Excoriated Acne – If you pick at it, it WILL get worse.
When your mother used to tell you that picking at a cut would make it worse, she wasn’t kidding. If you are still doing it to this day, however, then the chances are that you have a compulsive skin picking disorder – apparently not that uncommon in this day and age. But picking at a healed cut or spot is a big mistake. It can lead to a small scab becoming a large wound, and can very easily result in infection. The unsightly blemish that results is known as excoriated acne.
“Excoriate” means to strip the hide or skin off something. It is a word that is used figuratively as much as anything, often being used to explain the severe telling off that an unruly child might get from a parent. But it does have a literal application, and the obsessive habit of picking at our skin is an example of how excoriation is a genuine problem. Anyone can develop excoriated acne, but it is more common among women.
Excoriated acne is the result of a desire to pick, squeeze, or scratch at blemishes, even creating new blemishes in some cases. This leads to open sores which, when they scab over, are prime for picking again. It can be a very hard habit to break, sometimes only stopping when the skin ceases scabbing. At this point, what you are left with is open red sores and inflammation. This is excoriated acne, and can be very unsightly and also potentially very unhealthy.
Why Acne Treatment is so Important
The problem of acne is not a new one, and yet we find ourselves at the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century still without a genuine, permanent cure for the condition. Acne is a problem which persists for a large number of sufferers due to the lack of strong, substantial research aimed at delivering a cure, and a preference for lotions and potions which may well clear up the external symptoms for some weeks at a time, but do little to affect the overall condition. This ensures that in good time, a return to the old problems will occur, and the sufferer will need to start again in their search for a cure.
As it is widely felt that the major root causes of acne are internal, it is puzzling that the majority of the cures which are commercially available treat the condition from the outside. For the sufferer this simply means that they will need to spend the same money over and over to achieve the same short-term effect. There is little point in doing this from a common sense point of view, as the sole substantive effect is to clear the skin to make room for more symptomatic lesions and blemishes to fill. Treating the condition from the inside is really the only sensible approach. This can be achieved in consultation with a doctor, but if possible you should also consult a dietician to find what steps you can take to regulate your body’s production of sebum, along with observing a rigorous cleansing regime.
