Do you have dry or dehydrated skin?

Does your skin feel dry? The cause of the unpleasant feeling, dull colour or wrinkles may not be a lack of water but the lack of fat in the skin.

Your skin type and the state of your skin are two different things

Your skin type is a given you were born with: your skin can be dry, oily, combination or normal. On the other hand, the state of your skin mostly depends on You and your environment: your diet, lifestyle, good and bad habits as well as your health can hugely affect the state of your skin. The season matters too as do the temperature, quality and humidity of the air around you.

Dry, sensitive skin type

Dry skin means that in a lot of areas from head to toe you experience itching and stretching that are followed by peeling. Treating it with moist creams or body lotions does little to moisturise and you can feel your skin getting dry over and over again. That’s because your skin is lacking a certain type of fat that protects from itching – that’s what you need to replenish.

Dehydration

Dehydrated skin, on the other hand, means that there are other factors leading to a loss of moisture in some areas of your skin: your clothing may be too warm, the air may be too dry in the room where you spend your day, you may drink too little or you use inadequate, alcohol- and chemical-based cosmetics.

Your skin tries to make up for the loss of moisture by increasing sebum production, which leads to problems: the skin feels dry and sensitive and starts to develop blackheads and spots. The petrochemical-based moisturiser can do little to help with this as it only hydrates the top layer of your skin whilst drawing moisture away from the deeper layers.

What can you do? 

It’s important to know that your skin is the last to get water from the body so if you drink less liquid then your body needs your skin will be the first to suffer – in a quite visible way.

Healthy, radiant skin requires a good deal of self-consciousness, conscious lifestyle choices – while using pure, gently cleansing, chemical-free cosmetics that nourish the deeper layers of your skin and match your skin type can also be very important.