Believe it, There Are Mites Living on Your Face

Believe it nor not, there are mites living on your face right now, and no amount of scrubbing is going to get them off. Researchers have known for more than a century that Demodex mites like to hang out on human skin, but a study recently published in the journal PLOS ONE is the first to fully investigate these critters.

There are more than 48,000 species of mites, according to Medical Daily, and Demodex brevis is one that likes to live in our pores, eat the oils we secrete, and explore the surface of our cheeks, nose, foreheads, and chins as we sleep.

"The first time I found one on my face I didn't sleep for four nights," the study's co-author Megan Thoemmes, graduate student at North Carolina State University, told NPR.

Thoemmes and her colleagues scraped the sides of people's noses at a science event in Raleigh, N.C., and found every single adult 18 years and older had DNA from mites on their skin.

While these results are likely to make your skin crawl - both literally and figuratively - Thoemmes has decided to make peace with the microscopic mites.

"They're actually pretty cute," Thoemmes told NPR. "With their eight little legs, they look like they're almost swimming through the oil."

Scientists don't know how these mites spread among humans, but one theory is that they're passed on from mother to child while breast-feeding. Children are less likely to have them, according to the study, or if they do they have significantly less than adults.

Considering the fact that these crawlers are exploring your face 100 percent of the time, researchers want to investigate further into the history and origins of the Demodex mites and see if they cause any skin problems. They suspect it might potentially be the cause of the skin disorder rosacea, or redness of the face.

Makes you feel kind of itchy, doesn't it?