Fold crossing theory |
A single fold is a theoretical concept.
On your body, any fold will eventually meet another fold.
Let’s call the point where they meet a “fold crossing”.
Pimple |
I can assert this because I have personally groomed several of these traumatisms on my own body up to their complete disappearance.
Most fold crossings, however, do not exhibit any of these problems.
They are only knots in your skin.
Analogy with roads
A single road is quite rare on this planet.
A road will connect with another at some point, creating a road crossing.
We all know how much more action there is at the crossing than elsewhere on the roads.
Corners
A crossing has four corners which are far from square. Each one being a tangled and draped mess of smaller folds.
As the corners get pushed and pulled, the skin becomes crumpled and compressed.
Chimney
The four corners slowly close in and create a void in the center, a skin cavern.
This evolves height wise into a chimney-like structure.
Its inner passage is often constricted and twisted, with plenty of sudden curves.
The opening is mistaken as a pore.
Some organic wastes, from the enclosed skin, stay trapped inside.
Fold crossing evolution |
Fold crossing creation
First, let’s separate the two folds of the crossing and call them Fold A and Fold B.
Very early in your life, Fold A and Fold B started meeting when you would do something.
At first, they probably did not meet at the exact same place every time.
As their paths became etched into your skin, due to specific epidermis formation, so did the position of their crossing point.
Fold crossing and heat
The walls of both folds now crash into each other every time you do the same movement.
At the crossing point, the skin is badly and continuously deformed.
All this generates lots of heat.
The heat is worse in the center and at the four corners.
Epidermis locks the center
Epidermis formation will come to the rescue of the poor crossing in order to prevent breakage or puncture.
One by one, coats of protective epidermis
cover the crossing's center.
This action solidifies the skin of this mistreated region, but locks the crossing into place.
Crossings growing inward
Since folds A and B are already grooves, not mounds, the fold crossing is a hole.
As it evolves and fixates, it grows deeper and deeper below the surface of your skin.
Epidermis closes the corners
Once the center is locked, the blunt of the heat forming action is transferred to the crossing's four corners.
Each branch sees the crossing as an ending and closes its walls.
The corners become so big that they touch each other and join.
Epidermis will now glue them together
Continuous refolding at the top
The very top of the fold crossing keeps on refolding.
As time passes and your actions challenge it again and again, the top edge of the crossing adds new coats of locking epidermis to protect itself.
This brings new unfolded skin, next to the opening, into the chimney
Outgrowth
Sometimes, this
relentless refolding forms a mound or
agglomeration above the skin's surface.
They become
jumbled messes of skin,
We notice the darker ones, but generally there is little color change. It could also be paler.
Epidermis formation often places a hard cover on the whole mass.
The grid |
Your skin’s natural horizontal and vertical folding tendency ends up giving a grid of folds and crossings.
Please note that the folds are not equally spaced like in the illustration.
In reality, the grid is variably spaced and complexifying, adding more folds between existing ones as needs grow.
The grid and skin tensions
This grid adds new strength to your skin acting like a flexible skeleton inside it.
It brings relief to large sections of skin between the folds.
The damaging pulling forces from your actions now travel down the branches of the folds up to the ever-growing crossings.
Tensions at one crossing are relayed to all the crossings in its vicinity.
The grid is problematic
The grid of fold crossings has several disadvantages:
-It greatly reduces the skin's flexibility and elasticity.
-On the face, expressivity and beauty are diminished.
-It interconnects problem areas. Doing one movement now affects regions further and further away.
-The skin becomes brittle, bleeds easily and is harder to the touch.
-...
The grid is tightening
Because the size of your body has increased since your youth, the grid has tightened.
It is deepening into your flesh.
Ungroomed folds and crossings don’t disappear, they multiply, enlarge and tighten your skin still more.
This reduces your capacity to move, it makes anything you do more painful as you get older.
Fold crossing chimney |
The center of the fold crossing becomes almost completely encased into its sealed corners.
This structure solidifies, developing into a grotto made of skin
At the top of the chimney, continuous refolding pulls more skin down into it.
The entrance gets covered and blocked.
But often there remains an opening.
Fold crossing coats
The crossings build their chimney coat by coat, each coat being caused by your movements, just like the folds.
But the crossings see much more action than their adjoining folds, the tensions from the folds being relayed to the crossings.
So crossings develop about ten times more coats than their folds.
Fold crossing become huge.
How the chimney is built
The fold crossing keeps on sinking deeper into your skin.
New coats of epidermis push and compress the older ones down.
Hundreds of enclosed cells make up the chimney's walls and the epidermis coats holding it together
Typically, a few hair follicles and sweat glands now find their exits redirected into the chimney.
Most vital functions are halted
Several areas become so crumpled, flattened or distorted that their vital functions, such as hair growth, sweat and sebum production, are halted.
Some vital functions remain active
On the other hand, a minority will stay active.
But the bodily wastes they produce, hair, sebum and sweat, have a hard time exiting the chimney.
Open and closed chimneys
Evacuation of the wastes tends to keep the top of the chimney open.
But the beautification process at the skin’s surface has a tendency to pave the opening with epidermis.
The chimney becomes closed.
What's inside the chimney?
The content depends on the crossing's position on your body.
Generally, it is a mix of dead epidermis cells and sebum.
You can expect the sebum content to be greater on your face, but it is spectacular on your scalp.
Sebum makes this cement stronger.
The chimney will also contain sweat, hair, cellular wastes and possibly some intruders.
These uninvited guests include whatever there was on the skin just prior to it being folded: food, cosmetics, dirt, ...
Skin sucked in
Because of the continuous refolding at the top of the chimney, skin near the opening is covered and pulled into the chimney.
The health of the cells involved is important.
Often they are charred by sunburn and can be seen as darker spots. This necrosed tissue has harmful effects mostly when infection occurs.
Open chimneys evacuate their wastes
Evacuating the chimney is difficult and awkward.
Since air can penetrate it, its content has a tendency to dry in place.
Further waste production pushes it out gradually.
Sometimes, in areas where sebum glands abounds, only the very top of the chimney's content will
dehydrate, forming a plug.
You know this phenomenon as a blackhead.
Closed chimneys entrap their wastes
A capped chimney imprisons its contents.
Everything stays trapped in.
These encased deposits don't dry and remain captive for life.
If new sebum arrival is sufficient, it forces a swelling and a bubbling of the skin at the top of the chimney.
You know this phenomenon as a pimple
Acne
Your face is about six times more folded than your body is.
There are proportionally more sebum glands there, making their presence inside the crossings probable.
Your body's sudden size increase at adolescence tightens the grid of folds and crossings deeper into the skin.
This augmentation of your skin's tension has a strangling effect on the crossings. It is like if they were pinched.
It forces the sebum out of open crossings.
It creates extra pressure inside closed ones.
A bubbling of the cover follows, but it often resists and the content has to look for another exit.
Trapped in wastes infect the skin
Pressure inside a closed crossing is always on the rise.
This may be caused by the arrival of more wastes,
but also by exterior factors such as your actions, physical condition, menstruations, emotions or even by temperature changes.
This stress pushes the filling, not finding an exit,
to attack its skin sheath.
The flesh is pierced.
Some blood invades the chimney.
Your body is now fighting this invader.
Pus is formed.
This infection usually produces more swelling and a need to empty the content unnaturally.
Sometimes though, the absence of sebum glands may preclude any pressure increase.
Other times, the exit may be so far away or unreachable that everything is kept in.
This link with the immune system may lead to disease.
Skin lesions
Most of the conditions I have listed at the top of this page are considered as skin lesions.
They are not to me.
A lesion implies that the skin is attacked, cut or pierced, that the epidermis is ruptured.
Pimples, blackheads, nodules, moles, nevi, beauty marks, brown or age spots, ... are only a variety of fold crossing configurations.
They are caverns or folded baggings made of skin, but not below it.
All the action occurs above the epidermis.
It takes extra pressure to force perforation.
Then infection may take place.
The cancer connection
My cancer theory is based on the principle that they are caused by alien substances trapped in the body.
All kinds of compounds stay stuck inside the crossings.
Many may be harmful, but it is believed that sunburned skin cells are carcinogenic.
These cells, charred by the overexposures of your youth, are now deeply inlayed.
They form the deepest parts of your folds and crossings.
Your system thinks they're foreign and does all it can to reject them, but, after years of combat, looses the battle.
The infection then spreads inward.
Skin, breast, prostate, anal, mouth, ... cancers would all be fold crossing cancers.
Backing evidence
The following observations have guided my thinking:
-The link between acne scars or moles and skin cancer is clearly documented and accepted by the scientific community.
-The lumps or nodules that triggered my grooming adventure are the kind described in
breast cancer early detection tests and in prostate cancer rectal touch examinations.
-I am now experienced at seeing what fold crossings look like on my body and that of others.
I have examined skin cancer photographs. Not only is the appearance of epithelioma or a melanoma similar to a crossing, their position on the body corresponds to major intersections on the grid of folds. Places where most people have a problem.
Hair out of the chimney
Typically, one hair will stick out of it, though it may be quite small and colorless.
In very folded areas, like your scalp, several hairs may come out of the same chimney.
Chimney torsion
The pull from the four branches of a fold crossing is unequal.
A movement you do involves a series of varying tensions.
This action causes some crossings to rotate.
Skin thickening
As the fold crossings on your body deepen, their connected folds also increase their depth.
This has the effect of thickening your skin gradually.
It is accompanied by a steady loss of skin sensitivity.
Coats in time
When grooming, your nails remove the coats of epidermis cells one by one.
Since these coats have been created in time one above the other, you are always grooming the most recent coat.
Going back in time
Every coat corresponds to some actions you have done in the past.
Removing them is like reliving your life backwards, counter-clockwise.
One could compare the task to unbuilding a house. You cannot start with the foundations, you have to remove what is above, coat by coat.
Fold crossing styles
Most fold crossings are almost invisible to the naked eye.
They can be seen easily on your palm and soles so you can observe a variety of styles with their branches meeting at every possible angle.
Some crossings are quite deep with redness visible in their center.
-Two way crossings.
-Merging crossing.
-Multiple or star crossings.
Further fold crossing evolution
Some crossings grow in size while others simply tighten, most will do both.
At some point, the whole structure of the crossing may collapse and become part of a new, bigger one.
It can roll over itself.
A crossing can link with adjacent ones.
It can protect itself with a very hard cover.
Locks
A lock is a draping of the skin on one side of a fold crossing.
Like an accordion or a hand fan, they are made of tens, sometimes hundreds, of small folds.
