Re: Fordyce spots - new developments and my changed opinion

I'm a woman, and I've used lipstick, lip balm, lip gloss, and vaseline on my lips for the past 27 years. So I've had a lot of oily stuff covering my lips in my life.

However, I _never_ noticed these spots on my upper lip before this month, and the spots on my bottom lip I just noticed about a week ago. I swear that I would have noticed the ones on my bottom lip if they had been there longer than this short amount of time, because they are pretty big and can be easily seen with the naked eye when my lower lip is not even stretched out. This has been confirmed by one of my relatives.

I read this tonight on the internet:
"Fordyce spots are harmless small yellow-white spots found on the lips and genitalia, both the penis in men and the vulva in women.
They are caused by sebaceous hyperplasia, a kind of overgrowth of the lubricating glands, which keep the skin from drying out and cracking."
source: http://www.fordycespots.com/fordyce-spots/


...."An overgrowth of the lubricating glands, which keep the skin from drying out and cracking"..... very interesting.

It was only a couple of weeks ago that I stopped using coconut oil (or anything else that is oily) on my lips, and began to use just glycerin, 4 times a day. Glycerin is not oily.

My lips have not felt too bad while being treated with the glycerin (other than the normal EC flaking off of skin constantly, the fissures and cracks, etc., which I had before and after the glycerin usage), and glycerin is kind of sticky and calming, so it makes my lips feel covered and protected. I have really been pretty happy with the glycerin.

However, given that these Fordyce spots JUST became noticeable, and that they are rapidly spreading across my lips, becoming bigger by the day, and that I'm in my 40s and I have used oily lip products for longer than most of you have even been alive - until the last couple of weeks when I stopped using anything oily on my lips, I think that the fordyce spots (in my particular case) are a reaction by my lips to being suddenly dried out, to NOT being lubricated by external products. I think they are a result of my lips trying to compensate for all the dryness and dismay that they are going through, so they force their little oil glands to try to create their own oil for the first time in eons, and they are getting big and puffy and freaked out because they can't do it.

[OR, maybe they are just a natural progression of cheilitis, and maybe the fordyce spot overgrowth is a stage in EC that I just had not gone through, until now. Maybe it doesn't have anything to do with topical treatments, oil or no oil, and it is a factor of the weakened and challenged internal structure of the lips.]

Tonight, after I washed my face to get ready for bed, I saw that one of my fordyce spots on my upper lip was sticking out a bit tonight, like it was a small pimple ready to pop, and I squeezed it and a miniscule bit of something came out of it. That was when I said, "Hang on, this is too weird," and I started to look these things up again on the internet.

IF my lips are desperate for oil, and IF that's why these spots are POPPING up more and more, I think I will stop using the glycerin immediately, and go back to coconut oil.

I'll update here if anything changes with my spots.

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Be stong, folks. My thoughts are with you. This is such a weird condition.

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