The first step to avoiding dry skin is cleansing without drying.
We love clean, but with a few bathing ‘tweaks’ you can have really clean AND really moist skin.
Dry Skin Care Step 1
Cleansing: The big point here is mild cleansers, sparingly applied and totally rinsed off with warm water! Harsh foamy soaps strip your skin's protective natural oils. Hot water makes this worse in the same way it’s better for washing the dishes. As you lose these oils, your skin becomes even more sensitive to irritation by the harsh soaps, more vulnerable to further irritation by harsh chemicals like house cleaners. The end result is dry skin.
The trick is to use only mild soaps such as:
- • the many lovely glycerin and oil soaps available at specialty boutiques or natural food stores
- • soapless cleansers (like Toleraine Cleanser) clean without the irritating ingredient sodium laurel sulfate. (Sodium laurel sulfate is the foaming agent in cleansers and has other names including sodium laureth sulfate, ammonium laurel sulfate) Adding oil to harsh cleansers doesn’t compensate for the irritating effects so don’t be fooled by fancy claims. If your skin feels dry and tight after bathing then your cleanser is too harsh for you!
In addition, all soaps and cleansers need to be rinsed completely off the skin using warm water. Avoid really hot water. Remember, hot water strips oils better that cooler temperatures.
Also, only apply soap to areas of your skin that need to be cleaned. These include the areas with body odor glands and a lot of oil glands. We all know where these are: the armpits, groin, buttocks and feet have body odor glands, oil production is greatest on the face, ears, upper chest and back.
Remember mild cleansers, applied where needed and rinsed well with warm water!
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