Giving a hickey may be fun and easy, but getting rid of one can be quite a task. If a person has a hickey in a visible place, such as the neck, he or she will probably want to hide it or remove it to avoid the embarrassment.
What is a hickey?
A hickey or a love bite is a visible mark on the skin caused by kissing, sucking or biting. It is basically a bruise that forms because the pressure on the skin makes the blood vessels burst. It can be reddish, pink or purple, but its color changes as the hickey heals, gradually turning greenish, brown, gray or yellow. Just like any other bruise, a hickey does not go away overnight. It may take anywhere from four to fourteen days for it to disappear on its own, but fortunately there are remedies that can be used to speed up the process.
How to get rid of a hickey
The best way to get rid of a hickey is to do something as soon as it is made, if possible. Applying ice wrapped in a handkerchief or pressing a cold spoon firmly against the skin can help by shrinking the blood vessels and making them less visible. If using a spoon, it is recommended to few of them in a freezer because a warm spoon will not do any good.
There is also the so-called toothbrush method, which involves a stiff-bristled toothbrush for lightly scraping the hickey. A comb can be used instead of a toothbrush too. Scraping or brushing the hickey improves circulation, but if it is too intense, it can actually make the hickey worse. After doing this for about 15 minutes, it is recommended to apply some ice.
The coin method may be the most painful one but it seems to be very effective. In this method, the skin should be stretched flat by pulling the skin on the opposite sides of the hickey and then the edge of a large coin is used to scrape the skin, with movements similar to spreading the butter on a piece of toast. Scraping must be hard, which can be painful. It is believed that this will push the blood, that leaked from broken blood vessels, away from the surface of the skin, making the hickey less visible. Of course, the area will be red and sore for several minutes after using the coin method, but if it is done right, the hickey will disappear almost completely.
If these methods do not help, a person having a hickey can always use makeup to cover the hickey or try to conceal it with clothes or accessories.
- www.webmd.com/skin-problems-and-treatments/hickey-what-you-need-to-know
- health.clevelandclinic.org/how-to-get-rid-of-a-hickey/
- Photo courtesy of Matthew Goldthwaite by Wikimedia Commons: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hickey.jpg
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