Demodex ticks are more friends than enemies, but while we sleep, they party all over our faces | Credit: ShutterStock
Dozens of legged mites cratch through your pores and meet your entire face and party. They become smaller, but when you see them enlarged, it’s pretty disgusting. They are called demodex mites and almost every adult has them throughout the body.
These nocturnal crawlers are more tinier than pinpoint, so you don’t even feel like seeing these nocturnal crawlers. Reports say they are invertebrates, with lengths ranging from about 0.15 to 0.4 mm, and feeding on oily contents around the outer part of the hair follicle.
“As you fall asleep every night, you can feel at ease knowing you’re not really alone, thanks to dozens of legged mites raw from your pores and raw to the party,” CNN writes. Alejandra Perrotti, an associate professor of invertebrate biology at the University of Reading in the UK, said these demodex mites are creeping up, saying, “Don’t do it.”
They mate and visit relatives and parties
“While we sleep, they’re coming out, very happy, mate, visiting relatives, walking in our faces,” she added. “The moment we wake up, they go back into the pores.”
In exchange for cleaning the mac from our pores, our bodies provide these miniature vacuum melatonin. Melatonin is a hormone produced in the skin that puts us to sleep, but that gives us important energy to mites, Perrotti said.
Like microscopic vampires, mites evolve to protect themselves from UV rays and can easily destroy DNA.
The face usually has up to five mites per square centimeter, but it is impossible to see them with the naked eye without examining skin samples under a microscope.
Perrotti explained that weakened immune systems can lead to overproducing mites, leading to many skin and eye conditions.
They can cause demodicosis
Dr. Richard Locksley, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, said DeModex mites grow rapidly, causing an overgrowth condition known as surfactant disease.
Immunodeficiency people, such as older adults and those undergoing chemotherapy, are more vulnerable to demodicosis and may experience an inflammatory response to mites and bacteria that can help them colonize, Locksley said.
Inflammation can manifest as rosacea, acne, dryness and peeling, especially on the cheeks, eyelids, forehead, wrinkles, rosacea, acne, dryness and peeling, and oil can accumulate, said Dr. Roberto Ricardo Gonzalez, an associate professor of dermatology at the University of California.
Perhaps most of us don’t notice
“Most people are completely unaware that they have mites, and that’s how they should stay,” Locksley said. “You can do more harm than just being an agnostic,” he said.
Research shows that regular and proper sleep is essential to prevent the skin from overproducing sebum, which is an oily substance like mites’ food, from overproducing it, researchers have shown.
CNN said Demodex mites have been observed in humans for centuries and are believed to have been handed over from contact with their mother shortly after birth.
However, Perrotti and her research team discovered in 2022 that these symbionts could be experiencing what she calls “experiences a long-term evolutionary death.”
