You’ve probably heard about sebum!
It’s the skin’s natural lubricant often called oil or grease; it helps to keep the skin supple stopping it flaking, splitting or cracking. It is also a crucial ingredient in the skin’s ‘acid mantle’.
Sadly, very few of us have a really well-balanced skin, where the skin is ideally moist and supple.
Some of us have a dry skin type that looks dull, and flaky in appearance, and is often also dehydrated too, whereas others of us have an oily skin with some congestions with the skin looking shiny.
There are many of us that have a skin type with an area known as the T-Zone; this is known as a combination skin. This is where the T-Zone is oily, with a different skin type in the other areas. The T-Zone consists of the chin, nose and forehead, usually at least two or more of these.
Sebum is actually a waxy substance, and it is an oily, lipid-rich film, similar to ear wax (but not so concentrated), and is also similar to lanolin (the lubricant that sheep have for their skin and wool) – this is one of the reasons that this ingredient was often used in skin care products.
Sebum is a secretion that is produced by a skin structure known as a sebaceous gland. This gland has an opening at the skin’s surface, and it has a tube that travels down to the glands base where the sebum is produced. These glands are usually attached to a hair follicle, whether the hair follicle is producing hairs or not, but the hair can act as a wick, and this helps the sebum to be carried up to the surface. The hair follicle, sebaceous gland and sebum are formed by epidermal cells (cells of the epidermis), although the structures can be seen to plunge down into the underlying dermis, to obtain nutrients from the blood capillaries and chemical messengers (or hormones) to make it work.
Sebum is produced the same way as ear wax, that is, the epidermal cells die and fall off the surface of the gland’s wall (same as dead cells would on the skin’s surface). These cells are in a moist environment and decompose in the sebaceous gland sack; they form a waxy substance which we know as sebum which they then secrete.
When someone has an oily skin, it is often triggered at puberty, when the sexual hormones start to work, and a male hormone stimulates the body hair and sebaceous glands to change; boys will start to grow facial hair, chest, pubic and underarm hair and girls will start to grow underarm and pubic hair, plush leg hair can become more obvious. At the same time ‘teenage’ spots may appear and this is due to increased sebaceous activity where sebum is secreted at an increased level.
Unfortunately, male hormonal stimulation can affect women at various time during their lives, such as pregnancy, post-pregnancy and menopause, to name a couple. Plus, there many other disorders that can affect the hair growth and sebaceous gland activities, which we will not go into in this post, as it is a very large subject area.
There is so much more I could tell you about sebum, but if you want to know more, just check out my SkinBlog on the subject that will be published next week.
Love,
Shirley-Louise xx
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