barnacles skin care

My patients and I call them barnacles, because they’re stuck on the skin much like barnacles are stuck on things in the ocean.

These barnacles are structurally similar to warts because they’re made up of excessive layers of skin cells from both the living and dead skin layers.  The fact that they are made from your outer skin layers means that skin care products can help to get rid of the growths. Like a wart, a barnacle happens because your living skin cells grow excessively and form a little mound that’s raised up higher than the rest of your skin.  It’s the dead cells that we can buff and exfoliate away with powerful, regular, AHA-containing, exfoliating skin care.  Occasionally, this exfoliating skin care treatment will also get rid of the little mound of living cells too.

At the time, the concept of exfoliating skin care was less common.