Blemishes come with a host of embarrassments, but the ones that accompany whiteheads rank at or near the top of the list. They’ve ruined dates, job interviews, and an uncountable number of first impressions, and these skin health embarrassments often feel inevitable to those of us who have to suffer through them.
But they don’t have to be. You can learn how to get rid of whiteheads or avoid them in the first place, which gives you a fighting chance of avoiding those “hide under the bed” moments when they suddenly appear out of nowhere. You do need to know the causes, though, and you need to have a plan for both avoidance and elimination.
The ultimate expert on how to get rid of whiteheads
Every dermatologist has the education and experience to deal with whiteheads, but few have the stomach and determination of Dr. Sandra Lee, aka Dr. Pimple Popper. She’s made a career out of tackling and eliminating some of the most grotesque whiteheads imaginable, so she knows the terrain.
“Don’t pop your pimples,” she says simply. “Because there are risks. Infections, and things like that. I know people are gonna do it, so I feel like it’s my responsibility to tell people when it’s the ideal time, and that would be when they’re most superficial.”
To put that in more technical terms, that time occurs when whiteheads are still pustules, which means extraction can be performed with the least amount of damage to the skin.
Extraction involves using the right equipment
If you are going to do an extraction on your own, though, understand that every job demands the right equipment, and that’s true when it comes to extracting whiteheads, too. Lee recommends starting with clean hands and clean skin, and you should make sure the area around the pimple is also sterilized. You should also steer clear of cysts and lipomas, as well as pimples that are an integral part of an ingrown hair.
Beyond that, it’s important to evaluate the pimple itself. Lee won’t touch whiteheads that extend into the muscle, and she only recommends extraction when the head of the pimple is clearly visible, with either a white or yellow color.
That indicates that the material to be extracted — which is called sebaceous filaments with most ordinary whiteheads — is close to the surface and easier to extract. Warm compresses can be used to further simplify the extraction, especially if the whitehead is hard to the touch.
Lee’s go-to tool is the comedones extractor. It’s the foundation tool for a lot of what she does, and the initial goal is to use the extractor to squeeze the area around the whitehead or blackhead. She also wants to minimize trauma to the skin to make the extraction less painful and eliminate the possibility of scarring.
When to see a dermatologist for whiteheads
This is also a common question Lee fields frequently, and she’s equally straightforward in her recommendations.
“Certainly, when you have a deep one underneath there,” she says, “and you have an event coming up. Those are the ones we inject.”
These injects draw eyeballs for TV stars like Lee, of course, to the point where she actually said that people try to create challenging whiteheads for her to tackle.
“This often involves them getting a tub of lard,” she says, and it’s virtually certain that the recipes stemming from this won’t be showing up on culinary shows any time soon.
How to avoid whiteheads in the first place
The best way to avoid whitehead extraction is to minimize the odds that you’ll get them in the first place. There’s no one way to do this, especially when hormones are running wild, but there are multiple small things you can do that add up.
The first small thing is to establish an effective skincare routine. This isn’t nearly as hard as it used to be — there’s plenty of good information available about skin type, effective choices, and so on.
If you’re mounting an all-out assault on whiteheads, though, three ingredients are typically part of the mix: salicylic acid, topical retinoids, and azelaic acid. Before you go all in on these, though, it’s not a bad idea to get an evaluation from a dermatologist.
The other is to adopt a diet that promotes skin health. This, too, is easier than it used to be — eat plenty of lean proteins, fruits and veggies, and stay hydrated. Fatty diets that feature ingredients like the aforementioned tub of lard experiment are obviously a no-no, and you should also try to avoid processed foods and sugar. These can be an underlying cause of whiteheads, and anything you can do to lower your stress level will be helpful as well.
A final note: Men and women face different causes for whiteheads
As you check all the boxes for the tactics outlined here, you also need to remember that men and women often face different issues when it comes to isolating the causes.
For men, it’s about accounting for the fact that their skin is thicker, which means oily skin can be more common. Shaving is another issue that has to be tackled separately, sometimes with a unique set of products.
Women frequently face an entirely different set of causes. These include whiteheads popping up more frequently during the menstrual cycle, and they’re also more common during pregnancy and perimenopause. Contraceptives also fit into this basic category, and issues related to makeup can be a factor as well.
There’s a lot to think about, but you can use this process and the information presented here to avoid whiteheads, diminish their severity, and get rid of them when they do occur.
