White spots

White spots on my skin

What are these White spots on my skin?

In today’s blog we are going to tell you what the White spots are on your skin.

One of the more noticeable and unwanted signs of aging can be the patchwork of brown spots that appear on your hands, arms, chest, and face which is caused by years of sun damage. Depending on the extent of your sun damage, you may also have noticed that dotted sporadically between those brown spots and freckles are small, flat, white circular spots. These white spots have a rather long, unpronounceable name: idiopathic guttate hypomelanosis.  These white spots look to be the total opposite of the brown spots but it’s likely that they are caused by sun damage as well.

White spots are caused when the sun damaged affected area stops making any melanin at all which causes the area to completely lose pigment. Although these spots can be unsightly, they are benign.

Unfortunately treating white spots is not possible as it isn’t possible to get the pigment back. Skin-care products such as exfoliants won’t help and skin-lightening products don’t make sense, so treatment options involve making the spots less noticeable by preventing them from expanding.

Using sunscreen daily will help the spots not get any bigger and avoiding getting any amount of tan, as this will increase the contrast between the white areas and your skin colour (not getting any amount of tan also reduces the growth of brown spots). As you may have noticed, the white spots do not tan, they can’t turn colour because there’s no pigment in that area to darken.

You can try to make the white spots blend into the surrounding skin by routinely applying a self tanning product but you need to apply it only to the white spots.  Using a makeup brush, apply a tiny amount of self-tan directly to the white spots, then wait a few hours, or a day, and see how the colour looks. If you need to apply more, go ahead. To maintain the colour, reapply the self-tan as it fades over time.

Be careful not to confuse the white spots from sun damage with the skin disorder known as vitiligo. This disorder is believed to be an autoimmune issue where the body’s immune system attacks the skin’s pigment-producing cells (known as melanocytes). With vitiligo, you’ll see large patches of pigment loss rather than smaller spots, and these patches tend to expand over time as more pigment cells are destroyed. You should see your GP if this concerns you.

So now you know what those White spots could be.

Tags: self tan, Skin, skin care, Spots, sun damage, sun damage to skin, tanning, white spots