Finding the right cosmetic routine for your skin can be costly. When the time comes, you ask yourself questions like: how many products should I choose? which products are right for me? if I use facial oils will they make me too oily? which moisturiser should I use? However, what you do not often ask yourself is “where am I?” Today, I want to explain a key point to consider when selecting the products you need for your skin: the climate.
The needs of your skin could be defined as the type of skin you have (which has a genetic component and a circumstantial one depending on your age, diet, and lifestyle), added to the climate of the place where you are. In other words:
Skin Need = Skin Type + Climate
Although it may seem that instead of making your life easier I am complicating it with mathematical formulas to find the key products for your skin, if you apply this formula before choosing a cosmetic product you will see that it will work better for you and everything will make sense.
Let us say you have dry skin, and you go on holiday to Miami. You can feel the humidity as soon as you get off the plane – it is one of the main characteristics of the climate here. With this in mind, it would be wise to use a cream with hyaluronic acid, an ingredient considered the SpongeBob of cosmetics (it absorbs up to 10,000 times its weight in water).
The hyaluronic acid you apply to your dry skin will capture the water in the environment and therefore hydrate your skin. If you also drink a lot of water, all the better, as this way you will provide water to the skin from the outside with the cream you apply and from the inside of your body.
If, on the other hand, you spend your holidays in the desert of Yosemite National Park in California, where the humidity is very low and the climate is characteristically dry. Your cosmetic routine should not contain hyaluronic acid or any other moisturisers, as they will dehydrate your skin and make it dryer. Moisturising ingredients applied to the skin draw water from your body and draw it outwards to meet the need and balance the scales:
Internal water Vs. environmental water
and in between is the skin that acts as a filter.
- If the internal humidity is low, the moisturiser picks up the ambient humidity and draws it into the skin.
- If the environmental humidity is low, the moisturiser picks up the internal humidity and draws it outwards.
Therefore, moisturisers in this situation will be your enemy, but oils will be your ally. Oils are hydrophobic ingredients, i.e. with little affinity to water, therefore, they will make a barrier on the skin (occlusive effect) and will not capture our own body water, because oil and water are not related. So, oils prevent internal water evaporation in a dry climate, thus keeping our skin hydrated.
To conclude, I leave you with a summary of what I have explained:
- I am in a dry place: mountains, deserts, cities with less humidity (in Spain Madrid is characterised by being drier, whereas Galicia or Barcelona are more humid): Yes to oils.
- I am in a humid place: near the sea, the Catalan coast, rainy places like Seattle, cities with a tropical climate: Yes to hyaluronic acid.
