It is quite easy for skin hydration to become an afterthought in your daily grooming habits. We shower, brush our teeth, comb our hair, and meticulously manage our appearance every day. One element in our daily routines that is conspicuously absent is tending to the needs of our skin. Continue reading below for five great reasons why working to develop habits for healthy skin hydration needs to be a priority.
1) Correctly Hydrating Skin Creates Resilience
Skin does have some fantastic properties. It is not directly apparent upon first thought, but with close examination, your skin is one tough cookie. In the winter months, the skin needs to be able to stand up to bitter cold temperatures. Conversely, it provides the vehicle for your sweat to cool your body during the gruesome dog days of summer.
It also needs to be able to stretch, fold, bend, shrink, and grow to give full range of motion so we can live our lives the way we want. The skin needs moisture to maintain this high level of resilience. A quick way to integrate a moisture regimen into your daily routine is to replace traditional soap with a quality soap that promotes skin hydration in your daily shower.
2) Hydrated Skin Creates a Tough Barrier for UV Protection
The sun is an essential part of our life. It provides us with the warmth and light we need daily. An unfortunate side effect of the sun’s light is the harmful UV radiation that it produces. While moisturization alone does not provide 100% protection from harmful UVA or UVB rays, keeping skin healthy and hydrated goes a long way in helping it do its job to protect you.
Well-hydrated skin can also aid in recovery after experiencing UV damage. Using a proper sunscreen, in addition to maintaining adequate skin hydration, provides the chance to have a little fun in the sun safely.
3) Keeping Skin Hydrated Soothes Sensitive Skin
One of the most noticeable signs of skin that is in dire need of hydration comes during the winter seasons. The cold temperatures reduce the amount of water that gets contained in the air. These reduced humidity levels mean that water from our skin can evaporate much quicker into the air. It is the exact opposite problem experienced in summer months when sweat refuses to evaporate due to high moisture content in the humid air.
The downside of the quick evaporation in the winter months is that water comes directly from the hydration reserves of your skin, leaving dry, sensitive skin in its wake. This dry, irritated, and itchy skin is the perfect example of how essential skin hydration is. In winter, having a skin hydration routine is more important than any other time of year.
Using a natural soap with ingredients such as oatmeal and honey can go a long way in getting your skin through the brisk and biting cold months of the year.
Your home (or work) environment can also wreak havoc on your skin if the environment is dry. Consider using a humidifier by your desk or in your home and start noticing the difference in your skin.
4) Proper Hydration Reduces Oil Buildup and Fights Acne
Almost everybody has had to deal with the irritation of an unsightly blemish. Pimples always seem to have some hidden agenda where they pop up at the worst time and in the worst places. There are many companies out there offering expensive and complicated acne remedies, but the best way to fight acne is by keeping your skin moisturized.
At first, this seems slightly counter-intuitive. Oily skin is quite often associated with painful and unsightly little red dots. A necessary distinction, however, is that oily skin does not equate to hydrated skin. In actuality, your body produces more oil as your skin becomes less sufficiently hydrated. Using this knowledge, it makes perfect sense that making sure your skin is adequately hydrated results in a reduction in the amount of oil your skin produces.
The other benefit of hydrated skin is it can leverage the excess moisture to trap and move dirt and toxins. With this dirt suspended in the layer of moisture, that means it cannot settle in your pores, creating blemishes. It also means when you take a shower or bath and use a moisturizing soap, it can easily wash away the trapped gunk. As a result, you will have an additional layer of protection against pesky pimple bullies.
5) Committing to Skin Hydration Daily Slows Signs of Aging
In the first point of this list, I briefly mentioned the importance of the skins’ ability to allow movement. A prime example of this need for flexibility is facial expressions. Imagine a face frozen in place throughout all ranges of emotions. The world would be a very different and sad place if the ability to gain understanding about how a person feels were rendered impossible due to a lack of facial expressions.
Luckily, we live in a world where humans can make twenty-one different facial expressions to give clues about exactly how they feel inside. The downside to this valuable communication tool is the effect it can have on the skin. After many years of stretching and creasing to express excitement, fear, sadness, and joy, significant wear marks become noticeable.
A great way to combat these wear marks is to keep your skin nourished through proper skin hydration. Moving skin that is not hydrated is similar to folding a piece of paper. Paper, being dry, if folded in half, would have a telling crease line etched into its surface. If instead of a piece of paper, you were to fold something like the leaf of a freshly watered plant, the resulting furrow would be almost unnoticeable.
The same is true for skin. Keeping skin hydrated is key to expressing emotions through facial features. The result being expressions that are as accurate when you’re 60 as when you were 6. Also it is vital to keep in mind the only way skin hydration techniques and regimens are effective is through consistent and daily use.
Trust the Eczema Care Company for Your Skin Hydration
These five examples are just the opening of a seemingly endless list of why providing hydration to your body’s largest organ needs to be essential.
At Eczema Care Company, we offer an all-natural soap with a special mix of ingredients that promotes healthy and hydrated skin. We are more than just your source for high-quality soap, however. We also provide skin hydration facts and tips to assist with all your skin related needs.