We hopefully all know by now that it's good practice to keep our hands off of pimples. There are even products that help you curb the urge to pop a pimple, like blemish patches. But sometimes you can’t help it and you just end up picking at your pimple. Maybe it’s bugging you a little too much or you have an event and you don’t want to show up with a visible whitehead. Either way, you’ve popped your pimple. So now what are you supposed to do?
What to do now:
Since you've already popped your pimple, all you can do now is make sure you do the appropriate aftercare so you don’t have to deal with scarring, or even infection.
Before you even think about touching a popped pimple, make sure that your hands are squeaky clean. You don’t want to transfer any bacteria from your hands to an open wound, so it’s important that you wash with antibacterial soap.
Now that your hands are clean, you want to apply a product that has some sort of antibacterial and anti-inflammatory properties. For instance, take Tea Tree Oil, it’s a pretty popular acne treatment for good reason. Tea Tree Oil is antibacterial, soothes irritated skin, reduces inflammation, and helps with the wound healing process.
However, you should veer away from applying Tea Tree Oil straight to an open pimple. Instead, you can use our Soothing Blemish Patch, a hydrocolloid patch infused with Tea Tree Oil, Aloe, and Madecassic Acid. The Soothing Blemish Patch can be applied on popped pimples to help calm the angry wound and help speed up wound healing. After a couple of hours you’ll notice a reduction in swelling and redness.
After-after care
Now that you’ve taken care of the open pimple and it’s sufficiently healed, you might still have to deal with post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation (PIH). PIH is basically when a darkening of the skin occurs after a wound has healed. These dark spots can also darken even further if you don’t take the proper precaution to protect your skin against UV rays (if you don’t apply sunscreen daily).
There are a couple different skincare ingredients that can help brighten dark spots including: Niacinamide, Vitamin C, Azelaic Acid, Retinol, and Kojic Acid. Our Dark Spot Brightening Patch with Microneedles is infused with 2% Niacinamide, Hyaluronic Acid, Madecassoside, and Green Tea to help fade dark spots and keep the skin hydrated. Niacinamide and Green Tea both help brighten dark spots and the dissolving microneedles help deliver these ingredients deeper in the skin.
In caring for your skin after popping a pimple, it’s important to apply sunscreen daily to make sure any existing dark spots don’t darken under the sun.
What to use to avoid pimple popping
Hopefully in the future you will feel less inclined to pop your pimples, especially since you can cause damage to your skin, like infection and scarring. Blemish patches are a pretty easy way to deal with pimples, all you have to do is apply the patch to clean skin and wait.
When you have a pimple, you also can’t help but to touch it every now and then (maybe you’re checking to see if it’s still there or if it’s gotten worse). With blemish patches at least if you keep touching the pimple the patch will be there to create a barrier between your hands and the pimple so you don’t spread bacteria to the pimple and surrounding skin.
Hanhoo has a line of blemish patches that helps treat a variety of different blemish types. Like say you’re dealing with a blind or pre-stage pimple, our Extra Strength Blemish Patch with Salicylic Acid can help extract all the gunk from a pimple without you having to squeeze it out. And, if you have surface acne, our Blemish Patch can help with those whitehead pimples. We even have you covered if you happen to be dealing with a cluster of pimples. Our Custom Blemish Patch can be cut into any shape you want and can fit over multiple pimples in any area on your face or body.
One last thing:
Although we don’t recommend it, if you plan to pop any pimples in the future, always wash your hands thoroughly first. And don’t pop pimples with your fingers, try instead using cotton swabs to gently apply pressure. But, if you find the pimple won’t pop after trying a bit then it’s best to leave it alone to avoid causing more damage and inflammation. Don’t forget to patch the popped pimple as well to help the healing process and to protect it from outside bacteria.
