Face mites – we all have them!

Writer: Anina Lee.

Face mites live in your pores, eat your grease and crawl on your face while you sleep. That’s right – they crawl out of your pores at night and party on your face. And you don’t even know it.

You probably have a few dozen tiny arachnids on the shafts of hair on your face, quietly gorging themselves on your natural oils.

There are two species of face mite called Demodex. They have eight legs, so they belong to the class Arachnida. They live within the hair follicles on human skin, feeding on face oils and dead skin cells. These mites tend to be most prevalent around the eyes, affecting the lids and lashes.

Only a biologist would describe these microscopic arachnids as “actually pretty adorable”!

Demodex folliculorum mites are wormlike, with eight stumpy legs; they are microscopic in size, measuring about 0.3 millimetres in length. They live near the roots of facial hair follicles, hidden away inside your pores.

Click below to read more. (The full article can be found on page 15)