Mirror, Mirror, On The Wall, Who’s The Wisest White Girl Of All?
#AskSCB: I have a kind of embarrassing beauty question… I get tiny red bumps on the back of my arms and legs and I DESPERATELY want them to disappear. I’ve read a lot online (probz my first mistake) but there seems to be this battle between the Exfoliates and Soothers and I just want them to go away. Plz help.
Even those these might be annoying, at least know you’re not alone. You’re probably talking about keratosis pilaris, which is a genetic skin problem that affects 50% of the world – 4 in 10 adults have it and it’s more prone for women… Unfortunately it’s apparently impossible to eradicate, so the best thing you can do is treat the symptoms and practice good self-care to minimize them.
(image from pinterest)
Make peace with the situation because unless you outgrow them, you can’t truly get rid of them. It’s an issue where your hair follicles/pores get clogged because they don’t naturally exfoliate and then the bumps you’re talking about form – you’ll want to employ both exfoliators and soothing moisturizers in your routine to treat them.
For at home treatment to deal with keratosis pilaris, regularly exfoliate but don’t overscrub those areas or you’ll just piss them off and irritate them more. This is a problem that goes much deeper than the parts of your skin you can scrub topically using an exfoliant. However, you could benefit from using a cleansing brush like the Clinique Sonic System Purifying Cleansing Brush or the Clarisonic Plus Brush for Face & Body to help stimulate the exfoliation process.
You can try a moisturizer with lactic acid in it to help loosen the cells to exfoliate the skin, like AmLactin. Picking at them like they’re a zit won’t do any good but irritate them so don’t do that, either – just exfoliate a few times a week, moisturize well and leave them alone, and hopefully they should at least become less noticeable with a regular routine dedicated to minimizing them.
If it seriously bothers you, Allure says in this article you can go see your dermatologist for laser treatments to exfoliate the deeper layers of your skin to really break up the clogged pores.
xx
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STONECOLDBETCH 
AmLactin is a LIFE SAVER!