When winter hits, your skin and hair can take a toll, becoming so dry the skin flakes off your face, your feet feel like sandpaper, and your hair feels brittle like a Brillo pad. Your hands can become so dry that your knuckles crack, and your skin can feel so tight in winter it’s like it shrunk 2 sizes. Battling dry winter skin can feel like a losing fight, but with a few simple changes you can remedy dry winter skin without issue.
How does winter make skin so dry? Beyond the harsh cold weather and the brutal winds, it’s actually usually what happens indoors in winter that makes skin so dry. The heater is a huge skin moisture sucker. Heaters and the increase in indoor temperature sucks whatever moisture is naturally in indoor air dry and is detrimental to the skin. If you have the heater blasting all day long, try adding moisture to the air by getting a humidifier and have it running in the house, or boil water on the stove (never leave unattended) to keep the air from getting so dry it actually hurts your skin. Better yet, just turn down your heater. It’s far healthier for your skin to put on another sweater than it is to blast it with the harsh heat from the heater.
Take cooler temperature baths and showers. The extreme heat of a tub or shower actually harms your skin as well, leaving it lacking moisture and leading to dry skin overall. Soak in a tub of lukewarm water instead for about 15 minutes to naturally hydrate the skin. Even lowering the heat of your water temperature by a few degrees will leave your skin feeling less damaged by the heat. Take baths and showers as cool as you can stand them to help battle winter dry skin that is driving you nuts.
Apply lotion and moisturizers when your skin is still damp from bathing or showering. You don’t want to dry completely; rather, apply a moisturizer when your skin still feels wet from cleansing. If you put on moisturizer when your skin is already dry and gets that feeling of tightness again, your moisturizer won’t be able to work as well to ease that dry feeling. With your skin still damp and supple, the moisturizer and lotion can absorb more completely and bring your skin relief and help it regenerate more fully, keeping flaking, cracking skin better at bay.
Also, if you can, avoid showering or bathing every day to allow your skin to heal from the harsh indoor heat and outside blistery cold. Your skin needs time to heal, and attacking it daily with hot water from the tub or shower can actually make your dry skin worse.
If you can stand it, moisturize with a heavier cream or oil. Even regular vegetable oil from your pantry can work wonders for your skin, and mixing Vaseline with your daily regular lotion can help to battle your dry skin. If you can’t stand the greasy feeling during the day, slather the oils on at night before bed, to help your skin heal as you sleep. I mix Vaseline with my daily lotion in the winter to make my skin feel silky smooth all day, instead of sandpaper dry, and it doesn’t feel too greasy to me.
Oatmeal is a great moisturizing skin repair tool. Colloidal oatmeal is best (available at Pharmacies) as it is ground fine and sustains well in water, but even regular oatmeal (about 2 cups in your tub of water) can help to soak needed moisture and hydration to your skin as you bathe. You can use a food processor to finely grind your oatmeal, or just soak in whole oats. If feet or hands are the driest part of your skin, make a hydration bath by placing half a cup of oatmeal into a bowl large enough for your hands or feet and add lukewarm water and soak for about 15 minutes or so.
Keeping skin moisturized in winter can seem impossible, but with a few small tips and alterations to your skin care routine, you can enjoy glowing, happy skin even when the weather and season is breaking it down.
Source:
www.mothernature.com › … › The Doctors Book of Home Remedies
