"By golly, Jim, I'm beginning to think I can cure a rainy day!" McCoy is the one I identify with, now that I'm... well, older. I just want to preface these comments with a clear declaration: I'm a homemaker, not a doctor! Or a barber, or a cosmetologist. But it seems like anybody and everybody is free to give bad advice about shaving and skincare, so I cast my lot with them.
I think the whole idea of "Exfoliation" is wrong, as it is currently conceived, in exactly the same way that it was wrong for me to amputate my SC in the autumn.
First confirmation of my alternative, lamellar reorganization theory came from my nose. Whenever I spread pumpkin juice over my entire face at night, I would find a zit on my nose in the morning. Other nights, if I lathered up and extruded the sebaceous filaments with a tool, using a shaving-like motion (which in itself was a significant breakthrough), I would awake with flaky skin in the area.
Last night, though, after washing and applying my pumpkin juice, I addressed my clogged pores as follows: on the still-damp face at large, gentle swiping with a microfiber cloth. On the nose, firmer wiping, followed by extrusion. And I awoke with nary a zit or flake. In the acute state of lamellar reorganization (for which a better word will have to be found), the follicle openings are sufficiently deformable to maintain corneal integrity.
Also elastic enough to dry down smaller than before, thus revealing why pumpkin juice alone would cause a comedone. It's not that "exfoliants" shrink the surface of the skin, by ejecting cells. They allow its energy, contained in the bonds previously holding it together, to flow to the lowest potential. The pore opening was always genetically designed to be that smaller size, until a gob of sebum stretched it open.
"Exfoliant" just lets skin do what it wants to do. What it would do, if it weren't so beat up. It's the Tanqueray for the skin's tango!
I pored over diagrams of the quaternary structure of "intermediate filaments," and though I cannot rule out some chemical action of pumpkin juice on that level, the more likely site for chemical restructuring of the SC is the desmosome. Note that muscles also have them: so what we're talking about is probably more like muscle "tone" than voluntary relaxation, like I was originally thinking.
These protein complexes hold the corneocytes together like velcro, but are reinforced by keratin filaments within each cell. Even when the cell structure is completely lost, it is believed that the conjuction is still functional.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9248619
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