A mole is basically a brownish spot or blemish on the skin. The darker hue is provided by melanin, the pigment that gives skin its colour.
Most people have between 10 and 40 moles. Moles may be pink, tan, brown, or a color that's very close to the person’s normal skin tone. People who have dark skin tend to have dark moles.
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Moles may be present at birth or may appear later on—usually before the age of 40. Interestingly, they tend to fade away in older people.
Not many moles are worth worrying about, but they need to be monitored, because if they do start giving trouble, the earlier it’s detected the better.
When the cells within a mole start to invade adjacent tissue, the mole is described as a malignant melanoma. They’re scary words, but malignancies of this sort can usually be dealt with quite easily.
Think of a mole as a little bubble of pigment cells called melanocytes, rising slowly through the skin. The skin has two primary layers – the epidermis and the dermis. When a melanocyte lies in the dermis, doctors call it an intradermal naevus and it’s unlikely to cause any trouble.
Most of the moles found on the arms, face and torso are of this sort. They can be raised or flat, smooth or warty, hairy or hairless. They generally present no threat to your health.
But when it stops migrating upwards from the dermis into the epidermis there’s a chance it could cause a problem. If the melanocyte lies at the junction of both layers, it’s called a junctional naevus and there’s a chance it might turn nasty.
Many of the moles on the palms of the hands, the soles of the feet and the external genitalia are of the junctional variety, so you need to examine these regularly.
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