Scratching the surface: Now your dermis is showing!

Your dermis, the layer of skin that lies just under your epidermis, has an intimate relationship with your epidermis. It comes equipped with sensory nerves, sweat glands, blood vessels, and hair follicles.

It nourishes the epidermis by providing gases such as oxygen and carbon dioxide, which reach the epidermis by diffusing through the basement membrane.

The epidermis can’t survive without the dermis, because it has no nerves or blood supply of its own. Throughout the dermis are collagen and elastin fibers. Collagen is a resilient protein that provides rigidity and strength to the dermis.

Elastin is made of a protein structure that is able to coil and recoil like a spring. This protein is what gives the skin its elasticity.

A hair follicle is a hair-containing canal; a tube-shaped sheath that surrounds the part of the hair that is under the skin. It’s located in the epidermis and the dermis.

Blocked hair follicles are often at the root of the acne problem. In fact, it seems like the hair follicle is the central focus of this entire book! (To read a detailed description of how a follicle becomes blocked and a pimple forms, skip ahead to Chapter 3.)

Styes, boils, shaving bumps — I could go on and on — all have their origins in the hair follicle. In Chapter 19, I go into a few of these conditions that folks often mistake for acne.