Have you noticed the seemingly sudden appearance of a very tiny brown dot under (not on) your lip? And you wipe and rub it, and it remains? And it just doesn’t go away?
One day I noticed a very, very small brown dot under my lip.
I aggressively rubbed it with the tip of a finger and it didn’t budge, so I quickly ruled out a speck of grime.
I had an appointment already scheduled with a dermatologist for a routine skin exam, so I knew that soon, I’d be getting a dermatologist’s assessment.
I’ll admit, I was worried, because I just couldn’t figure out what benign thing this very tiny spot could be.
It certainly did not resemble any of the solar “age spots” on my face; those were lighter brown and less dense.
It also didn’t resemble the beginnings of the benign seborrheic keratosis (those need to begin from something, right?). This tiny little spot under my lip, as teeny as it was, looked dense.
If you’ve noticed something like this, stand under very good lighting and stretch your lips into a “smile,” and look closely at the stretched skin around the little brown dot.
What I eventually noticed was that this spot’s location fell neatly into the location of neighboring pores.
During previous inspections, I had not noticed the surrounding pores because I had not stretched my lips out and angled my face in such a way that the light illuminated them.
But this time I did, and voila, lots of visible pores, like a field of them, and this tiny brown speck was neatly part of the field. A clogged pore, I wondered.
I also had noticed that it strongly resembled a few of the clogged pores on my nose. I held out hope that this was what the dermatologist would tell me.
And she did. She took no time, after viewing it, to tell me that it was a clogged pore.
So if you notice something like this near your lip, you now have a benign explanation of what it could be.
However…I would urge you to get it checked by a dermatologist just to be sure. DO NOT PICK IT WITH A PIN.
It may make you feel relieved to “get rid of it,” but then if you do—you’ll never know what it really was.
Lorra Garrick has been covering medical, fitness and cybersecurity topics for many years, having written thousands of articles for print magazines and websites, including as a ghostwriter. She’s also a former ACE-certified personal trainer.
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Top image: Shutterstock/ Image Point Fr
