Most adults have about 5 million hairs on their body, which means just as many pores. Pores are simply the opening at the top of our hair follicles. Gases, liquids, and microscopic particles pass through your pores. Oil comes out of your pores – it is made by glands attached to your hair follicles. Because we have so many tiny fine hairs on our faces, we have lots of facial pores.
Several things affect the size of your pores. While certain factors are out of our control, like age and genetics, sun exposure, smoking, wind damage and pollution can cause damage to your skin and make your pores look larger. (delete ‘as well as smoking.’)
It is possible to slightly reduce the size of your large pores with products that contain tretinoin,a form of Vitamin A. Other things that can help are exfoliants or exfoliating treatments like microdermabrasion and microneedling. We recommend at least 3 treatments of microneedling to see a decrease in pore size. We offer both microneedling as well as different strengths of tretinoin by Obagi. We also offer TCA peels which can remove damaged skin and reduce pore size.
Pores tend to look larger when skin is oily. Daily face-washing may be enough for most to reduce oils on the skin, but for others there are products that contain salicylic or glycolic acid, both which can help dry out over-oily skin.
Whiteheads and blackheads occur when pores become clogged. This can happen from oil build-up or dead skin cells, bacteria, and makeup. Washing your face daily, in the morning and the evening, can help to prevent such build-up. Depending on whether you have oily, normal, or dry your skin is, you may prefer Obagi Gentle face wash or Obagi Foaming face wash. The worst thing you can do to a blocked pore is squeeze it or touch it. Leave it alone (we know, it’s hard). Contact with your fingers only adds more dirt and oil, and the squeezing causes inflammation, redness and infection which make pores even larger.
Debris, such as dead skin cells, collects around the edges of pores, making them look bigger. Topical vitamin A treatments like tretinoin can prevent skin cells in the pore from sticking together, and help to reduce the ridges or rims that develop around pores that make them more visible.
The best thing you can do for your skin and your pores is to wear sunscreen and avoid too much sun exposure. Sun damage causes not only age spots and wrinkles, but it can thicken the top layer of the skin. This thickening causes pores to look bigger, because of the rim that forms around them. We recommend sunscreens that contain zinc oxide. There are great options now that have less shine like Obagi Sunshield Matte or try a tinted one like Tizo Mineral Sunscreen. If your skin truly cannot tolerate sunscreen – we carry Vitamin C serum which also gives you sun protection, although less than a zinc oxide sun screen.
Dr. Morgan’s office at 2045 Peachtree Road NE will be permanently closing on August 15, 2019.
Beginning September 1, 2019 Dr. Morgan will be seeing follow up patients on Thursday afternoons at an office near Northside Hospital and at our Alpharetta location on Saturday mornings.
Please refer to the bottom of the Home Page for exact locations and hours of operation.
