Before you start squeezing any blackheads on your skin there are a few things you need to be aware of with a blackhead extractor tool.
Blackheads form due to a blockage of your pores by a mixture of oil on your skin and dead skin cells. Dermatologists and cosmeticians call this mixture “sebum”. Once a pore is blocked by sebum one of two things can happen.
1. The pore can grow a small layer of skin to “grow over” the pore, effectively closing in the sebum. This is called a whitehead, or more commonly a pimple.
2. The pore does not grow over and the sebum trapped inside the pore oxidizes due to constant contact with the air and turns to a blackish color. These are, you guessed it, blackheads!
You can actually sort of tell the age of a blackhead just by how black the sebum is that comes out of the pore once squeezed. The older the blackhead, the darker the sebum that pops out.
So back to our original topic, if you have decided you’ll try and extract blackheads you need to make sure your tools are up to scratch.
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Tips and Tricks Before Using Blackhead Extrator Tool
1. You need a good cleansing routine
I emphasize on routine as for most people this seems to be the hardest thing to get started or hold on to. The trick why so many celebrities have amazing skin is because they have a team of dermatologists and cosmeticians whose job it is to ensure that the celebrity in question does their daily cleansing routine to the letter.
So there are a couple of steps in this routine;
Make sure that before you go to bed your face is clean. Wash it twice with lukewarm water to make sure any makeup residue or other impurities are fully washed from your face.
Use a cleanser while you do this. However don’t use anything harsh, the trick is to exfoliate gently and in a controlled fashion. Washing gets the impurities off, not scrubbing!
Use a gentle wash cloth to massage the cleanser into your face so you can get a deep pore cleanse out of it.
Afterwards use a clean towel to gently pat your face dry. Now that this is set you are ready for the second phase.
2. Soften your skin.
To make it more easy on yourself and to make the treatment that is coming more comfortable it is important to first soften up your skin. You can do this by for example wrapping a fresh towel around your face that is drenched in hot water for about 2-3 minutes. Or you can also take a hot shower after which you start your cleansing ritual immediately.
3. Disinfect your hands.
What use is it to treat your skin if the blackheads come back the day after anyway right? In order to make sure this doesn’t happen you can use gloves. Or then you can make sure your hands are properly disinfected. Just rub some rubbing alcohol onto your hands. Additionally paying extra attention to massage the alcohol into your fingertips is your best bet of making sure your hands are clear.
Also if you are about to treat acne with the extractor tool then it is important to also make sure your spots and the skin around the acne is disinfected as well. We don’t want any bacteria to spill over into the surrounding pores causing an outbreak as soon as you wake up the next morning.
My personal advice however is to just have a pair of disposable gloves at the ready for ease of comfort.
Using the blackhead extractor tool
There are several different blackhead extractor tool for several different blackhead and acne types.
Use the lancet tool to carefully pierce the skin that is on top of the pore. Then afterwards turn the tool around. On the other side is a scoop like tool with a hole. Place the hole over the opened whitehead and carefully press down, while gently rocking the tool from side to side.
Important things to remember:
If you are unfamiliar with using the lancet tool or you are having difficulties piercing the skin, leave it be and go to a dermatologist or cosmetician. They are trained to do this. If you force it you might end up with a nasty acne scar that will take some more advanced treatments to get rid of.
Method
In your kit there are several looped tools. These loops are for various different sizes of blackheads.
The larger the pore in which the blackhead sits, the bigger the loop you need to choose on your tool in order to get everything out.
If you look carefully you’ll also notice that some of the loops are placed at a slight angle. This is all to accommodate for your various facial features. For example a blackhead that sits right behind the nostrils is will be quite tricky to remove with a flat ended loop.
Pick a blackhead extractor tool with a slight angle to its loop to get into those hard to reach spots.
When trying to get a blackhead out, place the loop over the blackhead. Then with a scooping motion as if you would scoop some ice cream, apply pressure and pull downwards. The blackhead should slowly but surely come out of the pore. Don’t be dis-encouraged if it doesn’t come out immediately. There is not necessarily need to apply more pressure. Just maintain the pressure you have and simply wait until it oozes out. If the waiting becomes unreasonably long (several seconds), then apply more pressure.
Finish with some more disinfecting.
Finally make sure that your blackhead extractor tool and other tools are disinfected. Once your tools are disinfected your face is up next.
Apply some toner to a cotton ball and gently wipe your entire skin. Afterwards apply some moisturizer and you can rest assured that when you wake up the next morning, your skin will be pure and clean!
Best Blackhead Extrator Tool Kit Review – Equinox International Kit!
By far, the Equinox International Blackhead and Blemish Remover Kit (5-Pieces) is probably the best blackhead remover kit on the market to date. It’ll give you the most bang for your buck.
You will get better quality for spending maybe $20 more, however at less than $10 today, this kit is a steal at the moment.
The Equinox blackhead and blemish remover kit comes with a set of 5 tools. They are to be used on a variety of skintypes and on a variety of white- and blackheads. It’s in my opinion probably the best blackhead remover kit out there.
From top to bottom:
Best blackhead remover kit tool number 1 is used for medium to large sized pores. Using them is very simple. You can read a more in depth guide here. The gist of it is to move the looped end over any blackhead that might be on your skin. Then with an almost scooping-like motion apply pressure to one side of the blackhead. After that, pulling down, it should pop out of the pore (hopefully!).
As a general rule the larger loops are meant for blackheads. The ones that look like a tiny melon-scoop with a hole in them, are meant for whiteheads. Tools 2 and 4 are also for blackhead removal.
Best blackhead remover kit tool number 3 in the picture above is just such a tool to get rid of whiteheads and pimples. It features a spike at the end meant for piercing open the skin of the whitehead. The skin gets broken in a controlled fashion and as a result when you squeeze the whitehead, it pops open nicely rather than puss flying everywhere.
Once the skin is broken then place the scoop with the hole above the now open pore. Simply press down and if everything went correctly the sebum and (possibly) puss should ease out of the pore relatively painlessly.
Best blackhead remover kit tool number 5 is also a whitehead removal tool.
Make sure that before you start using these tools you pay extra care with disinfecting these. Any impurities that got stuck on the tools during fabrication might cause you blackhead trouble or acne outbreaks in the future.
An easy way to disinfect the tools is just by boiling them in some water. Another way is to rub some rubbing alcohol onto the work surfaces.
Also make sure to thoroughly clean these after use. Any leftover sebum or even makeup remains (if you haven’t properly cleaned your makeup off or are just addicted to popping blackheads and pimples) can easily cause new breakouts.
I would recommend to use this best blackhead remover kit right after showering. Presuming that most of you take relatively warm showers, your skin will have softened enough to allow for easy blackhead extraction.
Make sure to use an exfoliator and a cleanser before squeezing. After this you are ready to go to town with your new kit.
Apply a toner after and some moisturizer to seal the deal and your skin will start to glow in no-time!
From a total reviews of 2,631 at the time of writing, this product has received 4.1/5 stars which is pretty good.
Out of experience I can say that this kit is a very good standard set, a must have in your arsenal of skincare products as the price/quality is very good.
Just make sure that you don’t press so hard in your skin that you don’t damage it. But that should be common sense :).