How to Pop a Pimple the Right Way

Want to know how to pop a pimple the right way? Annet King, Dermatologist at the International Dermal Institute, shows us how:

Hi, I'm Annet King from the International Dermal Institute and what I'm going to show you here today is how to pop a pimple the right way. Now we would never normally advise you to do this because you don't want to cause scarring on the skin and if you're bringing blood to the surface of the skin, there's a much, much higher risk of scarring. But we know you do it anyway. So we're going to show you, as professionals, how to go ahead and do that in the easiest, cleanest, most hygienic and safest way.

So let's get started and take a look at this pimple on the skin.

First of all what I'm going to do is gently clean over this actual breakout here on the forehead. You don't want to do this on skin that is dirty or has makeup on it. You really have to do this on clean skin. So I'm just using an antibacterial skin care cleanser right now that actually helps to kill bacteria and helps to reduce inflammation. You can cleanse your entire face if you're at home or just the actual spot area, but like I said you don't want to do this on skin that hasn't been cleaned. You've got to remove that surface dirt, oil, debris, sweat, and makeup. So by gently cleansing the area before I go in and extract that pimple.

The next thing I'm going to do is just gently exfoliate over my pimple so I'm able to loosen up any dead skin cells and actually help to prepare that pimple before we go in and extract it. By exfoliating first, and with this I'm using a chemical exfoliate with salycic acid, by doing that first, I'm actually helping to prep the skin and it's going to help that pimple to come out more easily. Now you should not really remove or squeeze a pimple that's inflamed like this. But we know that we can't resist and we all want to go in and get rid of it. There's a right way to do it and a wrong way to do it.

The right way to do it is to cover your fingertips with little mitts, if you possibly can, because what you don't want to do is dig your nails into the area. There's lots of bacteria beneath your nails. So we need to make sure that's not coming into contact with your skin.

Now I'm creating little finger mitts with tissue or Kleenex over my index fingers and that's protecting my fingers and protecting my skin really thoroughly. Now if you're able to steam your skin at home, that's also a great advantage.

So what I'm going to do now is come over the area and actually stretch the skin -- look at that the pimpled popped straight away from the fact that I've already done that exfoliating. So there's very little that I need to do to actually help the contents of that pimple to expel itself. And now there's a wiping of that on the tissue. I don't want to spread that around the skin so I'm going to take another tissue and wrap that around my finger. And you can see the contents of which is basically dead cells and sea bum and white skin cells which we know is puss that expelled very easily onto the skin. I'm wiping away.

And now what we need to do is to wipe with an antiseptic skin care purifying wipe to remove any bacteria that might be on the surface. Taking that wipe and covering my finger and putting all of those soothing ingredients and antiseptic ingredients over that actual pimple. You can use a mask at this stage and use an antiseptic mask on this pimple or a clay-based mask to help to soak up any excess oil and bacteria. But what we're going to do is a pimple treatment by using a benzoyl peroxide based product. And this is really a pimple zapping solution and by pouring those ingredients on this cotton bud, I'm able to deliver exactly onto that pimple. This type of solution has benzoyl peroxide, which is a common pimple solution and what it does is it carries oxygen into that pimple, into that follicle to kill that bacteria and to stop that pimple from developing any further. You don't want to ever apply this to the whole area, you only need to ever apply it directly on the pimple. So by tomorrow morning that pimple will be gone.

So we've successfully popped a pimple without using too much damage to the skin, without causing any redness. We've created a very hygienic environment and we soothed and treated that pimple after we popped it.

Now that you know how to pop a pimple the right way, you can try it yourself when necessary.