Reduce Your Skin Tag Risk

It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!

Have a question or a request? We love to hear from you!

In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!

As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!

So, no question/request too big or small

❝As I get older, I seem to be increasingly prone to skin tags, which appear, seemingly out of nowhere, on my face, chest and back. My dermatologist happily burns them off – but is there anything I can do to prevent them?!❞

Not a lot! But, potentially something.

The main risk factor for skin tags is genetic, and you can’t change that in any easy way.

The other main risk factors are connected to each other:

Skin folds, and chafing

Skin tags mostly appear where chafing happens. This can be, for example:

• Inside joint articulations (especially groin and armpits)
• Between fat rolls (if you have them)

So, if you have fat rolls, then losing weight will also reduce the risk of skin tags.

Additionally, obesity and some often-related problems such as diabetes, hypertension, and an atherogenic lipid profile also increase the risk of skin tags (amongst other more serious things):

See: Association of Skin Tag with Metabolic Syndrome and its Components

As for the chafing, this can be reduced in various ways, including:

• losing weight if (and only if) you are carrying excess weight
• dressing against chafing (consider your underwear choices, for example)
• keeping hair in the armpits and groin (it’s part of what it’s there for)

See also: Simply The Pits: These Underarm Myths!

Take care!