Size, color and frequency of skin moles

Fair-skinned people are the ones who commonly get skin moles. Moles usually form when melanocytes group together in the form of a cluster. Skin moles appear at various points in life, some at birth, others later in life. There will be around ten to forty moles per person and it is usually located in areas exposed to sun light.

According to statistics, around three hundred million people in America have skin moles. These are nevus, or the common moles. Meanwhile, at least one in ten Americans has dysplastic nevus. This will be close to thirty million people. This is not an alarming fact. The fact that nearing seventy thousand people develop melanoma in a year is a matter of great concern. Melanoma is metastatic and can spread to all parts of the body, causing great harm. Thus your lungs, bones and kidneys can also get affected. If you're able to detect it earlier, the better off your health will be.

You will have no other option, when you have been diagnosed with melanoma. You have to remove those skin moles completely using surgical procedures. Melanoma is found in both men and women, though in different parts of their body. In women, it mainly appears in the lower part of the legs. For men, melanoma is found in the neck and back region. Those who have dark skin will seldom suffer from melanoma. When they do get it, however, they are found under the toes or the soles of the feet. In fact two people out of ten thousand Americans experience this problem. To date, eight lakh of Americans are suffering from melanoma.

Can a layman find the difference between a common mole and melanoma?

The distinction can be found in the color and size of the skin moles. Melanoma reaches around six mm in width. This size is larger than your typical pencil eraser. Meanwhile, dysplastic nevus has a width of about five mm. Although larger than melanoma, dysplastic nevi are benign. Normal moles are just half an inch wide. They can also be as wide as three to four inches.

You can easily identify a melanoma, as it normally has an uneven color distribution. The shades of color will vary. The colors could vary from black, brown, blue, grey, pink and white. Dysplastic nevus will be having shades of brown, pink and red color. Nevus, however, will only have one color. People with these moles will normally have them brown or black. The highly pigmented moles will come in shades of black. The color of a normal skin mole is somewhat closer to the skin tone of each person. Melanoma's contour is blurred. They will normally be four mm wide and will grow even larger as the skin cancer becomes worse.

Moles are not threatening. Hence, they do not have to be removed mandatorily. For some people, they are cause of social awkwardness. This is the root cause of low confidence among many people. There are some cultures in the world that still believe that moles prevalent, at some spots, are seen as beauty marks. Everybody wants to be perfect.