Aa
Fleshy Plugs Under Skin In Pores on Face
there is a spot on my nose that i've rubbed raw washing, trying to get these "things" out of my pores. these are not whiteheads, nor blackheads. these are clusters of white or fleshy hard and sticky plugs-- not filled with anything, but they stick straight out from the pores. They are not bumps. If I rub the area w/ a towel they do not rub off at all. I tried to remove one with tweezers, and it was very tacky (as in sticky) and clearly goes deep under the skin. Part of it broke off but I could still see that the pore was plugged and a day or two later top of the plug was sticking out again. i can't find ANYTHING online that looks like it.
Yep. This is my current affliction also. No need for me to describe it because if you have it you’re already very aware of the horrendous symptoms. I’ve used Retinol with success. I believe it could potentially be eruptive vellus hair cysts or some form of trichomycosis (which would be fungal related. I mentioned the vellus hair thing because I have literally found dark hairs embedded in these lesions...on rare occasion even close to the surface of my skin like right under the outermost layer, as I could see them and upon trying to pluck it realized it was UNDER the skin and not sticking out of the skin like a normal hair. I’ve spent so much money and so much time researching this, meanwhile my poor face looks destroyed. I have a dermatology appointment tomorrow, which I’m dreading, because I know they are going to say it’s acne and tell me to stop picking and prescribe yet another antibiotic that won’t work. But as I said in the beginning, I used a Retinol serum for the first time last night and I could not believe the improvement in the lesions. And the parts of my face that are not affected by this crap looked glowing. So I’m gonna continue to use it and hope for the best. Maybe I’ll order some silver stuff too, since people seem to have had success with that.
2 Comments
I used tea tree oil a couple of weeks ago
and had a horrible reaction!
Last night I read a post on another board from someone that has Demodex and was alarmed
both my husband and I put Listerine in our hair hoping to make sure these
things were gone and sure enough they aren’t! I am going to keep at it but I was up much of the night itching! When Demodex move around ( on your face for example) you can feel them. - like a faint rustling of the tiny hair ( I’m guess it’s hair follicles) on your face.
and had a horrible reaction!
Last night I read a post on another board from someone that has Demodex and was alarmed
both my husband and I put Listerine in our hair hoping to make sure these
things were gone and sure enough they aren’t! I am going to keep at it but I was up much of the night itching! When Demodex move around ( on your face for example) you can feel them. - like a faint rustling of the tiny hair ( I’m guess it’s hair follicles) on your face.
2 Comments
I should have said with regard to the post I read last night , “ a person I think has Demodex.”
I thought i had demodex infestation.. its actually pinworms or threadworms.. and had all these symptoms... and they get into ur hair :( become tinus cappitis or something... worth a look?
Just wanted to say, today was the first day ( and last night ) I used a creme on my face ( and not Ascend ( kills Demodex) ). And, sure enough the biofilm is slightly trying to return. So back to Ascend. But , I haven’t stopped and won’t stop going to the infrared sauna for quite awhile.
Take whatever approach works for you. I utilized the methods I posted and mine is gone within 2 months.
Also, I think that some of us complicate our initial presentation because we over treat, excoriate, mess with our skin. So it makes it hard for a dermatologist to diagnose the underlying inflammatory process that we begin with.Yes these plugs form in inflamed lesions. But you have to get an accurate diagnosis of the inflammatory process you have to begin with, and you won't get one if you present to the Derm with a bunch of excoriated lesions and a bag full of "specimens". I know it's hard, but I seriously recommend booking a Derm appointment like 1-2 months out and committing to going hands off with your skin for the time you're waiting to be seen. Use next to nothing for that time period and don't screw with breakouts you do get. This will at least allow a dermatologist to assess the presentation and treat you correctly. If you're throwing a million things like tea tree oil and oil of whatever and all kinds of acids at your skin and tweezing out all your lesions, you're creating secondary clinical signs that will obscure a correct diagnosis. I know this is easier said than done, but I am dealing with horrendous scarring caused by over treating my skin, extracting and excoriating and I wish I had just taken a big deep breathe and left it to professionals. And quit looking in the magnified mirror, its literally just going to drive you insane and you end up micro injuring your skin and introducing more potential for infection.
2 Comments
have u ever had one of those plugs turn into a crystal or glassy looking plug that was very sharp until it came out of the skin and within a minute it turns soft? also when I have a white plug that gets stuck like its wrapped in ingrown hair or what not I tend to bleed a lot n the blood is very think like grape jelly with some debris in it and a lot colder than fresh blood? the reason I ask is I have cirrhosis of liver n my blood is starting to get ****** and im bout to go from stage 2 to stage 3 cirrhosis
Threadworms?
I have dealt with the sores complicated by these little annoying white plugs for a while. My theory is this. And no, you nut cases playing on fear and toting anti parasitic drugs and snake oil- this isn't some sort of parasite or microscopic worm or rare bacterial disease. These claims are honestly outrageous. Listen up.
This is an issue of keratinization gone awry due to inflammation.
The initial skin lesion can be triggered by anything, in my case it's just usually a deep pimple or superficial injury or irritation to the skin. If you're a picker, which i admittedly am, we sometimes cause extra inflammation by manipulating our pores, and in some cases increasing the bacterial burden our inflammatory response then has to grapple with. The area becomes very inflamed, and the processes normally called on in response to wounding are unable to work effectively, causing the follicles which are normally moving and depositing keratin and sebum through the layers of skin to become ruptured, constricted or otherwise messed up.
If you have a tendency toward keratosis pilaris, you might have a genetic tendency for an extra wonky keratin production and clearance pattern at work in your body- further complicating matters. If you have a hyperactive inflammatory response, someone who's prone to over the top immune responses- histamine and mast cell hyper activity, you have a double whammy. This is why drugs for rosacea and some anti biotics and even antifungals can be helpful, they reduce flora and organisms that are revving up your inflammatory response. Most of the time you don't actually have a full blown bacterial/fungal/demodex problem-youre just colonized like everyone else but have an immune system that finds it extra freaky!
These white plugs are almost assuredly keratin/immature villus hairs/perforated follicles/trapped cells . Think of them as a sort of ingrown hair of sorts, but on a much much smaller scale.
So this keratin is backed up, maybe altered due to gene expressions being screwed up by inflammation. The result is a foreign body inflammatory reaction to the excess of altered keratin being trapped inside the inflamed dermal site. Keratin, a substance normally used to provide strength and waterproofing to the skin, ends up inciting a foreign body auto immune response, and our bodies suck at healing when inflammation and cellular organization are coalescing in a screwed up way.
The extraction of these white plugs definitely gives some amount of relief because i suspect they are in a sense deterring the healing process by hanging out trapped like a splinter, but the process of extracting something so tiny inevitably leads to more local inflammation, thus the domino effect of more plugs, more inflammation, slow healing etc.
My approach is moving away from mechanical extraction via tweezers-you end up with so much scarring doing this. Focus on preventing inflamed sores to begin. Whatever is causing this starts with a simple skin lesion, could be acne, impetigo, contact dermatitis, rosacea. Figure that out first and then commit to no messing with any sores you do get. Minimizing inflammation is crucial and you have to avoid injury to the skin that inevitably happens with picking, squeezing, tweezing. Keratin production gets ramped up and faulty when the body experiences chronic or overwhelming inflammation-conditions like psoriasis, eczema, discoid lupus, cutaneous lupus, lichen planus all show keratinization problems. This is because inflammation leads to a keratin process gone awry.
This kind of sucks in a sense, because you can't de-keratinize your entire system, you need keratin to build connective tissues and other important structures. Avoiding biotin is helpful in terms of preventing over production, so if you're taking a hair skin and nail vitamin i suggest avoiding that. Vitamin A, Zinc and Vit C will help overall with boosting healthy cellular clearance/regeneration. Antioxidant amino acids can also help. Anecdotally, sweating seems to help clear our dead cells and keratin, so exercise and get sweaty if you're able, it will also increase blood flow and help lymph drainage.
This also seems to disproportionately effect parts of the skin with a lot of hair and oil follicles, so if you have the means, maybe laser hair removal might help. But the bottom line is, these plugs are made by our own bodies and they're malfunctioning and interfering with healing because of inflammation. Hope this helps, sorry theres no magic "take this bizarre veterinary medicine and see instant results!" pill for this. But i think it helps to understand whats happening, so you can rationally work on it
This is an issue of keratinization gone awry due to inflammation.
The initial skin lesion can be triggered by anything, in my case it's just usually a deep pimple or superficial injury or irritation to the skin. If you're a picker, which i admittedly am, we sometimes cause extra inflammation by manipulating our pores, and in some cases increasing the bacterial burden our inflammatory response then has to grapple with. The area becomes very inflamed, and the processes normally called on in response to wounding are unable to work effectively, causing the follicles which are normally moving and depositing keratin and sebum through the layers of skin to become ruptured, constricted or otherwise messed up.
If you have a tendency toward keratosis pilaris, you might have a genetic tendency for an extra wonky keratin production and clearance pattern at work in your body- further complicating matters. If you have a hyperactive inflammatory response, someone who's prone to over the top immune responses- histamine and mast cell hyper activity, you have a double whammy. This is why drugs for rosacea and some anti biotics and even antifungals can be helpful, they reduce flora and organisms that are revving up your inflammatory response. Most of the time you don't actually have a full blown bacterial/fungal/demodex problem-youre just colonized like everyone else but have an immune system that finds it extra freaky!
These white plugs are almost assuredly keratin/immature villus hairs/perforated follicles/trapped cells . Think of them as a sort of ingrown hair of sorts, but on a much much smaller scale.
So this keratin is backed up, maybe altered due to gene expressions being screwed up by inflammation. The result is a foreign body inflammatory reaction to the excess of altered keratin being trapped inside the inflamed dermal site. Keratin, a substance normally used to provide strength and waterproofing to the skin, ends up inciting a foreign body auto immune response, and our bodies suck at healing when inflammation and cellular organization are coalescing in a screwed up way.
The extraction of these white plugs definitely gives some amount of relief because i suspect they are in a sense deterring the healing process by hanging out trapped like a splinter, but the process of extracting something so tiny inevitably leads to more local inflammation, thus the domino effect of more plugs, more inflammation, slow healing etc.
My approach is moving away from mechanical extraction via tweezers-you end up with so much scarring doing this. Focus on preventing inflamed sores to begin. Whatever is causing this starts with a simple skin lesion, could be acne, impetigo, contact dermatitis, rosacea. Figure that out first and then commit to no messing with any sores you do get. Minimizing inflammation is crucial and you have to avoid injury to the skin that inevitably happens with picking, squeezing, tweezing. Keratin production gets ramped up and faulty when the body experiences chronic or overwhelming inflammation-conditions like psoriasis, eczema, discoid lupus, cutaneous lupus, lichen planus all show keratinization problems. This is because inflammation leads to a keratin process gone awry.
This kind of sucks in a sense, because you can't de-keratinize your entire system, you need keratin to build connective tissues and other important structures. Avoiding biotin is helpful in terms of preventing over production, so if you're taking a hair skin and nail vitamin i suggest avoiding that. Vitamin A, Zinc and Vit C will help overall with boosting healthy cellular clearance/regeneration. Antioxidant amino acids can also help. Anecdotally, sweating seems to help clear our dead cells and keratin, so exercise and get sweaty if you're able, it will also increase blood flow and help lymph drainage.
This also seems to disproportionately effect parts of the skin with a lot of hair and oil follicles, so if you have the means, maybe laser hair removal might help. But the bottom line is, these plugs are made by our own bodies and they're malfunctioning and interfering with healing because of inflammation. Hope this helps, sorry theres no magic "take this bizarre veterinary medicine and see instant results!" pill for this. But i think it helps to understand whats happening, so you can rationally work on it
9 Comments
Wow ! this was by far the best logical explanation of what’s happening in the skin that I read anywhere so far, and it makes so much sense. You can find a lot of dumb speculation on the internet, but this is straight up like from a dermatology book. Thanks!
I'm glad and truly hope it helps others dealing with this. After years of agony and confusion about this, losing an entire summer having reconstructive surgery to close a gaping wound I created trying to tweeze "mystery plugs" out of a sore on my forehead, being scared half to death reading all the pseudoscience/hysterical theories from people who do not actually understand science going on about parasites and biofilms- all before finally realizing my Nurse Practitioner sister had left her immunology, derm and genetics books from her grad school days at our families house. Cracking a couple books made it a lot less mysterious! Science rules :-) <33
Thank you for posting this information!!
I am tottaly agree with all this info. I suggest to use antigungal treatments- because then you have wounds and years of antibacterial treatment you should have for 100% fungal infection too and some sulfur and zink treatment too- it will make production of sebum less so any infection will have less ,, food,,. But - in Russia ( i am from russia) in discussions on this problem we just started to think that skin immunity ( and immune system in general) can be affected by intestinal parasites- (most likely ascaris lumbricoides) so I highly suggest to make Igg ascaris test ( or at least to start from general IgE and eosinophils- normally they are high then you have parasite infection). And I repeat- that what we have in skin- it is not any skin parasites- it is some wrong ( allergic) reaction probably on intestinal parasites and for sure on pickings! Skin is trying to close pores, blood vessels from infection , but people are ruining this. More you pickle- more you have these white things!
Wow thankyou so much I’ve been to2 hospitals and 3 dermatologists nothing seems to be working and these wounds I keep “tweezing” obviously won’t heal. But I can’t figire out what these hard black head looking things are in all of my open (wounds) they are hard and almost always have a lump under them in the skin. Btw this is all over my neck, face, and shoulders. Now 3 months later I’ve forced myself to stop picking its starting to heal but even with the scab just about gone I have hard lumps under my skin around my lips and if I push on it the skin crunches and rips away from the area revealing a nasty hole under my skin any ideas ?
Look up Morgellons disease, which research is showing is connected to Lyme disease.
Parasites are in fact very common! Where do you think inflammation comes from in the first place? Bacteria, fungus, parasites and virus.!
Demodex mites are very common. Almost all adults have them, and often the cause of rosacea and adult acne.
They can be seen under a microscope and comes up from the follicles during the night and have sex on your face !
And yes you CAN get them from your dog, and/or your boyfriend/girlfriend, towlesl, etc
Same goes for mange scabies and Cheyletiella.
Also lice and various strongyles can affect human skin/hair.
Many different microscopic critters crawling on you all right now!
When the immune system goes out of balance they reproduce faster and create trouble.
Treatment: ivermectin, fenbendazole , tea tree oil, borax, hydrogen peroxide and enzyme peels/ solutions amongs many.
Diet change is always key
These are Facts
Good luck
Demodex mites are very common. Almost all adults have them, and often the cause of rosacea and adult acne.
They can be seen under a microscope and comes up from the follicles during the night and have sex on your face !
And yes you CAN get them from your dog, and/or your boyfriend/girlfriend, towlesl, etc
Same goes for mange scabies and Cheyletiella.
Also lice and various strongyles can affect human skin/hair.
Many different microscopic critters crawling on you all right now!
When the immune system goes out of balance they reproduce faster and create trouble.
Treatment: ivermectin, fenbendazole , tea tree oil, borax, hydrogen peroxide and enzyme peels/ solutions amongs many.
Diet change is always key
These are Facts
Good luck
@ Noelle: I never said parasites don't exist, but the parasites and inflammatory rashes you mentioned, like scabies and lice have very specific and recognizable clinical presentations, as does rosacea, none of which present the chronic/slow healing wounds people are describing.
for those of us living in first world countries and not suffering from significant immu suppression(IE HIV, neutropenia from chemo therapy) and lucky to live in adequate sanitary conditions, toting fear about parasites crawling around on people is irresponsible and borders on absurd, as is recommending people treat themselves with drugs like ivermectin unless diagnosed by a dermatologist with the need to do so. i am not denying that our skin is colonized with a variety of different things, but most of the organisms on our bodies are entirely harmless, youre playing on peoples fear and misunderstanding
If you re read my posts, I mentioned initial inflammatory spots can be caused by a variety of things: staph, cystic acne, rosacea etc and avoiding further manipulation of these lesions allows a dermatologist to assess and treat accordingly.
for those of us living in first world countries and not suffering from significant immu suppression(IE HIV, neutropenia from chemo therapy) and lucky to live in adequate sanitary conditions, toting fear about parasites crawling around on people is irresponsible and borders on absurd, as is recommending people treat themselves with drugs like ivermectin unless diagnosed by a dermatologist with the need to do so. i am not denying that our skin is colonized with a variety of different things, but most of the organisms on our bodies are entirely harmless, youre playing on peoples fear and misunderstanding
If you re read my posts, I mentioned initial inflammatory spots can be caused by a variety of things: staph, cystic acne, rosacea etc and avoiding further manipulation of these lesions allows a dermatologist to assess and treat accordingly.
@reel life: glad the majority of spots have resolved :-) scar tissue under the skin feels hard/stiff while being less elastic and strong than regular unwounded scar free skin. my advice is stop pushing on the area and utilize gentle scar treatments. keep skin moisturized and avoid squeezing spots and reopening scar tissue which will only create more of the same.
You are reading content posted in the Dermatology Community
Learn to identify and prevent bites from summer’s most common pests.
Doctors argue for legislation to curb this dangerous teen trend in the latest Missouri Medicine report.
10 ways to keep your skin healthy all winter long
How to get rid of lumpy fat on your arms, hips, thighs and bottom
Diet “do’s” and “don’ts” for healthy, radiant skin.
Images of rashes caused by common skin conditions
