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The Nuance
What Are These Spots on My Face?
How skin ages and what you can do about it
It happens to everyone sooner or later. A casual glance in a mirror turns into a lengthy self-examination. Is that a new mole? Old photographs and the internet are consulted. Visions of skin biopsies dance in one’s head.
Even those who take meticulous care of their skin are likely to develop age- or sun-related imperfections as they grow older. And for many, any new mark or mole kindles skin-cancer concerns. For good reason: Skin cancer is the most common form of cancer in the U.S. While the majority of skin cancers are basal cell or squamous cell carcinomas (types that are almost never lethal), the incidence of deadly melanoma skin cancer is on the rise and has been for decades. According to figures from the American Academy of Dermatology, one in 27 men and one in 40 women will develop melanoma at some point in their lifetime.
But while skin cancers are increasingly common, a new mole or mark is much likelier to be the benign result of either age- or sun-related damage. Dermatologists say these “age spots” come in four common types. Each of the four has a few defining characteristics, and they all tend to start showing up during a person’s thirties — though they can appear at younger ages.
The first two have nothing to do with sun exposure and everything to do with growing older, says Suzanne Olbricht, dermatologist-in-chief at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. One type is called a cherry angioma. These are bright red or bluish-red raised bumps that tend to be about the size of the tip of a crayon — although they can be bigger. They can show up anywhere, but are most common on the trunk and scalp. “They’re big tangles of blood vessels,” Olbricht explains. While doctors aren’t sure why they form, most people in their thirties have at least one or two of them, and nearly everyone develops a handful or more as they grow older.
The second type of age spot is known as seborrheic keratosis. “We call these stuck-ons, because they look like they’re stuck on the skin like a piece of gum,” Olbricht says. These “warty looking” moles tend to be a shade of brown, are uniform in color, and often appear waxy or scaly, she says. Once again, doctors…
