It’s normal to have visible pores and the occasional blemish. However, when clogged pores begin to take over, they can cause your skin to look dull, feel textured, and contribute to acne breakouts. While a good skincare routine can help maintain healthy, clear skin, targeted treatments like facials and facial extractions provide deeper cleansing and brighten the skin. Here’s what to know.
What Is a Facial Extraction?
A facial extraction manually or mechanically removes oil, dirt, and dead skin from your pores. You can have a facial extraction by itself or as part of a facial. Where extraction is one technique to clear your pores, a facial with extractions is a multi-step treatment that includes steam, exfoliation, extraction, masks, and vitamin and peptide-enriched serums to thoroughly clean and treat your skin.
How Do Facial Extractions Work?
Facial extractions are a simple but technical process that uses special tools, needles, or blades. The steps they require vary based on the type of blemish being targeted. Extractions can be done on blackheads, whiteheads, and cysts such as milia.
Blackhead Extraction
Blackheads are open comedones or lesions filled with dead skin cells, oil, and dirt that collect in the surrounding hair follicle. These pores are open to the skin and exposed to air, which oxidizes the debris and makes it appear black.
Blackhead extraction is simple and usually involves an extractor tool or manual extraction using the hands. An esthetician will press gently over the blackhead to push the buildup out of the pore. This process clears the hair follicle and promotes deeper skin cleansing and refreshing.
Whitehead Extraction
Whiteheads, on the other hand, require more technique. These comedones are plugged with oil, dirt, and pus and closed to the skin, which makes them harder to extract.
Whitehead extraction often involves a needle or other extractor tool that punctures the skin and allows the pore to drain. Like blackhead extractions, the goal is to clear the follicle and promote deeper cleansing for fresh, revitalized skin.
Who Benefits From Facial Extractions?
Facial extractions can be gentle or deep and are suitable for people who want a relaxing facial, a refreshing pick-me-up, or need treatment for acne, oily, or dehydrated skin.
Dull and Congested Skin
Oily skin causes frequent breakouts and makes your skin appear congested or dull. Facials and facial extractions remove clogged oil from pores, cleaning and revitalizing your complexion.
Gentle extractions are great for congested skin or minor blemishes. You can pair an extraction with other facial treatments to maintain healthy, vibrant skin or to get refreshed before a special event.
Acne
Facial extractions may help treat mild or challenging acne. Sometimes, breakouts don’t respond well to home treatments like serums or exfoliants and need a push. Or, you may want to encourage faster healing. Extracting the pores helps remove oil and dirt. Regular extractions may also help control breakouts, speeding up skin recovery and acne clearance.
Why You Should Leave Extractions to a Professional
It’s tempting to pop a pimple yourself. It’s equally easy to try and take matters into your own hands when you want to do an extraction. But it’s easy to damage your skin or cause an infection when you try to do a facial extraction on your own, even if you use the “right” tools.
The wrong technique can break the pore wall and push its contents into your skin instead of outward, releasing keratin protein inside the follicle into areas it shouldn’t be. Your skin will react with inflammation, which causes scarring and skin damage.
Plus, at-home extractions can push bacteria deeper into your skin and cause an infection or spread bacteria to other parts of your face, worsening acne. Professional extractions use specially designed tools or needles to extract pus and other debris, preventing pore damage and controlling bacteria.
Only professionals, such as estheticians and specialists at Laser by Monica, have the right tools and training to safely extract pores without causing damage. We’ll thoroughly prep your skin to soften the contents and gently extract pores. These techniques protect the skin and prevent unnecessary irritation.
Revitalize Your Skin With Laser by Monica
Professional extractions, facials, and laser treatments are some of the best tools to rejuvenate your skin and maintain a healthy glow. Laser by Monica estheticians and laser hair removal specialists in Manhattan and the New York City area provide boutique services with professional results. Contact us today to help your skin look and feel its best.