Winter is the toughest season on skin. Sure, winter gives you a blast of sun, but winter leeches your skin of moisture, leaving it flaky, parched, and sad. Here are five essential ways to combat the winter skin blues:
- Drink Plenty of Fluids
On average, women should be drinking 8–10 glasses of water a day. If you hate the taste of plain H2O, try chugging O calorie flavored water! There are many on the market that help add flavor to an otherwise boring glass of water. Your skin is a very thirsty organ, but it has to share all water intake with the rest of your body.
- Avoid Hot Baths/Showers
Prolonged hot moisture on the skin removes the natural oils in our skin, leaving our skin dry and flaky. Try bathing for a shorter amount of time with a more tepid temperature on your skin. After bathing make sure you moisturize not only your face--but your whole body right away. Moisturizing helps to hydrate and sooth the skin.
- Exfoliate and Hydrate Your Lips
Our luscious lips can get very dry all year, but mine get especially dry in the winter months. I have learned two tricks that can significantly help add needed moisture back into the lips and surrounding mouth are:. First, exfoliate your lips once a week. As crazy as it sounds, dead skin cells build up and get trapped on the lips! Remove pore-clogging dead skin cells on your lips with a soft toothbrush! Once you have exfoliated your lips, you need to hydrate them immediately. An excellent choice is Soon Skincare’s Strawberry Lip Mask. These masks contain ingredients such as collagen, aloe, strawberry extract, and allantoin. Ingredients that are found in masks like these instantly hydrate and improve the texture of your pucker, as well as aid in adding collagen that plumps and firms.
- Exfoliate the Skin on Your Face
Dry, pasty faces aren’t attractive. Does your makeup slide off your face by lunch time? Do you have a dull drab reflection when you gaze into the mirror? These are all signs that your face needs an exfoliation ASAP. There are several ways to accomplish an exfoliated face: The cheapest is a good old-fashioned washcloth. Scrubbing your face in the shower is the bare minimum to keep your pores unclogged. However, there are better, more effective routes you can pursue, like PMD or personal microdermabrasion. Clarisonic makes a great product for this. It’s a tool that polishes your skin and cleans out the pores. Daily use gives you great results. But the best and most effective choice is a scheduled microdermabrasion session with a professional skin specialist, such as a dermatologist or esthetician. It is well worth the money to see a professional at least twice a year—think of it as a power cleanse for your face.
- Use a Humidifier
