How to Identify Skin Conditions

 so when I did the other day was I made a big mistake and googled skin conditions at Google melanoma and this is what I saw pictures like this and I nearly fell off my chair so these are various skin conditions that we see relatively commonly entered in my dermatology office so I can walk into a clinic with twenty patients and I could see probably every single one of these in it in a day so these are very very common how do we know what to look for when we're checking our skin in dermatology I talk about the ABCDE and what does that stand for so the a is for asymmetry so you should be able to take that mole and cut it in half and no matter which way you're cutting it the two sides should be mirror images the B is for border I should be able to tell exactly where that mole begins and ends you want a mole that has a nice round sharp mortar c is for color it's normal for patients to have a lighter and a darker mole but I wanted to be all one color our fourth one is D for diameter I like things that are smaller than about six millimeters which is roughly the size of a pencil eraser he is evolving so let's say you have a mole that is changing so it's changing in size it's changing shape color if it's bleeding you know your skin so if there's something that just doesn't look like the rest of your spots that's something we want to look at now that we know when that spot just might deserve a second look let's give it a name starting with a scary one skin cancer let's start with the basal cell we diagnosed more than three million of these a year here in the United States a lot of times it looks like a pimple or a right if it's a pimple or a bug bite should be gone within four to six weeks right anything that's sticking around beyond that let me take a look at it so this one is what we call a squamous cell carcinoma okay these in contrast to the basal cell where it which is kind of smooth and shiny looking it's a little crusty up next shingles so shingles is caused by a virus it's called the varicella virus and that it's chickenpox you get these itchy kind of blisters all over the body and they go away but your body never fully gets rid of the virus it's just kind of hibernating and then when it reactivates it travels along that nerve up to the skin this one looks familiar this looks like several sunburns I've had overtook my life down any tan is a sign of sun damage so really the safest hand that you can have is a spray tan it can really happen in anybody I think one of the common misconceptions is it can only happen in fair people I do recommend sunscreen for everybody something that has a broad-spectrum SPF 30 or higher but the key is that they're using enough of it I tell people a shot glass for the whole body psoriasis and eczema are often confused but here's the difference so sorry this is something that kind of flares up every now and again correct so people have a genetic predisposition to here you can see on the front of the knees and here's on the elbow raised Plex and a plaque is basically just a raised skin lesion this same inflammation the same irritation that you're seeing in the skin can also happen in the joints you can actually lose functioning of those joints psoriasis it increases your risk of heart disease so this is eczema and so the fancy word for eczema in dermatology is atopic dermatitis dermatitis is I just means inflammation derma means skin so eczema tends to travel in families that have a history of asthma seasonal allergies and exit and the problem eczema is really itchy and so the kids will itch itch and itch and then as we get older it shifts to other locations so we'll see it in the crook of the elbow we'll see it behind the knees sometimes around the neck on the eyelids and whatnot so moisturizers and cooler showers gentle soaps lots of things to know about lots of things to have something to get checked so see the dermatologist once a year once a year and I would especially if you've had a lot of sun exposure tanning beds blistering sunburns I would see a dermatologist let's check in and then they can tell you one to two years or go from there great thank you so much for having checked this little thing right here my face you