While it doesn't cause pain or itchiness, having flesh growing on your skin can be distracting to your appearance. Growing meat is not dangerous. However, these lumps can become irritated and become painful if rubbedwith your own clothes, jewelry or skin.
Everyone can have meat grown. However, generally growing meat occurs in adults, the elderly, and also people who are obese or diabetic.
Growing Meat Is Harmless
In medical language, growing meat is called acrochordon (skin tags). These lumps usually grow to a small size, which is about 2-5 millimeters, and can enlarge. Growing flesh can appear in any part of the body, such as the armpits, thighs, eyelids, neck, chest, under the breasts, and also under the folds of the buttocks. However, more often it grows in the armpit and neck area.
Growing flesh is formed from a network of loosened collagen fibers and blood vessels surrounded by skin. The formation of growing flesh is thought to be triggered by frequent friction of the skin with clothing or certain body parts. Generally, sprouted flesh is a color similar to the color of your skin. However, this part could be darker in color.
Although often considered similar to warts, the flesh grows differently. Warts tend to have a slightly rough texture, whereas fleshy growths don't. Moreover, the flesh grows like a lump, whereas the wart does not. Not only that, warts are caused by human papillomavirus (HPV), while the cause of meat growing is not known with certainty, but genetic or hereditary factors are thought to play a role.
Growing Flesh Can Be Removed
Actually, growing meat does not require special care. Growing flesh can go away on its own, if the tissue lacks blood supply and dies. But if you feel uncomfortable and disturbed, you can remove it.
Growing flesh that is very small, will usually go away on its own. But if the size is larger, you need the help of a dermatologist to remove it.
Here are some ways to remove sprouted meat that you need to know, including:
- Electrosurgery, by burning tissue in growing meat using high-frequency electrical energy.
- Ligation, with surgical threads to cut off blood flow to the growing flesh tissue.
- Cryotherapy or freeze therapy, by freezing grown meat using liquid nitrogen.
- Surgical removal, by cutting the growing flesh using scissors or a scalpel.
Growing meat is not contagious, and there are no studies showing that removing sprouted meat can increase its growth. However, growing flesh can indeed reappear, even if it has been removed in some of the ways above.
You are advised not to remove the growing flesh yourself without the help of a doctor, as it can cause sores, bleeding, and infection. To date, there are no medicines or self-care methods at home that have been proven effective in removing sprouted meat. If you have growing flesh, don't hesitate to consult a doctor.