What are Skin Barnacles?
People who suffer from skin barnacles know how embarrassing and bothersome these skin irritations can be. What exactly are skin barnacles and how does a person get them? Here are few general facts on what this skin problem really is:
- Skin barnacles are sometimes referred to as barnacles of aging and are often seen on people who are 50 years old or older.
- While not all skin barnacles develop into seborrheic keratoses, which are benign skin growth.Most of the time, these age induced barnacles indeed develop into this noncancerous benign skin problem.
- These growths are relatively harmless and are actually more annoying in an aesthetic sense than in a health related sense.
Symptoms and Signs of Skin Barnacles
When a person finds himself or herself with skin barnacles, they often detect certain physical attributes that make them conclude that they do have skin barnacles or barnacles of aging. Here are some of the telltale signs of this problem:
- These growths on your skin are often brown or flesh-colored and are often similar in appearance to warts.
- These skin barnacles are often seen on many different parts of the body but do not appear on a person’s soles or on his palms.
- To help rule out skin cancer, a doctor usually performs a biopsy of some of these barnacles, if there are a lot of these on a person’s skin.
- These barnacles usually start appearing when a person is 30 years old and the numbers of these barnacles increase over time.
Home Remedies and Treatment for Skin Barnacles
You can treat these skin barnacles from home. Once skin cancer has been ruled out by your doctor, treatment is actually optional since these pose no threat to your health. Treatments are actually carried out by dermatologists and include removal with the use of lasers, liquid nitrogen, and even electric shock. Here are some home care tips you can follow after treatment:
- Keep your wounds from these treatments clean to help ward off infection.
- Do not rub or scratch your skin barnacles since this will only cause them to bleed and get infected. If you find that you are tempted to scratch these barnacles before or after you get them treated, try to cover them loosely with a with sterile gauze and bandages.
- Apply an anti-itch cream or an antibiotic ointment on your healing skin barnacles to help you avoid any possible infections as well as keep the itch down.