One of the most common questions I hear from patients in the scar clinic is: Doctor, why do I have a scar? Some think they are keloid, some think they were not treated properly in the emergency room, some think they ate something “hairy”, you can hear all kinds of speculations. When it comes to keloid, people generally have a misconception that they are keloid if they have had a knife or injury that left a scar on their body, in fact, as long as our skin has been opened or the depth of the wound reaches a certain level, your wound must be scarred to eventually heal, no one can be an exception! Only some people are heavy and some people are light. Scar formation is a normal and inevitable reaction experienced by the body’s tissues to heal after an injury. If you have difficulty producing a scar because of some disease (such as diabetes), the wound will not heal, or even split open after the stitches are removed, which is a very dangerous situation! Medical studies have found that the only people who do not scar are lower animals (such as geckos) and fetuses developing in the womb. True keloid people are rare and are usually only encountered in our scar specialist clinics. Their key characteristic is that a small injury (e.g. a small pustule on the skin or a small scratch) can result in a large scar (several centimeters or even a dozen centimeters visibly bulging outward) that extends beyond the extent of the injury and that continues to expand outward. Therefore the vast majority of people are not keloid and can be reassured. The relationship between diet and scarring is also a frequent concern for patients. We advocate not to eat too spicy or hot food after injury or incision. As for seafood, it is not an absolute taboo, you can pay attention to observe, if you eat seafood will be swollen and red, then do not eat, otherwise a small amount of eating will not be a problem. In addition, some people often ask whether eating dark condiments such as soy sauce will lead to black scar, I can clearly answer you will not, the food pigment is not possible to enter or remain in the human skin for a long time, we are yellow, our skin color is determined by genetics, not by the food we eat, just as it will not be because eating black sesame will be black, eat white noodles will become white. In the southwest of China there is also a saying that you should not eat ginger after surgery, the reason being that the local dialect calls scarring jiang bei, because it is the same sound as ginger, causing ginger to carry this charge. I have also heard patients in the clinic say not to eat watermelon, peanuts, milk, onions, vinegar and other condiments, and many other blackmailing statements, which have no medical basis in either Western or Chinese medicine. I can tell you for sure that the smooth recovery of the wound also needs comprehensive nutrition, the same as our daily nutrition needs, including meat, eggs, milk, vegetables and fruits, not to be neglected. If someone does not have a scar after an injury, there are only two possible cases: the depth of the wound only reaches the superficial layer of the skin, although sometimes the area may be larger and look serious; the other possibility is that the scar formed is not obvious (probably because the surgical incision is meticulously sutured, the post-operative measures to prevent scars are correct, etc.), and is close to the texture and color of the surrounding skin, which is relatively fine and not easy to be detected and does not bring the patient This is what we call the “ideal scar”, but what we hate is the pathological scar! Some of them are very wide and grow on the face, some are contracted and affect the function of the active parts, some are prominent and itchy and painful, and the most serious type of keloid scar is even worse: keloid scars, which exhibit characteristics similar to skin tumors and expand to the surrounding normal skin, making them very difficult to treat repeatedly. However, it is still impossible to completely eliminate the scar and turn it into completely normal skin, but plastic surgeons will do their best to make the scar inconspicuous, including the design of the incision, intraoperative care and postoperative preventive measures, in order to transform it into an “ideal scar”. The “ideal scar” is an inconspicuous, minor mark that is acceptable to the patient. Specific surgical treatment for scarring includes excision of pathological scar tissue, re-fine suturing, reshaping surgery to change the direction of the incision, local flap transfer to make up for the deficiency with surplus, skin grafting, and dilators, which will be described in detail in a later article.