It started off as a simple blackhead extraction posted online...now Dr Sandra Lee's videos are watched by millions
SHE'S the skin doctor best known for her stomach-churning, pimple-popping videos.
Dr Pimple Popper has become a You Tube sensation, uploading grim footage as she lances giant cysts, boils and stubborn spots - more often than not, triggering a volcanic cascade of pus.
It started off as a simple blackhead extraction posted on social media, but fast-forward three years and Dr Sandra Lee is something of a phenomenon in the pimple popping, cyst draining world of dermatology.
The 47-year-old's YouTube channel has more than four million subscribers and is growing by the thousands every day.
The US dermatology superstar is estimated to be worth a whopping £5.3million, with her YouTube channel rumoured to be earning her around £2,500 a day.
She even has her own skin care range designed to help those who suffer with skin conditions like acne.
Here she chats to The Sun Online about her fame, her patients and the goriest things she's seen.
Dr Sandra Lee has been a dermatologist, working in California for 14 years, but it was a simple decision to post a blackhead extraction that changed her career forever.
"I posted, pretty early on, a blackhead extraction video and I noticed it had quite a reaction," she told The Sun.
"It got noticeable attention and likes, so I tried it again and it happened again.
"Over the next couple of weeks I realised there was a subculture of people on the internet that shared popping videos with each other and I was fascinated by this.
"I thought lets extend it to cysts and lipomas and the surgeries that I do in my office and low and behold, just over three years later, we have over 2.5 billion views and over 10 million followers.
"And now I have a show on TLC – how crazy is that!"
"The most interesting cases are people who have things they cannot hide.
"People who have something growing on the middle of their forehead the size of a golf ball, or people who have something growing out the back of their neck the size of a large grapefruit or even a bowling ball.
"There’s no way to hide it, it must be a very hard thing to go through.
"In many of these cases the toll is even bigger emotionally than physically.
"I had a guy we called The Unicorn because he had a huge golf-ball sized cyst in the middle of his forehead and he had been living like that for years.
"When he had that removed it was really gratifying.
"And another one was a cyst the size of a bowling ball on the back of a man’s neck.
"The fact that he had it for 30 years and it comes out in 50 minutes is amazing."
"I’m not squeamish but a lot of these cysts in particular can have an odour that’s not very nice.
"But most of us know this already, as dermatologists.
"I train myself not to be grossed out by it because I don’t want my patients to feel uncomfortable or embarrassed.
"If someone was doing something on you and all of a sudden said 'oh my god this stinks, it’s disgusting', you would feel really bad, so I really want to make sure my patients know that I am not judging them in anyway."
"A lot of these things are preventable.
"In general if you are going to get a cyst, lipoma or a pimple, a lot of it has to do with genetics and the kind of skin you were born with.
"A lot of pimples come up during puberty and that’s because our hormones are raging.
"Some people are just more prone to cysts and sometimes lipoma can run in the family.
"The most important thing to remember is it’s not that person’s fault.
"But you can help to prevent it from getting inflamed or infected.
"If you pick at it that increases your risk for scarring and scarring is permanent, that’s a badge you will wear for the rest of your life.
"If a cyst is on an area that you regularly hit or you lean against or gets irritated then that’s something you should seek out removal for sooner.
"If a cyst becomes inflamed or irritated or infected then it’s now an abscess and an abscess is extremely painful and can leave quite a large scar.
"Ideally it’s best to remove a cyst when it’s smaller and not angry."
"You certainly should see somebody if you are concerned about it and you don’t know what it is.
"If you feel a bump under your skin and it moves around very freely, like it’s mobile under the skin, and it’s growing really slowly, then those are good signs.
"But if you have something growing that is growing rather quickly, or breaks down easily, or bleeds easily and seems to be stuck to your body like it doesn’t want to move around, then those are potentially bad signs.
"Those are things you should show to your doctor sooner rather than later."
"In the first month that I started doing this I popped more pimples than I had in my entire career – it’s not something that I would do regularly.
"In any country doctors aren’t really that eager to remove them because they know they are nothing to worry about, they don’t have to be removed.
"So now I have become the go-to pimple popper, it’s quite an interesting journey that I’ve had.
"People shouldn’t be treated differently if they have these growths because they can get really big, and it can be fixed."
"On the show we have the biggest lipoma I’ve ever seen and the biggest cyst I’ve ever seen.
"So far the show has given me the most interesting cases of my career.
"I was really scared when the pilot came out about whether people would like it because it’s very different from my YouTube channel.
"But I was shocked and very pleased, I can’t believe people love it.
"I think initially some people might watch it because it’s like a car accident – you can’t look away.
"But I think people stay because they then feel like ‘this is really nice what has happened with this person’.
"Like how a person might be 30 years old and never had a boyfriend or girlfriend because of this growth and now we are changing their life and to witness that is a nice thing.
"And I’m very proud of these patients because it takes a lot of guts to show the world, especially when it’s been hidden."
";I’m not somebody who wants to have this person gush and say how much I have changed their life, I know they are very thankful.
"What’s gratifying for me, personally, is if I remove something and I make it look as good as I can.
"My goal in my surgeries and I tell my patients this all the time: that you will always know that something was removed there but I want it to be that other people don’t know.
"If I can do those things then that’s very gratifying to me.
"I’m just doing my job, that I love, and I’m just trying to help people as best I can.
"It’s just really nice for me to see how it affects people."
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