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• In a new YouTube video, Dr. John Gilmore, MD, shows three milium cyst uprooting procedures, with each patient enduring the tiny white bumps near their eye.
• Gilmore uses tweezers and needles, creating puffy white keratin gushes and teensy craters or blood and pus.
• Milia are small cysts resulting from keratin getting trapped beneath the surface of the skin and they can toughen to make removal challenging.
This week, John Gilmore, MD, whose polite Southern mannerisms and candid footage of dermatological procedures have earned him 500,000 YouTube followers, treated fans to a triple feature of milium cyst popping. The video features recordings of three patients plagued by the tiny white bumps on or near their eyelids and the Houston area dermatologist uses a mix of needles and tweezers to uproot the bumps.
The first patient’s cyst, the largest in the video, pops right open when tweezed, releasing a gush of puffy white keratin. The second two require a careful stab of a needle, leaving minuscule craters of blood and pus.
“Okay, my friend, I am now going to stab you with a very small needle,” warns Gilmore, seconds before pricking a man’s eyelid, “so my suggestion is you don’t move because it is right by your eye.”
Milium cysts (plural: milia) are small and white and usually appear on the face, the result of keratin getting trapped underneath the skin surface. (Unlike whiteheads, they are not caused by clogged pores.) They sometimes show up in clusters. While not hazardous, they can be annoying, particularly around the eye, mouth or other oft-utilized part of the face, and they can be unsightly, popping up right on the face.
Uprooting one is not usually a significant procedure, but they can be challenging to a dermatologist because they are so small and can get textually tough.
“The reason these are difficult to get rid of is the keratin,” Gilmore explains in the video, “the little protein that plugs the milium, can sometimes get really think and harden and it doesn’t want to come out, so you get stuck with this thing.”
Watch the video here: