatments became
available to us, that was how acne was often treated — and unsuc-
cessfully I might add.
What may look like dirt inside your blackheads is actually melanin,
the pigment that provides the natural color of your skin. Despite
what you may have seen or heard in commercials, your pores
don’t get blocked from the top down; instead, most of the action of
acne formation takes place on the inside of your skin in your hair
follicle (see Chapter 3 where I tell you the whole story).
Think about it. If dirt was a major reason that some people get
acne, we’d probably see gazillions of blackheads, whiteheads, and
pimples on the faces of folks who do a lot of manual labor such as
coal miners, ditch diggers, construction workers, and gardeners.
But it so happens that office workers, teachers, and doctors —
even alas, dermatologists and their kids — get acne.
As for the oil, although there is a connection between how severe
acne is and the amount of oil a person’s skin produces, not all
people with oily skin have acne and not all people with acne have
oily skin. It so happens that some people with dry skin also have it.
Scrubbing and rubbing a face that has acne will only serve to irri-
tate and redden an already inflamed complexion. Instead, the face
should be washed daily (twice a day at the most!) with a gentle
cleanser. For detailed information on proper face washing tech-
nique, see Chapter 2.