When you're bored, besides eating, sleeping, and playing games, do you find yourself irresistibly picking at your skin for fun—squeezing pimples, pulling at dead skin, and clearing out your nose and ears?But do you know the consequences of these actions after satisfying your urge?
Popping Pimples
Those red, swollen pimples on your face seem to grow uncontrollably—utterly unbearable. One word: pop!
After the satisfying squeeze, here's the reality you face:
1. Incorrect squeezing can deform pores, leading to acne scars. Over-squeezing damages surrounding skin, causing inflammation and ultimately scarring;
2.Blindly squeezing pimples can also leave dark spots. When the skin is damaged, it can cause bruising, leading to pigmentation and forming dark spots or acne scars.
The Right Time to Pop Pimples
Wait until the pimple has matured before popping it to minimize scarring. Signs of a mature pimple: it has developed a whitehead or pus-filled bump, feels hard to the touch, and is painful.
Never squeeze pimples in the facial triangle!
This area lacks venous valves and connects to the cranial cavity. Squeezing may force bacteria downward into blood vessels, allowing them to enter the cranium via superficial facial veins. This risks life-threatening intracranial infection.
Therefore, we must keep our hands to ourselves and resist the urge to pick at them.
Pulling off dead skin
During autumn and winter, it feels like moisture is severely lacking, with every part of the body sending out warnings. For me, the most troublesome issue is constantly peeling lips, sometimes leading to rough handling—like pulling the skin off.
The result? Often too forceful, causing unnecessary damage—tearing open a wound that not only hurts but risks infection.
Dead skin requires proper removal:
First, never pull off lifted lip skin with your hands or tweezers, as this can cause pain, bleeding, or even infection.Instead, apply a warm towel for three to five minutes, then gently brush away dead skin with a soft brush. Follow with lip balm, consider supplementing with vitamin C, and stay hydrated by drinking plenty of water.
Next, apply lipstick vertically. Most people apply it horizontally, but lip fibers run vertically—so applying up and down is the correct method.After meals, wipe your lips before reapplying lip balm. Also, avoid applying lip balm more than five times daily, as overuse can be counterproductive.
For fruit lovers, apples, lemons, kiwis, bananas, and sugarcane are excellent choices. However, avoid cold foods like watermelon.
Another tip: reduce lipstick frequency. The wax and pigments in lipstick can cause moisture loss, and long-term use may dry out the lips. When choosing lip balm, opt for simple formulations—basic ingredients like glycerin provide sufficient protection.
Earwax Removal
Earwax, scientifically known as cerumen, serves a protective function in the outer ear canal when present in small amounts. Moreover, our ear canals possess a self-cleaning mechanism—cerumen naturally moves toward the ear opening during activities like chewing, speaking, or opening the mouth.Therefore, avoid unnecessary ear cleaning!
The mechanism is this: skin cells lining the ear canal grow outward, carrying earwax toward the opening. However, this process is slow—like a snail's pace.
If you can't resist the urge, here's what might happen:
1. Loss of the "protective barrier": Frequent ear cleaning removes all earwax, effectively stripping away this protective layer. This can lead to chronic inflammation, causing symptoms like ear pain, pus discharge, and even hearing loss;
2. Damage to the ear canal or eardrum: Using ear scoops,toothpicks, matchsticks, fingernails, or other hard objects to clean earwax. If too much force is applied, it can damage the external auditory canal, causing bleeding, infection, or even abscesses, inflammation, and ulceration. This can result in excruciating ear pain, hearing loss, or even perforation of the eardrum leading to permanent hearing loss.
3. Earwax impaction: Using cotton swabs to clean ears may push wax deeper into the canal, preventing natural discharge. Water entering the ear during shampooing or bathing can cause wax to absorb moisture and expand, potentially damaging the ear canal skin and triggering inflammation.Additionally, when water enters the ears during swimming or bathing, it's recommended to tilt your head to one side and jump a few times to allow the water to drain naturally. After completing this action, simply use a tissue to gently blot the moisture from the outer ear canal opening. 4. Increased earwax production: Frequent ear cleaning can cause chronic inflammation of the outer ear canal skin, stimulating the ceruminous glands to produce more earwax.
Therefore, avoid frequent ear cleaning and protect your ears properly.
Nose Picking
Nose boogers—those disgusting things—should be cleaned out, right? But is frequent picking okay?
It's permissible, but not recommended.
At the entrance of the nostrils, hair follicles secrete substances to lubricate and protect the nasal cavity. When these secretions dry, they become what we call boogers. When a booger blocks a nostril and affects breathing, people feel the urge to remove it.
Picking your nose also brings these troubles:
1. It can remove nasal hairs.However, nasal hairs serve vital protective and secretory functions. When boogers adhere tightly to these hairs, forcefully removing them damages the hairs, weakening their defenses. This increases susceptibility to nasal inflammation, dry rhinitis, pharyngitis, bronchitis, pneumonia, and other conditions.Nasal debris adheres firmly to the nasal mucosa. Forcibly removing it may damage the mucosa, leading to nosebleeds. Numerous capillaries run beneath the nasal mucosa, and excessive force or hard fingernails can cause injury.People rarely wash their hands before picking their nose, potentially introducing bacteria and microorganisms into the nasal cavity. This disrupts the nasal environment's stability and may cause infections in severe cases.
Most people engage in these habits to some extent, and their consequences may be far more serious than imagined. Therefore, take care of yourself, keep those pesky hands in check, and break these bad habits.