5 Reasons Why You Have Dry Skin
1. You're using a commercial "body/hand/hair wash" or "shower gel".
Turn any one of your beloved shower gels around and read the fine-print ingredients. Boom, sulfates. "Sodium sulfate" is used as a filler in powdered home laundry detergents. Sulfates strip away too much moisture, leaving the hair dry and unhealthy. They also make the scalp dry and prone to irritation. Why on earth would you want that on your skin, day in and day out?
So if you think about it, using this stuff daily is guaranteed to exasperate any existing skin issues or create new ones. Such as chronic dry, rough skin. Skin needs moisture to heal, to brighten and even itself out. We dehydrate our skin each and every time we use these products.
Natural soap contains all that it needs the cleanse AND moisturize the skin. Bigger companies stray away from producing "natural" soap because they know they'll exhaust all the resources for profit.
2. You don't moisturize after your shower.
Believe it or not, it's more common than you think. Moisturizing your skin after a shower has become this 'self-care' thing for many but for many, but it's a requirement in my household growing up. As a child of color, you'd be made fun of if you came to school or around your peers, "ashy". So it's been a habit of mine since childhood.
Cleansing the skin is only half your battle when it comes to preventing dry skin. Some sort of moisturizer MUST be applied. Especially if you're using shower gels and soap bars that contain high amounts of coconut oil or detergents such as Sodium Laureth Sulfate (SLS) or Sodium Cocoate/Palmate (google them and you'll find out).
Here's also what they don't tell you. Whether you use soap or not, your skin still dries out after being in contact with water. Our skin behaves like a sponge. If you wet the sponge it expands. That expansion is a result of water being drawn in or "absorbed". But if a sponge was once wet, and left out to dry, the sponge becomes shrunken in size. It's rock-solid until you wet it again.
Conclusion: Moisturizing your skin prevents it from drying out.
3. You use a water-based moisturizer.
For your body (not your face) you're better off using an "oil-based" moisturizer. To make things easier, it's better to use a well-whipped Shea butter. Shea butter or any plant-based butter such as, cocoa butter, mango seed butter (the list goes on) last longer on your skin. They tend to be more omega-fatty dense, which the skin needs daily to heal and stay moisturized. Whipped butter keep the skin moisturized and protected longer as well. Water-based moisturizers tend to evaporate from the skin, quicker. Especially if the skin is exposed to colder, drier air than usual.
We recommend moisturizing your body while you're still in the hot steamy bathroom. Try not to leave the bathroom too soon if you don't need to. Take advantage of the extra moisture that the steam produced, and lock it in with an oil-based butter. Our Multi-Purpose Butter is an excellent whipped butter that can be used from neck to toe. If you have extremely dry skin on your face, we recommend adding a less than dime size on your face AFTER your normal skincare regimen.
Butters can be a bit more challenging than lotions to apply. But it's definitely with the swap in the winter. How to use:
- Scoop desired amount into the palm of your hands.
- Rub hands together vigorously to melt butter in your hands.
- Massage into warm, damp body.
4. Your showers are too long, and hot.
We love a hot shower. It's soothing. It's relaxing. It's everything you can imagine after a long stressful day. Especially when the weather's changing and you're figuring out ways to stay warm! A hot shower steams up the bathroom, keeping all the warmth and moisture. It feels like a warm hug doesn't it? But let's face it. The worst part about showering in winter is having to get out of the shower.
So you do what most mammals do? We stay there longer. Long showers at high temperatures can be the leading cause of dry skin issues. What we're doing is removing more natural oils and moisture from the skin.
5. Your environment is too dry.
Whether you're in an air-conditioned room, blowing hot or cool air, the lack of moisture effects the skin. Especially now we are now leaving the hot and humid climate and a dry one. The humidity in the air has dropped dramatically. When that happens it draws out the moisture on the top layer of your skin causing it to dry out. Leaving your with tight, flaky, and in some cases, cracked skin. When this happens, its followed up with itchiness and irritating. Then when we scratch, we're only adding more micro tears to the skin where dirt and bacteria from our nails and skin (and the environment) leads to infections, inflammation, etc. Just a vicious cycle that we aren't aware of.
You can't escape it but here are some tips on how to correct that:
1. Invest in a humidifier. Put the moisture back into the air. We recommend turning it on before you start your nighttime routine. This will allow time to fill up the room with moisture. Humidifiers come in different sizes and price ranges. They also go by how large your space is.
2. Always keep a moisturizer on hand. Our Omega oil is a great oil-based moisturizer for full body and hands.