Stuff You Should Know - SYSK Selects: How Acne Works

Episode Date: May 25, 2019

Over the course of our lives, 80 percent of us will experience acne. Ultimately, acne comes down to one thing, a blockage in the sebaceous gland. Learn what makes a blackhead black, and everything else about zits, in this pus-filled episode of SYSK. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey there, everyone. It's me, Josh, and for this week's SYS Case Selects, I've decided to bring us all down into the disgusting world of acne on the microscopic level. Yes, it's kinda gross, and yeah, no one wants it,

but we all get it from time to time, some of us more than others, and it's great to know what's going on down there because I gotta admit, it is fascinating. So enjoy this episode on acne. Welcome to Step You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.

I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. That makes this stuff you should know. That's right. Doesn't it? It does. When we're in this room, one thing happens. Anger.

I was gonna say magic. Angry magic. Yeah, right. That'd be good. Get out of the hat. I haven't seen that yet, the angry magician. No, that'd be fun. That'd be a great idea.

Yeah. There you go. Angry comics. Yeah, there are plenty of them, and for good reason too. Yeah. Do you remember a while back, we were writing a lot of articles

that seemed to share a common theme of skincare? Yeah. I remember that too. I didn't write too many of those. I wrote a lot of skincare articles. Yeah, I did. And I learned that I'm fascinated by the skin. That's good.

Yeah, it turned out to be very good. Like you don't want to take too many showers in a day. You don't want the water you use in your shower to be too hot. Like I learned these things definitively. Right. Also, the skin on your lips is three layers thick, whereas the rest of the skin on your face

is about 16 layers thick. Wow. And they're actually translucent, which is why your lips are reddish, because it's just the mucous membrane underneath. Right, showing through. Yep. Look at that.

Yeah, and you don't want to lick your lips too much because your saliva contains the digestive enzyme, which starts to break down the very thin and fragile skin on your lips. Yeah, I got chapped lips a lot. From licking them? Stop licking your lips. I'm constantly just, I have oral stuff,

bite my nails, bite my cheeks, bite my lip, all that stuff. All that good fun, stressy stuff. But you don't smoke cigarettes, though. Good for you. Yeah, I guess I'd chewed my face off instead of doing that. Yeah, that's a good looking face. Thank you. Well, anyway, Chuck, I just wanted

to say all that, to say that I will be very interested in what we're talking about today, which is acne. I'm glad you are. I am too, although I never really got acne, so I'm a little less enthused. It's so unfair. Look at this right here. Right now.

I have a big old whitehead running through my nose. It won't go away. Like, I was pressing it with my pinkies. Like, I can pop a zit. I get them frequently. That's a tough spot, though. Josh is talking about the area right under the nostril. It's so painful.

No, man, so the nose kind of prohibits access like you want. Well, it's not just that. It's very, very sensitive. And I was pressing it, and my eyes are watering, and it still wouldn't pop. So I'll have to have you me do it. Yeah. Yeah, but I guess that's method podcasting,

following in your footsteps, Chuck. So you want to talk about acne? First, I guess we should talk about the skin a little bit, right, in the process of how, well, let's talk about the skin. Did you like Tom's description? I did, actually. I think most people know by now it's the largest organ, but Tom takes it a step further in a very Buffalo Bill way.

And he says that if you skinned an adult human, there would be enough material to make a four by five foot area rug of skin, waist and pounds. I'm glad he didn't say how many skin suits or lampshades would make, because that'd be really creepy. Area rug was creepy enough. So yeah, 10 pounds of skin on an adult body. Right, and then most of the skin,

there's three layers. There's the epidermis, the dermis, and the subcutaneous layer, right? And the subcutaneous layer. I think the dermis is the fattiest layer, and the subcutaneous layer is like the nastiest layer. It's like, have you ever seen Hellraiser? Yeah.

Remember the woman, as she was coming back, regenerating? She regenerated from the inside out. So at one point, she's just like muscles in blood. Just above that is the subcutaneous layer. I think the epidermis is kind of gross, too, though, because it's all dead. It is dead. This is one of the things that fascinates me about skin.

All the skin I'm looking at right now that I can see, dead. Dead is disco, you know? Weird. Yeah, so your skin grows beneath that outer layer, and it grows as keratinocytes, which are new skin cells. Yeah, and your skin is a constant motion, pushing that dead skin up and up and out through the pores where they flake off into your bed,

making your mattress heavier. Right, from the moment it's born, when a cell divides, it starts making its way outward. And it takes about a month for a skin cell to be born and then make it out to the outer layer. That sounds about right. To the tune of 40 to 60 million skin cells per day? Yeah, 40,000 a minute.

That's crazy. Are reaching the surface, right? And so they reach the surface, and they don't just fall right off. Along the process, they die, and they become cornified and become keratinocytes, or corneocytes, sorry. And when they reach the surface, they provide a function for a while. They mix with sebum, which is the oil we produce,

that I really, really produce. Oily skin, yeah. And some fats, what kind? Lipids, Josh, linoleic acid. OK, so they mix all together, and they form waterproof skin that keeps out water. That's huge. Sebum is why we don't soak up water

when we walk around in the rain. Exactly, and it keeps bacteria out, which is why the skin is your first organ of resistance for immunity. That's right. So you've got all this process going on. Skin cells eventually do fall off and jump off, and are sloughed off.

And then beneath all that, you have the subcutaneous layer, and that's where the hair starts growing, right? Yeah, that's where you're going to find your hair follicle, which looks sort of like just a little tube with a little rounder end. I would say it looks like a sperm. A sperm going inward toward your body. Or teardrop, sure.

Maybe, and that is where the hair begins to grow from the bottom up. And it grows out of this follicle and collects on the way out, sebum, which we said was oil. That's why when you don't take a shower, your hair is going to look all oily. And actually, men, I think, have more sebum than women.

And teenagers have lots of sebum. Yeah, it's almost equal among the genders and during adolescence. Yeah, because that's why you get acne, most often in adolescence, because we're taking you up through where acne starts, which is really sebum. Right, well, the hair has a lot to do with it, at least. The hair follicle is connected to a sebaceous gland, like you said, which is why your hair seems oily

when it comes out. And so you've got this whole house of cards, I guess, just waiting to screw up. Well, they're trying to squeeze through this little pore. Right, together. Those dead skin cells, that migration they make, the way they get out is through the pore, through the follicle, through the sebaceous gland, right?

That's right. So when you have a lot of them coming together at once, all these dead skin cells are trying to get through the same door, it's like Three Stooges Syndrome from The Simpsons. Remember, Mr. Burns had everything? Yeah. But nothing could kill him, because they couldn't all

get through the door of his health? That's exactly right. So when you have too many skin cells, things start getting blocked and things back up behind it, and you've got trouble. Yeah, I mean, that's one way it can happen. And they don't know why the body would overproduce skin cells. But hey, it happens.

Yeah. Do we need to know why? Exactly. Another thing that can happen, you can have too much sebum, like we talk about in puberty. In puberty is when that's going to happen, most likely. Bacteria, specifically propionibacterium acnes. Nice.

Piacnes, that's found in acne lesions and every type of acne that we're going to talk about. They're all lesions. Right, and then inflammation, right? Yeah, the bacteria causes inflammation. When there's backup and there's bacteria, you're going to get inflammation. Yeah, Tom put it like these were different things

that could happen, and I'm sure they are. But it also seems to happen like a sequence of events. It's kind of like all of them. You've got too many skin cells backing up, right? So the sebum backs up behind it. Well, this bacteria loves to eat sebum, which causes an infection, which makes you. Inferred.

Yeah, I saw it as a sequence of events, too. All right, so Chuck, there is a very long-standing debate over what is worse, a whitehead or a blackhead. What's the difference between the two? Well, one is an open comido, and one is a closed comido. Do you know what a comido is? I do. It's blockage.

OK, do you know what the word is? Comidone is plural. What do you mean what the word is? The word is Latin for glutton. Oh, OK, really? Yeah, and it's named after a worm. You know how when you do pop a zit, and the stuff comes out as kind of a thin worm-like tube?

Well, there was apparently a worm that looked very similar to that, that loved to feed a parasitic worm, that loved to feed on humans, that was considered particularly gluttonous. So the blockage came to be called the comido, which means glutton. Wow.

Isn't that weird? And gross. Yeah. And true. Yeah, pretty much everything about this. We're looking at Acti on a sub-dermal level. Yes, it's gross. It is kind of gross.

So whiteheads, you might think, like, I just woke up, and there's a whitehead on my nose that just happened last night. Not true, it could have been a couple of months in the making before you finally see it. Like you might, you know, Emily calls them underground construction, when you can feel it, and you know it's coming, but you can't see it

or do anything about it yet. Yeah. That's infection, essentially. Yeah, underground construction. Yeah, at some point your skin cells started backing up. They didn't make their way out of the pore, and you're in trouble. So whiteheads, anyway, have an open comido, blackhead.

I'm sorry, closed comido. Blackheads are open, and the black that you're seeing is just melanin. It's just our skin pigment. Right, it's oxidized. It's not dirt. The reason it's black is because it's been exposed to air, whereas with a closed comido,

there is no exposure to air, so everything stays white just beneath the surface of the skin. And you stopped me in the hall earlier and said, you know, I can't tell the difference between a whitehead and a pustule. What I found, because I. You did find something? Well, the American Academy of Dermatology

says that it's really confusing, so like, don't feel bad. It is confusing. Thank you, AA. They're all lesions. But I think a whitehead, what we typically see as a pimple in a zit is the pustule. Because in here, it says the AAD says a whitehead is typically a raised bump that's the same color as the rest

of your skin, whereas the zit clearly has. Puss. The puss. But apparently, that's not the hallmark of a whitehead. So I'm even more confused now. Yeah. Thank you, AAD. Thanks for nothing.

Yeah, because I thought a whitehead meant it was the white, you know, pimpley zit looking thing. Yeah. So I don't know, man. I think too. It says here that the same color as the rest of your skin. OK, well, let's go with that, though. I mean, that a whitehead is just pressing your skin up,

so it's a raised bump. Whereas if it looks white, if there's clearly a white part, what has happened is this whitehead or blackhead has collapsed under the skin. And all that bacteria-ridden sebum is now causing an infection. Right. That's what a zit is.

That's right. Also called a pustule. That's a pustule. There's also a papule. And they are little small bumps, little firm small bumps. And they don't have any kind of white gooey center. Right. But they do feel like sandpaper, apparently,

if you rub your fingers across them. Yeah, I get like little dry skin bumps in the back of my arm. I don't know if that's the same thing. No. No, that's not. I don't think so. OK. No, that's some.

I mean, I'm sure it's got a name. What is that called? What's really severe dry skin called? Eczema? Yeah. I'll bet it's a mild form of eczema. All right. Maybe I have eczema.

There are nodules, which are larger and hard. A nodule is the kind of thing where you mash it, and you mash it, and nothing ever happens. And then it comes back and comes back. Yeah. Because you're just breaking it down and it stays in there. Did I have one of those? That was definitely a nodule, wasn't it?

Yeah, because I would be like, off of my face. And then it would go away. First it would go, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh. And then it would come back. That thing was there for a while. Yeah, man. It kept coming back. And then it'd stay for a really long time and come back.

And I was wearing like turtlenecks. I brought turtlenecks back inadvertently. You were a dickie. Flapping was. Shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher

and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slipdresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it.

It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up

sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s, called on the iHeart radio

app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. OK, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice

would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, god. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS,

because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one.

Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast, and make sure to listen, so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh. And then Superdiv nodules, Josh, you may think your sister boils. Right. And they might look like that, but cis have different traits. One of which is the ability to contain a trapped gas, which I thought was pretty interesting. That is nuts and pretty awesome.

Yeah, so that means that's not a cyst. I'll bet that gas stinks to high heaven when it's finally released. Can you imagine? Yeah, I can. Baby acne? Yeah, what is it called? Mila?

Milia? Milia. Sorry, Mila's the niece. I think the point here was you can get acne from cradle to the grave. Yes, sadly. Yeah, I mean, most people, Tom cited something like 80% of people get acne.

And we should say everything we just said was a form of acne vulgaris. Yeah, yeah, I don't think we said that. Vulgaris is a Latin, I think, for common. Yeah. Right? Most of us get it. Right, 8 out of 10 people get it at some point in their life,

he said. Most people, it starts stirring puberty and ends after puberty. For other people like me, it keeps going on here or there. And I mean, I take care of my face, dude. I've got a regimen. And it's still, I mean, I can imagine it'd be much worse if I didn't take care of it.

Or are you over regimening? I'm like Jessica Simpson here. Are you over regimening? No, I know what I'm doing. I'm going to see a dermatologist soon. I need to find one, but I'm going to go see one just to make sure I'm doing everything right. There's not other steps I can take.

But no, I mean, I know what I'm doing. OK, because the only reason I say that is later in the article, they point out that over washing, and I remember that as a kid, I think I went through a brief period where I got like a zit or two in high school. And so I got out like the buff puff and the Neutrogena for the first time ever and just scrubbed the crap out of my face.

You started bleeding? I started breaking out and I was like, well, I don't get it. I'm washing my face and it's breaking out. But all these years later, I have an explanation. You're agitating your skin. Yeah, I think I just have sensitive skin. Yeah, but no, I don't use soap or harsh stuff on my face. It's like, I take good care of it.

So Amelia, back to the babies. Babies can get Amelia. It's around the eyes or nose, little white bumps. It's really common. If you're a new parent and your kid has this, don't worry about it. In fact, the doctor's probably going to tell you the same thing, like don't even do anything.

It'll clear up on its own in most cases. And you can actually get that as an adult as well. Oh, really? Sometimes, yeah. Amelia? It's far more common in infants. And I mean like newborns, too. The cause generally is that the skin cells are already

dividing and dying off. But the sebaceous glands aren't developed enough to carry the skin cells to the surface. So basically, when the doctor says, just wait, it'll clear up on its own, he's saying, just wait, your baby will grow into it. Produce more sebaceous glands to handle this.

And that's that. Well, that's good news. It's great news. Pre-pubertyl acne forms in children. This is basically when you're producing your androgens, your sex hormones, before you should be. Yeah, like from drinking milk. Is that what it'll do it to?

Probably. Bovine growth hormone would do it. And that is when it's pre-puberty, and that's in younger children, and that's something you probably should go to a doctor about. Yeah, because I think they take it more as a sign like, oh, OK, you've got this other stuff coming down the pike, too, like breasts, and you're six, that kind of thing.

So it's just a big androgen dump in your body, and your sebaceous glands go, oh, we're supposed to start working now, I guess, and even the box. Little Timmy's only eight. I said six. Does it happen that young? I don't know. I'm sure it could, yeah.

I would imagine the younger, the more potentially problematic it is. That's the kid who ends up having the mustache when he's like in the third grade. The six-year-old boy with the breasts and the mustache. What'd you call him, Timmy? Timmy. Actually, I have a friend named Timmy,

but my other friend, Jim, you actually know. Jim did have a mustache when he was like in the eighth grade. Oh, yeah. It was pretty funny. Yeah. Swar the gym. Yes. So what else, Chuck?

Oh, there's rosacea. This is the one that is pretty awful on Google images. Really? Yeah. Yeah, it can affect the nose. And it's everything from just redness of the nose to horribly misshapen, bumpy nose. It can get really bad.

Is that the nose where you see divots missing from people's noses, rosacea? Yeah. I got you. It can get that bad. But it occurs in bouts, right? So you can kind of tell that you're about to have a bout of rosacea because you find

that you flush more easily. And it's because the veins in your face are dilating more wider, I guess. Yeah. Then that's it. Yeah, it's like that. It just triggers acne. Well, it triggers acne vulgaris, or a lot like acne vulgaris,

they said. And then I also got the impression from Tom that it's problematic and that people suspect that maybe you're a raging alcoholic because your nose looks like you have the gym blossoms. But it's really just rosacea. Yeah, and if you look up pictures of it, it looks like a gym blossom, or worse.

I don't encourage anyone to type in Pustules into Google Images because body parts come up that have these things on them and might not be something you want to see. You know what I'm saying? Well, kind of body parts. Oh, they just had pictures of just out of nowhere, just like feet penises with bumps on them. And I don't recommend it.

OK, well, that's fair warning if I've ever heard it. Anybody who does go Google Image, what, rosacea or Pustules? Any of them, really. Then you've been warned by Chuck himself. You're a dummy if you do it. Or you're on your own, at least. So those are generally the different types of acne, and their causes.

But we missed at least one, Chuck. Pizza. Pizza causes acne. No, it doesn't. I know it doesn't. That was play acting. I know. That is a, and I actually did a little more research on this

and diet and acne. That's sort of been one of the old things they say, is like, you eat greasy food, and it'll lead to acne. But most doctors say that that's pretty much a myth. End of story. Yeah. Although this one thing I found says that, theoretically, there could be some impact.

Like, diet has a direct effect on your insulin level, and that insulin is the master hormone, and it has to do with hormone production, in a way. So in theory, insulin spikes could affect acne. And also, things that you eat, it can affect it in a good way if you eat positively, like veggies and fruits and seafood. Gotcha. And potentially, if you eat good foods that are rich in,

like, omega-3 fats, like fish oil, it can be an anti-inflammatory. And so part of the problem is inflammation. In theory, it could help with that, too. But you want to watch, like, shellfish, they're high in iodine, because that, apparently, can inflame acne vulgaris. Yeah.

So here, as we say, that it doesn't impact acne. We're saying it does. Right. Yeah, I just can't believe that what you eat doesn't have any impact on the function of your cells. That's what I think. It's got to have some impact. That's what I think.

Genetics is another big one that is, I think, probably, it's overestimated the impact it has. Yes, the genes that you inherit from your parents and how they express the proteins that tell your sebaceous glands to function in this way, or that way, or whatever, it's going to have an effect. But not as much as, you know, if your dad broke out a lot, you're not necessarily going to.

Right. Or vice versa. Right. I don't know about my parents in acne, to be honest. I don't either. There's some conversation that you normally have with your parents. More, it's like, was your dad bald?

Right, right. That's the big question. That's the only thing we care about, as men. Dirt is not going to affect if you have a dirty face. I mean, it's not great for your skin, probably, but pimples and zits happen from the inside out. So dirt on top of your epidermis isn't going to really affect that, they say.

And then makeup. This one, I don't know. I could see makeup definitely making you break out. Yeah. Yeah, the wrong kind. Quit using that kind. Well, there's different kinds. There's a hypoallergenic, which means low allergenic.

Right. There's a non-comedogenic, which supposedly says, like, this won't make you break out. So possibly cheap makeup. Yeah, and if you have skin issues already, then you should probably be aware of the types of makeup that you're getting, if you're a young lady, or if you're a dude that's into that.

And leaving makeup on without removing it at the end of the day, that can definitely cause you to break out. Because you are going ahead and blocking the pores from the outside in, causing backups. Yeah, Stevie Nicks said that on... Might have been Oprah. Yeah, verbatim.

I was quoting her. Really? No, she said they asked her why she always looks so great. And she said that she's through all, like, even her drug days of being on tour. She never, ever failed to take her makeup off at the end of the night. Stevie Nicks did drugs?

Yeah, back in the day. Big time. I know. So she said, even if she was on a bender, she would still manage to take her makeup off. That is pretty good. Yeah. Wow.

She's the Belladonna. Living things with Chuck and Chuck. Chuck and all the things that you should know. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off

point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64?

Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing.

Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it, and popping it back in, as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass.

The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. OK, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help.

This, I promise you. Oh, god. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me.

Yeah, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general, can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody,

about my new podcast, and make sure to listen, so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. So, Chuck, let's say you want to get rid of the acne that you do have, right? Yes.

Right there? I'm good. You almost fell all the way back. Stopped over. There's really just two things that regular old acne vulgaris and not persistent, not a superative nodule type acne, but just plain old acne vulgaris can be treated with. One is benzoyl peroxide, and one is salicylic acid, right?

Yeah. And those are pretty much it. Almost all of the over the counter acne treatments that you're going to find anywhere are going to have one or both of those, probably just one. And anyone who's ever seen like an oxy commercial has heard the word benzoyl peroxide, you know? Big time.

What were those pads? Were they oxy pads? Yeah. There was another company that had the pads. Seabreeze came in like a, that was like an astringent. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. No, there were pads.

I guess it was oxy pads. Oxy pads, I think. They'd come in like a little canister and you'd just be like, yeah, I'm taking care of my skin. And then you would look at it and say, look at all that stuff. Yeah, it was gross, too. They said it on the commercial. Benzoyl peroxide specifically kills the P.

Acnes bacteria and it'll dry out your face. Which can be bad. Yeah, a lot of people think that moisture in your face is what breaks you out. Your face being too dry can break you out as much if not more. You want to keep your face moisturized. Cuts down on breakouts, kid, you know.

Tea tree oil, Emily uses tea tree a lot to dry out a pimple. And that's a good natural way to do so. And salicylic acid basically goes in and it's like liquid plumber for your pores. Like it just goes in and destroys everything that's in that blockage. And there you go. It also takes off a healthy amount of the horny layer,

which is the most external layer of your dead skin cells. The what layer? Horny layer, really. Well, look at you. The other thing that you can do, I mean, those are medications you can take. What you really want to do is to gently wash your face with soap and warm water.

But again, you can't just use any soap. I mean, maybe you can. If you have completely insensitive skin, then sure. Maybe you can. And you'll find out pretty quick what kind of soaps you can and can't use. Well, most of the soap you get in the store is pretty crappy anyway.

Right. You get what you pay for with soap, especially with face soap. It's worth the extra few bucks. Agreed. If you're exercising, you want to shower right afterward. You don't want to let sweat be on your skin for too long. Yeah, you got back knee. Your sebaceous, the reason back knee is so prevalent

is because that part of your body is lousy with sebaceous glands. Or is it head or face, back, and chest? I think so. Well, those are three areas. Yeah. Because yeah, zits, zits, zits. What about the butt?

That's something entirely different. Those are just red bumps that no one knows what they are. OK. They recommend loose clothing. And they recommend chilling out, not being so stressed. Light and not man. Be a type L personality. Which is L?

The long allele on the SLC6A4 gene, which basically creates this protein that ferries serotonin out of the synapse. It basically turns it off, which is so that if you have the L allele, it makes you a more laid back person because you have more of this transport protein. If you have the S version of that gene, then you make less of the transport,

meaning the serotonin stays in the synapse longer, which makes you high strung and angry because it activates your amygdala. So type A personality type B is actually type S and type L. Sounds like somebody just wrote a blog post. Yes, I did. Isn't that cool, though? Yeah, that is cool.

I like to think I'm an L, but I'm probably less L than I really want to admit. I don't know. Somebody posted a comment on Facebook when I put that blog post up, and they're like, not everything can be explained so succinctly. But the point of the blog post was, it's like, this one explains it succinctly.

You just remove the comment, and what about your day? I banned them from Facebook forever. What else can you do? Let's say you got acne. Check. And what can you do to treat it? You can take antibiotics, either oral or topical. All right.

And topical meaning like their current event type antibiotics. What about a chemical peel? That works, too. I would think that would not be a good thing if you were breaking out. It's a good idea, if you're going to do that, to, again, shell out the extra money and go to a professional who can tell you,

now, this is the chemical peel I've done on your face. This is what's safe. This is what your skin can handle. And then here's a product that will do the same thing at home. So don't go to the place where they have the ad on the subway? John's upstairs chemical peel and chicken processing plant. An espresso.

Have you ever done a chemical peel? Really? Interesting. Yes, I've been known to get it. You come out like, is your face all red and stuff? No, it feels red, but it's more also very refreshing. Like, it's just so nice to just kind of rub the back of your fingers along your face afterward,

because your skin is just like, what you're doing is just tearing that horny layer right off. Right. You're getting closer and closer to that new layer of skin cells. But it's still epidermis, though, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think you'd be in big trouble if you

store down to the dermis. Like, that's a third degree burn, I think. Right. You know, the second maybe. Apparently, birth control pills can help treat acne. Yeah, if you watch the ads for them, a lot of them will say, like, it prevents breakouts. Oh, really?

Like an extra bonus. Yeah, because it probably cuts down on the androgens, which cuts down on the production of sebum, which cuts down on pimples. Yeah. I didn't know they had ads for birth control pills. Sure, do they? Yeah.

Am I living in Amish country here? Why am I not seeing these? There is this one ad I saw several years ago. Yeah, it was really weird. First, they had this version of it was like the cartoon version of this ad. And then, like, that one went away. And then they had a live action version of the same ad.

Really? Same everything. Same everything. But for some reason, they did a cartoon version. Then they did a live action version. They released them one after another. But they were supposedly in no way related. And it was like, I think that company was like,

just how much are you paying attention? How much TV are you watching? And at the time, I was watching a lot of TV, so I noticed. What about lasers? You can get them lasered, right? And I guess that's if you have, if it's really bad, then they can actually laser your sebaceous glands. They say not to squeeze them, though,

which I think is kind of laughable. What do you mean, like, not pop them yourselves? They is Tom Sheave, pal. You can take that with a grain of salt. Yeah, I mean, show me someone who doesn't pop their own zits. And it says in here to make an appointment with a dermatologist so they can pop your pimples.

Right. Really? Well, that's the only thing, too, when you get like a chemical peel or a facial or whatever, the anesthetician. We'll pop all the zits on your face. Really? And what's crazy is when you do it right, it doesn't hurt.

These gloves, I guess? Yeah, but I mean, the pressure they apply is minute, and they're doing it off to the sides of the zit. You're like, that was it. It didn't hurt at all. I didn't cry at all. So it's kind of good to not necessarily go to the dermatologist. You could go do an anesthetician,

and they'll do all the same things. You'll learn a bunch just by paying attention while they do it. Emily would never let me do that. Why? Because she loves to do it herself. Oh, yeah. I mean, she could have been an anestheticist. She has that gene to where she just

gets a lot of satisfaction out of making that white snake come out. Yeah, no, I know what you mean. In fact, she's a little disappointed at my lack of pimple production in life. Yeah, she would love me. Yeah, you guys, perfect match, actually. Yumi loves me.

She does it. She does it a lot, too. She's kind of hooked. Yeah, a lot of girls are into that for some reason. I'm glad to know Emily's not nuts, and that that's a normal behavior. No, I know. But for some reason, too, I've never

been a guy who's into that. Yeah. It's always girls for some reason, and I don't understand. Maybe they're more into skin, skin care, or gross stuff coming out of your skin. Maybe so. Yeah. Well, that's it, right?

Yeah. 17 million people in America every day on a given day have a zit. Is that right? Yeah. I think more than that. There you go. All righty.

All right, well, that's perfect. Acne, which one? Well, I mean, it's Acne is the big word, pimples. I just like saying pimple. OK. I don't like saying pimple. I think it's a gross word. Do you like pustule?

I prefer pustule over pimple. Or zit. I don't like zit either. Yeah. Yeah. Where we, yeah, we were featured in the comic strip zits. Remember? Oh, yeah.

That was very nice. Yeah, yeah, and then you know what I need to find out? And I don't think they're blackheads. Emily calls them seeds, because it's like a little watermelon seed almost. I know what you're talking about. Like a little white spike comes out. I wonder what that is.

I didn't find that in here. I guarantee it's the same thing. You think? Yeah. All right. I think there's a very limited amount of Acne. It just happens, and it just kind of looks different, or comes out in different ways, or if it sits in there

long enough, it hardens, becomes a seed. I know you're talking about that, though. Well, that's Acne. If you want to learn more about it and see some cool cutaway illustrations of the skin. Yeah, that was a good part, actually. Yeah. You can type in Acne in the search bar

at howstuffworks.com. And now, friends, it's time for a list of your mail. If I told you to hold on one second, would you indulge me? Would you do me a kindness? Yes. OK. Josh, we have an audiobook that has just been released called the Super Stuffed Guide to Happiness,

available on iTunes. I know. You have to shell out $3.99 for it. We promise we think it's worth it. On iTunes, you just search Super Stuffed Guide to Happiness, right? And it'll bring that one up. It'll bring up our first audiobook, too,

the Super Stuffed Guide to the Economy. You can get them both there. But check out the Super Stuffed Guide to Happiness. It's awesome interviews, in-depth investigation of what is happiness, what makes us happy, how do we study happiness, great sound design. My niece starts the whole thing off with a nice quote from the Dalai Lama.

It's just a great little whirlwind ride that you'll want to listen to over and over again. All for the price of a latte at your favorite coffee place. You're going to have to probably go through your couch cushions to come up with a difference to get the latte. This thing's so cheap. That's true. Yeah.

So there's our plug. And it's time now for a list of your mail. Josh, I'm going to call this email from an author that we actually referenced. OK. He listens to the show. Awesome. Min Galaba, Josh, Chuck, and Jerry.

Hope you're having a good day. About three weeks ago, I was flying from Minnesota to Yangon, Myanmar. Is that how you pronounce it? Yeah, it's Burma, Myanmar. But it's post-Hunta Burma. Look at you. I really had a pretty surreal moment involving your podcast.

After downing as much free booze as I could, I was listening to episodes of your podcast trying to fall asleep over the Pacific Ocean. Imagine my surprise when I was coming out of my nap to the end of House Drunken Head's work. You were finishing the story of your dentist friend when Josh said you've also received Ajuma and Other Stories by Tyler Davis, which

is a self-published book and pretty awesome. Yeah. I couldn't believe it. Thanks so much for the shout out. Did he send this to us? Does this email from Tyler Davis? Yeah. Yeah, he sent it to us.

OK. It is good. Well, I've been meaning to write an email, and thank you guys for a while. We've been busy settling in. The internet here isn't exactly the information super highway. It's more like an Amish buggy. I'm teaching English in an international high school,

and I've already taught my kids what hinky means. I have no idea if that's how it's taught. What does hinky mean? How do you define that specifically? I would say hinky means suspicious. OK, see, I would say strange or unusual. Yeah. OK, so it could be three.

There's three definitions right there. That's what hinky means. Hinky is everything. It's like Smurf, huh? Yeah. What the cuss? I had time to write you today because I'm homesick from food poisoning, which reminds me,

you should do a podcast on whether or not you can poop your own skeleton. Gross. I feel awful, you and the rest of the gang, at how stuff works. Keep me entertained, educated, and in high spirits. Thanks again, Tyler Davis. Yeah.

Well, thank you, Tyler. Thanks for the books, too. You have yours. I think he sent us, too. Yeah. Ajuma and other stories. Yeah, yeah, I've got it. If you want, you can go on to the Stuff

You Should Know Facebook page and post in Amazon link or something like that to your book if you like. And also, I want to take this time to correct myself. We've got several corrections. A failsafe. Yeah. Failsafe is not something that you put that's designed into something to prevent it from failing.

Like, one prong being bigger on a two prong plug. Yeah. It's, I guess, parts of the design that make it so when it does fail, it fails as safely as possible. Right. So there's a bunch of different systems, maybe, that are redundant that provide safety when it does fail. Right, like one guy said, the lawnmower,

that you have to hold the thing to keep it going. Yes. Like, if you have a heart attack and fall over, it will cease to run. Right. That's a failsafe. So you have failed, but you are safe from the mower running over you. Right, exactly.

But you don't care because you're having a heart attack. Yeah. Yeah. So anything else? Bread, butter, side up? No. You know, I think the Mythbusters are great, and I'm glad that they've had this incredible juggernaut run

that they've had so far and continue to have. But I don't, I just don't, yes. I don't think you can say, well, the Mythbusters approved it. Well, shut up. Yeah. I think you have to also include one, maybe two, peer-reviewed studies as well that show that this is right. Here's what I think, and I was not able to articulate it.

I think you spread the butter side up so it's sitting face up, and when it falls off the, you know, stomach-high counter, then it only has time to rotate half a turn, and it will fall side down. If the counter were eight feet high, it might rotate fully and land butter side up. It has nothing to do with weight, in other words. I disagree.

I disagree. I just don't see how it can have nothing to do with weight, especially if you have, if one side is clearly heavier than the other, and the butter spread evenly across, then it's not going to turn back over. If it does turn back over, then there was more butter on one side that caused the bread to flip over again.

It's just not. It just makes, it's common sense. You're going to battle this one. I am, so that's why I didn't bring that one up. But fail safe, I mean. When you're wrong, you're wrong, you know? All right, boy, that was good. Well, yeah, if you have any corrections,

we don't want to hear about your acne. If you have any corrections for us, or you just want to say hi, you can tweet to us anytime you like, S-Y-S-K podcast is our Twitter handle. We're on facebook.com slash stuff you should know. Or you can go on any of the other Facebook stuff you should know sites they're fan driven, they're awesome too.

Agreed. Or you can send us a regular old email at stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen

to your favorite shows. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back

into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to, Hey Dude, the 90s called, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass.

Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen,

so we'll never, ever have to say, bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts.