Blackheads Begone! A Quick How-to Perform Extractions

Your kindly therapist will refer to these ganky bits of sebum clogging your pores as 'areas of congestion', but you, me and the dogs on the street know they're blackheads. Plain and simple.

Lots of things cause them - using the wrong creams, having sebum-prone oily skin, plus environmental and hormone-driven factors. But whatever causes them, no one wants them! Also - and I challenge anyone to prove me wrong - there's nothing quite like the satisfaction of getting a nice big one out and having an old look at it.

But sometimes they can be hard to extract - and this is where this fab little tip I recently learned comes in.

To start with, you'll need good light and a big mirror. Wash your hands well in hot soapy water, and dry them. Arm yourself with clean tissue and you're ready to begin. Fold a tissue up and use one per hand. With the tissues covering your nails, use your thumbnails to gently depress the skin IN and UP around the blackhead you want to remove.

Now, wiggle! The blackhead will pop right out without any digging of your nails, tearing or damaging of the skin or possible capillary damage! Yay!

If that doesn't make it pop, then leave it - it's not ready to be extracted yet.