It is already autumn and we can already see that the cold has come to stay. Little by little we will notice how our skin is getting drier and drier. This is because the wind, the cold and the sudden changes in temperature mean that our skin is losing moisture and as a result we have drier skin, redness or our lips are cut. Keep reading how to protect your skin from the cold.
But what does the cold really do to your skin? The cold causes a vasoconstriction in the capillaries, it makes the cell renewal cycle slow down, accumulating more dead cells in the superficial layer of the skin. In addition, due to dehydration, the skin can flake off and lose elasticity causing wrinkles.
The good news is that we still have time to avoid all this if we do a few little tricks.
HYDRATATION
Moisturizing the skin is the least we can do to avoid dehydration. Using products with moisturising active ingredients such as niacinamide, hyaluronic acid, glycerine, etc. in the morning and evening will help keep the skin’s moisture at bay and prevent the symptoms of dehydration.
EYES AND LIPS
Our eyes and lips have thinner skin than the rest of the face and are therefore more sensitive to changes and cold. If you feel your lips are dry, do not try to wet them with salt because you’ll get the opposite result, use a good lip protector (if it has a sun protection factor much better). In relation to the eyes, we cannot do without an outline because the skin around the eyes does not have sebaceous glands, so it will dry out much more easily, for this reason, this is the area of the face where it is most common for the first wrinkles to appear.
CLEANSING
As we have always said in MadridLondonBeauty, a cleaning is the most basic step that we must always include in a good routine whatever time of year it is. In this case, it is not going to be less important, although we probably have to change some products for others that do not dry out the skin much and contain active ingredients that help to improve the barrier function (hyaluronic acid, ceramides, niacinamide…)
EXFOLIANT
In cold seasons the skin flakes off more and as we said before, the cell cycle is delayed and we have more dead cells in the superficial layer of the skin. To eliminate them, it is necessary a good weekly exfoliation, there are many products on the market to exfoliate the skin, they can be physical exfoliants, which will have microparticles that will drag the dead cells (not recommended for acneic or sensitive skin), chemical exfoliants, which are composed of AHA, BHA or PHA and its effectiveness will depend on the active in question, the concentration and the pH in which it is formulated. These are indicated for acneic skin but not for sensitive skin. Finally, enzymatic exfoliants, which degrade and eliminate dead skin, are made from fruit acids. These are the mildest and are indicated for sensitive skin.
MASK
Masks have a much higher concentration of active ingredients than creams, so they will act much faster and in many cases, we will see results immediately. Here we can be a little more flexible and use a mask depending on what our skin needs.
We should not forget that bathing in excessively hot water will also dry out our skin, so it is better to take a warm shower. And we can not forget about food, a diet rich in antioxidants and drinking between 1.5 and 2 litres of water a day will keep our skin more hydrated during the winter.
If you have any doubts about how to look after your skin at this time of year, or if you do something different to look after your skin during the cold months, leave it to me in the comments. This year the cold is not going to be able to cope with our skin
