Is it true that the skin's total thickness is renewed every ten years?

I girl I know who is studying medicine like me and who does a lot of research told me once when I told her about my burn marks (mostly hyperpigmentations) and other side effects after LHR that the total thickness of the skin (and not just the epidermis) is said to have become renewed after aproximately ten years. She said that this meant that even the most persistent marks would be gone by then, that is to say if they aren’t real scars. Scars do “fade” with time and become practically invisible in some if is small enough, but they don’t realy go away.

Is this true about the renewal of skin? Wouldn’t this mean that hairs trapped in the skin (ingrowns) will also come to the surface with time (a lot of time though).

I don’t know if it’s because I didn’t pay atention or what, but recently I’ve discovered that I can se ingrowns (four of them) through my skin that must be old ones, becuase I can’t remember when I got them (the inflammation and pain phase). And I’ve got one out just to se if it works, the others I will let a electrologist remove.

Since I started removing my body hair with different methods I have always payed A LOT of atention to my skin and did not see this obviuose ingrowns through my skin. So they have to have become visible with time, appeared gradually (don’t know how to express it correctly). Is it correct to believe that deep ingrowns will resurface like this? Not because they are still growing but because of the renewal of the skin or something?

Maybe I should ask a dermatologist about this. hehe <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smirk.gif" alt="" />

Electrologists are definately not the ones to answer this question. I hope that in your interest of medicine you will find the real answer and come back to tell us!

Regarding ingrown hairs, they don’t all cause pain and swelling when forming. Most electrologists have seen that occasional dark, heavy hair - visible even though deep in the skin. Sometimes we can see the original follicle opening and simply lift it out of the skin. It might be attached still or not. Sometime we simply scratch the surface and they can be lifted out of the skin.

Thankyou for the reply Barbara.

I remember reading somewhere about some research that said that hair is not seen as a foreign body by the body’s immune system and that the inflammation associated with ingrown hairs is due to the “twist” of the hair follicle when an ingrown forms (or something like that). That’s why some ingrowns give rise to inflammations and some don’t. It seems like the ones growing sideways don’t and the ones curling into the follicle do.

Miss Barbara, do you always succeed in removing ingrown hairs or have you seen ingrowns that are impossible to get out?
I have myself been able to get out some rather deep ones but as I’ve written before it’s hard to see ones own skin (like the chest) and also sometimes do it with one hand if the ingrown hair is on the arm.

My electrologist actually doesn’t seem so good at removing ingrowns. I had one above my collarbone that I showed her and asked her to remove. She used a kanyl (I don’t know if it’s the same name in english), the needle you use when you give someone an injection (syringe?). I thought that was strange but then I thought that she should know what she’s doing. She did her thing and I went home. But then at home I saw that she had made a damage to the skin but the ingrown hair was still there, the damage was belowe the ingrown hair so maybe she has bad eyes, don’t know. But she used a magnifying glass. Also the damage was much bigger than what seemed necessary the get out that ingrown.
Anyways, I just needed a thin needle and pulled the hair out myself with some minor damage (it was a looong hair!). I think I would be able to get my ingrowns out rather sucessfully with a thin needle if I could clone myself and use both my hands and get really close to my skin with my eyes and have good light. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" />

Doing some damage to the skin when digging out ingrowns doesn’t seem to be so serious because the damage heals (at least in my case). But sometimes when you do it with one hand or when you can’t really see properly what you’re doing you damage the skin a lot more then is actually necessary. You dig and scrape and squeeze and it becomes inflammed and swells and you get a lot more hyperpigmentation than the ingrown hair would have caused. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/crazy.gif" alt="" />

I totally agree with you.But I usually end up asking my sister to remove my ingrown hairs that are a bit closr to the skin surface.I always cause such a huge mess myself when I attempt to remove the ingrowns myself.
Does applying lotions with salicylate help to surface ingrowns?

You asked: do you always succeed in removing ingrown hairs or have you seen ingrowns that are impossible to get out?

What I do: Some ingrown hairs are perfect for removing successfully when seen. If I am unable to remove them easily, I do not dig or pick at them. They must be right or I’m not going to mess with them.

I’ve had some ingrowns (from tweezing) that formed a hard callous over them (probably over a month’s time of festering). There is no way they would just eventually pop out on their own and it would take an enormous amount of acid products to take the skin down to the problem hair, which would probably result in a permanent scar.

A regular needle, coming in from a slight angle so that it can get below the hair, seems to be the best solution. Some hairs I’ve freed have been over half an inch long and have curled into rings, creating a hard bump on the surface. I would just free the hair, getting it to protrude normally, and let it heal before doing anything more to it, such as tweezing or electrolysis. It would take over a month for the skin to heal, but it eventually does.

Sarah77:

I too will let my sister remove the ingrowns this time.
I currently use tend skin on my arms three times a day becuase I have ingrowns there and what I can see after two weeks of regular use is that the skin peels and the inflammations becomes less severe and therefor some of the hairs trapped under the skin become more visible. You can catch a glimpse of a hair in the skin while before you just saw red inflammation. And also already visible hair seam to come closer to the skin surface. But I can’t imagine how theese hairs would pop up just by using tend skin, I think you have to pop them out of the skin with a needle - but this is now easyer to do (I think).

The down side is that the skin flaking doesn’t look pretty. It looks like you have some kind of skin dissorder. Maybe applying tend skin three times a day is too much.
Also, don’t use body lotion directly after using tend skin becuase then you don’t see any effect, at least I didn’t see any skin peeling before I stopped applying lotion directly after and let the tend skin do it’s thing undisturbed. Use tend skin and then wait like 15 minutes before applying lotion.

Barbara_CPE:

I think that one should also attempt to remove the ingrowns that aren’t easy to get out. I understand if it’s a still growing hair and one can wait for it grow a little more and maybe come closer to the surface. But old ingrowns that aren’t growing any more should be removed somtime, shouldn’t they? A little digging in to the skin doesn’t seam to do any permanent damage, at least not in my case, and the skin looks much better when the ingrown hair is removed and the little damage becuse of digging has healed away.

NoHair:

I don’t know if I have the same thing as you, but I have some hard bumps on my back because of ingrowns. I got them after a laser session where my back got burned. All of the skin of my back was swollen and red (inflammation) and I had many burn marks (even worse inflammation). I don’t know if it was because my skin and therefore the hair follicles ware so damaged due to the burn, but any hair that was still growing in on my back became a big , red, pus filled and aching bump. I was horrified becuase my ingrowns do get inflammed etc, but not like this, not at all.

Anyway, with time theese bumps shrinked significantly and the pain, pus and redness also subsided, but I could never remove the ingrown hairs from the skin. This happened in the end of february this year, so it’s now 4 mounths. But I still have hard bumps where the big inflammations were. You can clearly feel them in the skin.
No hair can be seen in the bumps, they must be too deep, and I don’t know if you can get the hairs out with a needle.

Maybe the bumps will diminish completely with time, I don’t know. Maybe there’s still an inflammation going on in them. Or maybe they now have become fibrous capsules that I’ve read about.