Clear Up Your Acne by Boxing

Acne affects a hell of a lot of people.  Up to 90% of men and 80% of women at some time in their lives will have to deal with the bacteria that causes acne.  To anyone that has it, you know how uncomfortable it can make you feel both physically and mentally.   Boxing can help you overcome both the physical aspects of acne and the mental ones, but to understand how boxing can help you clear the acne off your face, you first need to know:

What is Acne?

If you look really closely at your skin you will notice it looks like a bunch of small openings.  These small holes in your skin are called pores.  These pores have to remain unblocked so that fluid that forms beneath them can spill out onto the surface of your skin.  This fluid, called Sebum is made by your sebaceous glands and is a mixture of fat and waste from dead fat-producing cells.  Sebum production is a normal process in your body and is essential in keeping your hair and skin moist and prevents the drying and irritation of membranes.

Usually, the sebum travels to the surface of the skin through your pores via follicles which are basically canals that house small hairs found all over your body, but are most numerous on your face, upper back, and chest.  Lining the follicles are cells called keratinocytes. 

Acne begins to develop when dead cells mix with the sebum and plug the opening to the skin.  This mixture allows a bacteria called Propionibacterium acnes (P.acnes) to thrive underneath the skin in these follicles.  Usually P.acnes lives on the surface of your skin.  This bacteria creates various chemicals and enzymes that your body doesn't like, so it sends white blood cells to the rescue resulting in inflammation characterized by redness, swelling, heat, and pain.

Eventually, the cell wall of the follicle breaks down and spills all of these nasty products into nearby skin resulting in lesions and pimples otherwise known as zits.

Zits and lesions come in a variety of forms ranging from less to more severe.  In order of increasing severity:

Comedo:   Basically, these are a plugged follicle.  If the plug stays below the skin, it is called a closed comedo, turns into a white bump and is called a whitehead.  If it spills out onto the skin, it is an open comedo and forms a blackhead, named after its appearance as well.

Papules:  These are small, inflamed lesions, pink in color and tender to the touch.  They are less than 5mm in diameter and usually round, but can come in other shapes.  They are usually a precursor to something more severe.  That is, they will rupture/ulcerate and get worse.

Pustules:  Pimples in their most splendid form.  They are pus filled lesions, red at the base.  They are what papules will turn into.  They resemble whiteheads in that the pus in them forms a nice white pus bubble at the top, but they are red at the base.  These are the ones you are so eager to pop.  There is a safe way to pop them.

Nodules:  These are worse yet, and are large and painful and lodged deep within the skin.  They can last for months and usually result in scarring.  Do not try to pop one of these, it will most definitely lead to more trauma for your skin.  Doing so could make it last even longer.

Cysts:  Similar to nodes, but are more than 5mm in diameter and are pus filled.  They will likely cause scarring.  Again, trying to pop one of these will result in more skin trauma, worsen the lesion, and likely make it last longer than it would have if you had left it alone.

So How Does Boxing Clear up Your Acne?

Boxing is exercise and exercise makes you sweat.  That sweat cleans out your pores from the inside out.  However, it's important to wash fairly soon after you exercise in order to eliminate the waste products and bacteria expelled by your pores during exercise.  Boxing makes you sweat more than other sports because the demand it places on your body are enormous.  As such, boxing helps your body eliminate waste.

In addition, exercise ensures your body is in working order.  Waste eliminating organs such as your kidneys and liver become more efficient.  In addition, boxing is a great stress reliever and some studies have suggested that acne breakouts occur when stressed out.  The positive mental and physical focus boxing delivers not only makes you feel more confident, but as a side effect, you get a clean face too.  Not bad, eh?

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