What is a Comedone?
Comedones are forms of acne, which we may more commonly refer to as whiteheads or blackheads. A single whitehead or blackhead is a comedo or comedone, which means glutton in Latin. Comedones is a common plural form of comedo. This type of acne tends to create relatively small black or white bumps on the face. Whiteheads look like they contain a tiny bit of pus, though this is mostly dead skin cells. Although they are still visible, they are called closed comedones because they have a little bit of skin over the top of them. The main difference between a white and a blackhead is that blackheads don’t have this skin closing. This means material in them oxidizes from contact with the air, and turn black or dark brown. Material in a comedone, white or black, is really the same, and the two types form in a near identical way. Both are caused when follicles in the skin become blocked, usually by sebum, an oil produced by the sebaceous glands. As follicles get blocked, they widen and collect
A comedone is a clump of flat, dead skin cells that builds up in a follicle in the facial skin. A follicle is a long hollow tube (relatively speaking) not much bigger than the diameter of a hair, that extends down from the surface of the skin into the epidermis. The surface of the face is covered with them. The walls of the follicle are lined with the same type of cells that are on the outside of the face and are constantly being shed in the same way the surface skin sloughs off dead cells. When certain conditions exist, a “physiological glue” is produced in the follicle that causes these dead cells to stick together which can plug the follicle. If this plug is able to exit the opening in the upper end of the follicle, it is called an “open comedone” by dermatologists. A non-comedogenic product, then, is one that does not promote the formation of these plugs or clumps of dead cells. The good news about open comedones is that, usually, as long as the follicle has an exit or opening, the
