Hello, everybody.
Welcome back to my channel, where
skincare is all about progression over
perfection because perfection doesn't exist.
And welcome back to another When Beauty Turns Ugly.
As always, I'll be doing my skincare routine.
All the products I'm using today can be
found in the description box down below.
Listen, have you ever heard that, I guess, rumor that
popping a pimple, popping a spot can actually kill you?
Or like the myth of the triangle of death?
What if I told you that that
wasn't a myth, it wasn't a rumor?
The possibility of dying from popping
a pimple is actually quite real.
All be explained, demystified, maybe, and
possibly debunked in today's video.
So my TikTok isn't skincare videos at all.
It's dogs, it's horror, and it's true crime.
And a few weeks back, this video, which
went very viral, popped up on my feed. Let's listen.
"I died after squeezing a pimple that was on my face.
My name is Beatrice.
I'm from Santa Catarina, Brazil.
I'm the 18 year old who died this week
after going to the hospital after squeezing a pimple.
After being bothered for days with a huge pimple
on my face, I decided to squeeze it.
And that's when I signed my sentence,
because later I would lose my life."
And I'm going to cut it short
there, because this isn't a real story.
My thoughts when seeing this was, that's horrible that
they're using AI to kind of animate a dead
girl to tell the story of her death.
However, when I looked on the actual
profile, they are made up stories.
They're AI generated images. It's not real.
However, I do have a sneaky suspicion that
this story was based on a real person.
So what is the triangle of death?
Well, according to Dr.
Amesh Adalja, a board certified infectious disease physician, the
triangle of death is a slang term for the
area of face, which includes the tip in between
your eyebrows down to your nose, all the way
down to the corners of your mouth.
Dr Adalja says that this area is connected via blood
vessels to your skull, where infections can spread more
rapidly and become very serious and almost deadly.
Now, I am aware of this term before, mainly because it
is a popular kind of skincare topic, but also because I
get filler in the tip of my nose and the bridge
here just to get rid of a bump.
So with any good injector, anyone doing a consultation,
will let you know of all the important vessels,
passageways, veins, whatever you want to call them.
Arteries.
I don't know if arteries are in there.
That could cause complications.
Now, so that's why it's important to go see someone who
does hold a medical license of sorts, because first of
all, they know where to avoid, but if they do
hit anything, they are immediately able to reverse that.
However, popping a spot isn't sticking
a needle on your face.
So how on earth can popping a spot in that
area in the Triangle of Death put you in hospital?
Or even worse, kill you?
So if this area of your skin is broken, you've
picked at a spot, you've scraped it, bacteria can enter
your body and because it's so close to your brain,
can lead to a number of complications.
Now, luckily, we live in a modern
time where antibiotics are a thing.
If you catch the infection quick enough,
it means these deaths are extremely rare.
Extremely rare, but not impossible.
Even if you don't pick in the Triangle
of Death, if you pick somewhere on your
face, it could still lead to death.
Just like Geraint Mullins, who at the
time was 17 and he's from Newport.
He was lounging around, binge watching
TV, just like you do.
I don't know about you, but when... I have this
awful habit of rubbing my nose or picking my skin,
when I'm just, like, lounging around doing nothing, and he
was doing the same, but he noticed a spot that
was coming up, just like around here on his neck.
And just like he's done many, many times before, he
decided to pop that spot and have a good pick.
And that was it, really, until 24 hours later,
when he noticed a more sizable bump in the
area where he had picked that spot.
So he went to the doctor, not thinking much,
thinking, oh, I've just really irritated my skin.
Maybe the spot is just like
coming back with a vengeance.
However, after a few minutes of being at his GP, the
doctor gave him a quick once over, called an ambulance and
was like, you immediately need to go to the hospital.
Because after that little investigation and hearing
just how fast Geraint heartbeat was, the
doctor was like, this is sepsis.
Like, you need to go to the hospital.
Sepsis, according to the NHS, is a
life threatening reaction to an infection.
But what made this particular case so dangerous?
Like we mentioned earlier, this area still here is
connected to the skull via blood vessels, leading to
a possible quicker infection and leading to death.
And all this came from popping a small spot.
Luckily, Geraint's father was actually the paramedic who answered
the 999 call. I nearly said, 911 then.
999 call from the doctor.
So he knew that that was his son.
So he rushed to the doctors, rushed his son to
the hospital, where he had two surgeries just to drain
this abscess, as well as two blood transfusions.
In four days, Geraint's life had gone from just
lounging around, picking a spot to fighting for his
life in hospital because he picked a spot.
Now, he was extremely lucky, because here in the
UK, over 44,000 people die each year from sepsis.
Of course, this was an extremely, extremely rare case
and not even in the Triangle of Death.
However, there were stories of an unnamed 19 year old
from China only reported in the media as Yang.
And again, Yang was at home just minding
her own business when she noticed a very
red dot on the tip of her nose.
And again, like any other spot she had
before, she gave it a little squeeze, it
popped, and she thought nothing of it.
However, just a few minutes after popping this spot,
she felt a really sharp, like, consistent pain under
her right eye, like a real hard pressure.
After complaining about this to her parents and
suddenly developing a fever, they decided to take
her to the hospital right away.
And she was seen by Dr.
Han Kun, deputy director of
the department of neurology.
And in an interview with the Ningbo Evening News, he
said that she had a continuous fever of 39 degrees
Celsius, that's 102 Fahrenheit, while showing signs of developing meningitis.
Saying her life could have been in danger if she
hadn't got to the hospital quicker.
So not only did picking that spot give her
some serious infections, possibly developing meningitis, but the doctor
also says that that pain, that pressure behind her
right eye came from blood clots forming under the
eye, which, if not treated, could have turned into
blindness, paralysis, and even death.
Again, all from picking a spot.
She was given antibiotics. She was fine.
I mean, she was rushed to the hospital pretty quickly,
but that wasn't the case for a YouTuber called Lauren Loebrick.
She posted, like, a good
old fashioned story time video.
And when I saw the title of this one, talking
about how popping a pimple nearly killed her, I was
like, is this some kind of, like, over the top,
Tana Mongeau-esque kind of fake story time?
But no, it's very, very real.
Popping a pimple nearly killed her.
Can you guess where that pimple was?
Right at the tip of the triangle of death.
At this time, Lauren was in high school,
and lucky for her, she mentions that she
always really had very clear skin.
Like, it's never been an issue for her.
But she did get the odd pimple pop up.
So when she saw this pimple pop up just
in between her eyebrows... no, it was, like, to
the left or the right or something.
She was like, I'm going to do what I always do, pop it.
Now, we know popping spots isn't the right
thing to do, but we'd be lying if
we denied that we'd ever done that ourselves.
We've all made some skincare mistakes before.
She was like, oh, my God, this is too big.
It's so obvious.
I need to pop it and get rid of it.
However, when she went to pop it,
it was a little harder than usual.
She said that when she usually pops spots, you get,
like, a little bit of pus that comes out.
But this didn't happen.
She said it was so hard to pop, that
she put so much pressure on the spot to
pop that it went really, really red and kind
of developed this, like, white ring around it.
And because of the sheer amount of pressure that
she was putting on this spot, she had actually
taken off a chunk of skin as well.
We've all been there.
Well, I've been there. I've been there.
She also mentioned that it was incredibly painful, like
it wasn't any other spot she'd had before.
It was incredibly painful.
The next day, she had to go to school, and
she was like, no, I really want a day off.
I can't handle having this spot.
Just like any normal kind
of like high school insecurities.
But it wasn't actually just because she had a spot and
she didn't want people to see that she had a spot.
Her eye had actually swollen as well, so much
so that when she got to school, her friends
had asked her if she was okay because it
looked like she had been punched in the face.
After getting so much attention and so many questions
in school, she said that actually really upset her.
She was like, why is everyone commenting on this spot?
She went home and she was like,
I have to get rid of this.
So she tried popping the spot again, trying to
see if any kind of pus would come out,
if she can just make it look less worse.
And again, nothing happened.
She goes to bed.
The next morning, she wakes up
and her face looks like this.
She sees her reflection in the
mirror and starts to cry.
And she goes to see her dad.
And her dad was like, oh, my God.
Let's get you to the doctor.
After telling the doctor what she had done to
cause this swelling, the doctor did, like, a little
test and told her that she has cellulitis.
Now, this is an infection when bacteria
gets into the deeper layers of skin.
So, for example, you've tried to pick a spot,
you've taken some of the skin off, you get
an infection that can spread very, very quickly.
Again, we're right near the skull, and can
be life threatening if not taken care of
pretty immediately.
She had a fever.
She was throwing up, all because of this infection.
They took some blood samples, basically to
make sure she didn't need a blood
transfusion because of this infection.
They gave her some antibiotic cream because luckily,
it hadn't spread that far, and the cream
was able to heal and stop the infection.
I mean, honestly horrific for her.
And these are all examples of just how close to death
you can come from picking at the Triangle of Death.
Now, I wrote this script three, four months ago,
and like many scripts, they kind of sit in
a folder and don't really come to light.
But I have had to make a really unfortunate addition to this
script, which is why I'm now posting it, but we do have
an example of a death caused by picking a spot.
This is Demille Beatrice.
She was an 18 year old from Brazil.
And around June of this year she had been complaining
of having a really stiff neck along with what
she said was a painless pimple on her face.
And she did what anybody else would do, really.
She got a hot water bottle, took some pain
medication and kind of just got on with things.
She was planning on maybe getting like a deep tissue
massage just to kind of help relieve some of the
pain she had been experiencing around her neck.
However, the hot water bottle seemed to
be making the pain subside a lot.
However, the pain did start to become pretty unbearable
and that's when she decided to go to hospital.
She was quickly discharged, however, because the hot water
bottle had been causing some relief to her.
However, the next day she woke up with a pretty
swollen face and was immediately taken back to the hospital
by her mum, where she was further examined.
And the article that I was reading, which I did have
to translate, said that they ran some tests on her.
It doesn't really say what test they
ran, but it was found that she
had extremely low blood pressure and sepsis.
So the day that she was taken into ICU was
a Sunday, and unfortunately by Monday she had passed away.
It was promptly discovered that it was a broken
pimple on her face that had led to her
sepsis, which had led to her death.
Infectious disease specialist Sabrina Sabino explains that the
bacteria that caused Demille's death was nothing
more than a microorganism that colonizes the skin.
However, it could be worsened when there is
some type of injury to the skin.
She goes on to say that the bacteria
has a few names, including MRSA, which is
resistant to antibiotics such as Penicillin.
This means that some more common antibiotics
are not able to treat this infection.
The hospital where Demille passed also posted a
statement saying, "We at Hospital Santa Isabel confirmed
that the cause of death of young Demille
Beatrice was due to the worsening of her
health condition due to the bacteria MRSA.
This bacterium can be found in non
hospital environments and its entry point into
the body can be through any lesion.
We regret the patient's death."
Now, it's unclear where exactly this popped pimple
was other than her face, but from the
sounds of it, it doesn't necessarily matter.
Again, this is all an extremely rare occurrence.
Like very, very rare.
Even in the Triangle of Death, treatable
infections, when caught quickly, seem to be
the more common occurrence, a very rare,
common occurrence from this kind of injury,
pimple popping.
It just sounds like popping your pimples in general
here is not the best thing to do, but it does
sound like, although very rare, it's not impossible that picking
a spot can lead to infections or something more serious.
So please be very, very careful.
My personal favorite thing to do if I do have
an area of skin that I can't stop picking, pop
a pimple patch over the top of it, any of
it, any of them, they're all the same.
Get something you could fidget with while you're watching
TV so you don't start touching your skin.
But again, and I stress, extremely rare.
Please do not go panicking if you scratch your face.
As always, please let me know if
you have any experiences with this.
I know it's extremely rare.
If you're happy to share.
Strawberry, I don't like this one.
I don't like strawberry flavor.
Please let me know in the comments.
It's a good lip balm, though.
Let me know in the comments down below.
You can watch the full When
Beauty Turns Ugly playlist here, some general light
entertainment here, and I'll see you over there.