Know whether your skin is dry or dehydrated to know the ingredients you need in your moisturiser
Dry skin and dehydrated skin are different conditions, and need a different approach to remedy.
Dry skin is an indication that your skin does not have enough oil. Dehydrated skin is lacking water.
To know what moisturiser, or moisturising ingredients to use, you first need to know whether your skin is in need of oil or water.
Treating dry skin
If your skin is dry and flaky it lacks oils, we’d call this dry skin. It needs repairing by applying oil. But what type of oil?
To remedy dry skin you need an emollient oil that will penetrate into your skin, replenishing supplies.
- If your oil is more humectant (drawing water to it) than emollient (providing moisture) can help relieve the feeling of dryness, but it won’t solve or remedy dry skin.
- If your oil is occlusive it may feel soothing to apply, but it won’t tackle the root problem as effectively.
Before you apply your oil, start by gently exfoliating to rid the old skin cells. Applying an emollient oil to freshly exposed skin gives it the best chance of sinking in and replenishing much needed oils.
What not to do with dry skin
Avoid getting too much water on dry skin, especially water that is too warm. Perplexingly, applying water will make dry skin dryer. Keep your bath or shower water temperature as low as you can bear to minimise the oil-stripping effects of higher temperatures.
When you’re bathing or showering, add oils to your bath and apply pure oils as soon as you step out of the bath or shower, while your skin is still warm and damp. You’ll create your own instant oil and water mix mimicking the sebum your skin makes naturally, and encouraging it to increase oil supplies and gradually rebalance.
When dry skin becomes dehydrated skin
Dry skin can’t hold onto water, so can lead to dehydrated skin. You still you’ll need to tackle the dryness and the dehydration separately.
Treating dehydrated skin
Dehydrated skin may occur in particular areas, such as on upper cheeks, or flaking skin on your chin, nose or mouth. Or maybe your skin is just all-over dull and lacklustre. Sometimes dehydrated skin may manifest itself as tight and shiny. Generally you’ll notice dehydration if you pull your skin and find tell-tale wrinkles.
Often dehydrated skin is a result of using harsh, drying cleansing products. It can improve quite quickly with a switch to gentler products and careful moisturising.
Treat with water, not oil
As dehydrated skin is lacking water, it stands to reason that the treatment to resolve it is to apply water.
Skin is losing water all the time, the technical term is transepidermal water loss (TEWL), this is something we can take steps to manage. It’s most effective to apply moisturiser to your skin where and when it needs to rehydrate.
Prevention is better than cure
Take care to protect your skin against the drying elements: sun and wind, and central heating.
Avoid harsh products when your skin is dehydrated, these can strip oils giving the impression of dry skin, which can be confusing when you really need to be tackling your dehydrated skin.
Dehydrated skin is a temporary situation, it may even fluctuate through the day for you. Your skin can be oily and yet dehydrated (it can’t, however be oily and dry, as dry skin is that which doesn’t produce enough oil).
What won’t cure dehydrated skin
When your skin is lacking water it seems a natural solution to drink more water. While drinking plenty of water is great for your body, your skin is sadly the last place to benefit. When you rehydrate from the inside, necessary water supplies go to all the other vital organs first, skin just gets the left overs. If you’re generally dehydrated that may mean very little is left over for your skin.
For a quicker remedy to dehydrated skin, apply water from the outside in the form of moisturisers and spritzers.
Provide water in a form your skin can easily absorb
To replace water we need to offer it to our skin in a hydrolipid format (combined with oils). Emollient, humectant and occlusive ingredients all play their part in helping manage water content in our skin.
A 3-step remedy for dehydrated skin
- First, hold onto the water on your damp body as you step out of the shower or bath by applying a humectant-rich lotion to draw in the water and hold onto it for you.
- Next, follow this with a watery lotion including emollient oils to introduce more hydration. Moisturising sprays are great for applying these quickly.
- Finally, end with an occlusive cream to seal the moisture in.
Blend it Yourself to get the right mix
Many off-the-shelf moisturisers have a combination of humectant, emollient and occlusive oils and other ingredients. If you want to manage yourself what you’re using when, have a go at selecting your own oils and blending them into moisturisers to suit your skin’s needs.
Be inspired by Blend It Yourself recipes. In Vital Skincare you’ll find a trio of helpful moisturisers: an humectant rich lotion, an emollient hydrating spray and an occlusive body cream.
