Hi, this is Dr. Courtney Herbert from FDL dermatology. We are talking about how to fix problem skin. We have discussed cleansing your skin, what to do if breakouts occur and now we are going to talk about what to do if you get an actual painful pimple. Now, for example, on Zarina today, there is a pimple that s forming on her chin and we can look to the right of her chin there is a small area of redness forming.

Now, usually when a pimple is forming under your skin you will feel intense pain, itching or discomfort in that area. It may become a little large, it may become red. At that point, the best thing to do is, warm compresses and consider seeing a dermatologist because you may need antibiotics at that time or an injection of topical, sorry of intralesional steroid. As an example today, what we will do is we will show Zarina can hold this, compress on her face and encourage the pimple to come to a Head .

The compress that I would recommend you using is a washcloth with warm, tap with water or a piece of gauze with warm water. Now, when it does come to a head it will have a white pimple appearing to the top of it. At that point, you can gently, gently I must stress, evacuate the pimple. Otherwise, you should not manipulate having fingernails near the pimple, use any sharp metal object or anything that would encourage a scar where pimple formed. The most common cause for acne scarring is patients -- and breaking the skin and causing scars from manipulating their own pimples.

Therefore, do not use your fingernails or any of those things that potentially could cause a scar. In Zarina s skin, if she would continue to keep the compresses on the area, pimple came to her head, she has a chance of it going back to normal skin and doing well. However, if she did use her finger nails and resulted in having a scar, there are a lot of options for scars. However, they are very hard to thick in skin type such as Zarina when the skin is olive. It s very difficult to get those dark scars away.

So, the take home point is warm compresses, consult your dermatologist if you are not getting better and try not to manipulate. That is how you take care of a pimple when it occurs. Now, we are going to talk about moisturizing your skin.