?The Best Blackhead-Removers You Can Use At Home

Ah, blackheads. Those little black dots are super-annoying…and almost impossible to truly get rid of. But before we tell you just how to nix them (there is a way!), it’s important to understand why they’re plaguing your skin in the first place, says New York City dermatologist Lance Brown, M.D. “Every three months, we make a new layer of skin on the top,” he explains. “In some people, that cycling process doesn’t happen correctly, and a buildup of oil clogs pores.” If your skin is covering the pore, you’ll end up with a whitehead; if some of the top skin flakes off, the oil oxidizes and you get a blackhead.

Whether or not you’re lucky enough to be prone to blackheads depends on a variety of factors: Hormones, your age, underlying sun damage can all disrupt the natural cycling of skin.

There’s no short of blackhead-removing videos out there, as well as cool, crazy DIY techniques for clearing them out, like using dental floss or giving your skin a rather vigorous massage. And, of course, there are blackhead extractors—the instruments that have a little loop on the end or tweezers with super-sharp tips—that people love for picking. But before you invest in your own extracting device, know that there’s a better way, says Michele Green, M.D., a cosmetic dermatologist in New York City who advises patients not to try to perform extractions at home. “Patients who use these don’t know how to properly sterilize these and don’t use them correctly, either, so they end up scarring their skin or making the problem much worse,” she says. “I see this every day. They end up mutilating their skin.”

Got that? Best to avoid anything that encourages you to pick at your pores or requires the know-how of an aesthetician or dermatologist. That said, there are several blackhead-removing products you can keep in your arsenal that truly do get the job done. Try these five: