See Spots Run

Brown patches, dark marks, a pimple that looks like it’s sticking around way too long: Make them (poof!) disappear with these skin-smart solutions.

- Janell M. Hickman

THEY SEEM TO pop up out of nowhere: a small patch of brown on your forehead, a tiny freckle on your cheek. Is it a beauty mark? A blemish? The lighting in your bathroom? Spots of all stripes can happen to anyone—and if you have darker skin, you probably know this well. “People of color are particularly susceptible to hyperpigmentation,” says Kavita Mariwalla, MD, a dermatologist in West Islip, New York. “There’s plenty you can do, but it takes a nuanced approach to get rid of discoloration.”

The first step is knowing what causes an out-of-control pigment party. Essentially, your skin’s melanocytes—the cells responsible for giving your complexion its color— are churning out too much melanin. This process can be spurred on by unchecked sun exposure, as well as pollution and hormones. Darker women are especially prone because their melanosomes (think of these as mail carriers that deliver the melanin from your melanocytes to the top layers of your skin) are bigger and release more melanin to begin with. This becomes problematic when other factors are at play: “Inflammation caused by allergic reactions, psoriasis, acne, eczema, or superficial cuts can leave behind patches of discoloration, called post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation,” explains Michelle Henry, MD, clinical instructor of dermatology at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City.