Taking care of your skin is important because it is an essential aspect of good health. If you take your skin for granted, its sorry condition will affect your general well-being. Thus, it is ideal for you to know what should be done to take good care of your skin.
In the winter season, keeping your skin soft and moisturized can be challenging. The cold weather will make your skin dry, sometimes, to the point of cracking (as in cracked lips). Keeping the skin moisturized throughout the winter season can be challenging. Here are eight simple but helpful tips that can hopefully help you go through the winter season with soft, moisturized skin.
1. Use Lukewarm Water
Instead of using cold water for washing your face, try to use lukewarm water. If you do this regularly, you will help keep the oils on your skin. If all the oil is stripped away, your skin will dry up.
2. Use Your Moisturizer
When you towel off, do not rub on your skin. Instead, just pat the towel on your skin. Also, right after washing or bathing, apply moisturizer on your hands and body. The minute you add moisturizer to your damp skin, you will seal in the dampness, which is good for the skin.
3. For Dry Skin, Use Oil as Moisturizer
If you have extremely dry skin and you do not have a moisturizer, you can use baby oil as substitute. Although it is not a better moisturizer than the lotion or cream, if you apply it right away while your skin is still damp, it will do a lot of help in locking on the extra water into your skin. Meanwhile, you can use both the oil and moisturizer when layering. Simply apply the oil first and then the moisturizer. You can also make a mix of the oil and moisturizer and then apply it to your face.
4. Be Careful When Choosing Moisturizers
With the variety of moisturizers available in the market, trying to choose the best one has become difficult. There are pharmacy moisturizers and over-the-counter ones that are popular with a lot of women. While some are okay, there are others that contain harsh ingredients, like petroleum. This particular ingredient will not do anything to help solve your dry skin problems; instead, it will make your skin even drier. For the winter season, the ideal moisturizer is the oil-based variety.
5. Drink a Lot of Water
When it is cold, what we normally like drinking are hot drinks like coffee, tea, and cocoa. While this is comforting and relaxing, it is also important to drink a lot of water. Just water. Your oil and moisturizer will do one part of the solution; water will do the rest. When you are properly hydrated, so is your skin. To keep yourself – and your skin – hydrated, drink around 6 to 8 glasses of water every day.
6. Use the Right Cleanser
The winter season can make your skin extremely dry. So if you use an alcohol-based cleanser for your skin, you’re not doing anything good for yourself. In looking for and choosing a cleanser, you should avoid brands or varieties that contain ingredients like salicylic acid or glycolic acid. Apply the cleanser on your skin. Then use a toner to hydrate it. Apply the moisturizer last so the moisture will be locked into the skin.
7. Remove Dead Cells
Moisturizing and hydrating your skin by drinking water are not the only things you should do. To complete the process, you also have to exfoliate your skin. In other words, you have to remove dead cells, too. To do this, you have to look for and use a good exfoliating mask. Look for a natural hydrating mask, one that contains ingredients such as olive oil, honey, aloe, and avocado. To use it, simply put the mask on your face according to the instructions on the package. Remove the mask slowly after a few minutes (again, according to package instructions) and then add some moisturizer on your skin. This will help make skin soft and smooth.
8. Stay Away from Fragrance
Do not use moisturizers, cleansers, toners, and other facial products that contain fragrance. If you apply fragranced products on your skin, several things can happen, including you developing an allergy on the fragrance and your skin becoming drier than the usual. The best and safest ingredients are natural and fragrance-free. Also, you can go for products that contain ingredients that can neutralize the dryness caused by the cold winter weather.
