Do Pores Open and Close

People ask me if pores open and close. They certainly don’t open and close by themselves but the size or the pore can change, it can get bigger if there’s a clog in the pore and they can contract, get smaller, if the clog is cleaned out and that’s what people get confused with pores opening and closing. A normal pore is very tiny, you can barely see it. In this diagram, the pores are the little holes around the hairs as they come through the skin. If there’s a clog in that pore, the actual size of that pore will get larger, depending on the size of the clog. A program of regular and aggressive cleansing and exfoliants can actually shrink and dissolve the clogs and if it dissolves the clogs then the pore size gets smaller. As a matter of fact, when people use gentle moist heat, especially in the shower or from steaming, that very temporarily increases the pore size a little bit so you can use your granular cleanser to get the granules into the clogged pores to help clean them out much better. The bottom line is, enlarged pores are very common and most of the time, they’re pretty easy to treat.