Black and White: The deal with sebaceous filament

When I was still in my adolescence, I was very conscious of my face since it had a lot of problems. Apart from the usual acne, I had a barrage of whiteheads and blackheads. Add this to the fact that I grew up watching the onset of commercials churning up that practice of clear, whitehead and blackhead free skin. In my high school, some girls I knew had been buying those pore strips which remove the icky gunk off their noses.

My mother also had this obsession with clean faces. She was disgusted by my blackheads and my "lack of concern" which for me was not really so, but more like a "I really don't think I should do anything about this" type of concern. It was also because whenever I tried to remove them, especially the prominent ones, I end up with little wounds which in the end made my skin look much worse. She even took me to one of those skin shops in our mall. Easily the scariest and most painful aesthetic-related experience I've ever had.

To cut through the horror story, after the facial, I noticed that my pores did appear clean, but somehow appeared "cavernous". I thought everything would be back to normal in a matter of days as my skin just might be adjusting with the removal of the blemishes.Boy, was I dead wrong. Since then, I've always had these huge pores, and no matter what "pore reducing" product I use, my attempts were useless.

I also had a friend who had a bad experience with those blackhead removing strips. She said she had perfect skin until she tried to use nose clearing strips sold on the market (very huge at that time). "Ayan kasi, nag-arte arte pa, nasira tuloy mukha ko" ,she recalled.

After learning of her experience, I had a realization: if extraction of blackheads and whiteheads would cause more trouble, why then are we taught that these things should be removed (via cleansing, extraction, etc)? In fact, based on my experience, I had worse skin after the extraction that even now that my hormones have subsided and my acne trouble is no more, I still have huge pores from the extractions (I actually endured two painful extractions).

What are blackheads and whiteheads? These basically are sebum plugs formed which are also made of dead skin cells. These plugs may oxidize and become black, hence the name "blackhead". Sebum, which is secreted by glands in our skin, are made of natural oils which are essential in maintaining the integrity of our skin. A collection of sebum and dead skin cells around hair follicles are formed, forming what is called a sebaceous filament. These white little cylindrical tubes appear uniformly distributed around the nose, cheek and forehead areas, are exposed when we pinch those portions. Blackheads and whiteheads are "mutant" versions of these, a "morphological variant of sebaceous follicles". 

Therefore, what me and my friend did was to remove the naturally-occurring sebaceous filaments along with the sporadic blackheads and whiteheads. Yes, natural. Believe it or not, even those models for skin care products have it. Photoshop is the ultimate skin care miracle. I mean Google "Photoshop skin smoothing" and find a lot of tutorials and interesting pictures. 

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So if the whiteheads are distributed evenly within an area and appear uniform, go easy on the pore strips and find a proper extracting tool. Or better, go to your dermatologist!What we can do is to at least make the whitehead "cleaner", as they cannot be removed anyway. Proper cleansing (like including a weekly mineral oil cleansing regimen) and exfoliation with BHAs can help reduce the appearance of these nightmares and give our skin nicer looking pores.