Why is your skin drier in winter?

Chey from Black Chicken Remedies chats about what we can do to reduce winters potential to damage our skin.

Just as the seasons change, so does our skin throughout the year.

It’s important to treat your skin according to the season. With winter upon us, I wanted to share my top tips for maintaining glowing, vibrant skin in the cooler months.

In winter, depending on where you live, the temperature and humidity drops anywhere from marginally to severely. If you’re inland and at higher altitude, it’s likely that the change in weather is quite extreme. For those of us in coastal regions, we get some extreme onshore winds that can be highly drying. Moreover, in winter we tend to go between cold outdoor climatic conditions, and heated indoor environments. The sudden change in temperature can affect the capillaries and leave you looking flushed with pink cheeks. Sound familiar?

As well as the stress of sudden temperature changes as we move from inside to outside, lower temperatures also increase the risk of dermatitis, eczema and other skin conditions. This is because our natural skin hydration function is affected by the cold.

Those cooler temps can also make it very tempting to turn up the heat in the shower or bath, but it’s a fact that too much hot water can strip the skin of its natural oils. It’s far better for our skin if we keep the water temperature moderately lukewarm and keep the showers short. Exfoliating with expertly combined natural ingredients and therapeutic essential oils gives us even more of an energy boost! We put the heater on in our cars, homes and offices. We go out into cold winds and low temperatures, and often low humidity as well. Did you know that these factors can lead to more than a 10% moisture loss in your skin?

Why does our skin become drier in winter?

Winter conditions can cause accelerated loosening of the lipid barrier on unprotected skin, leading to drying, tightening and reddening. Skin is the biggest organ of the body. It’s also the last to receive moisture as the body prioritises vital organs over skin. So although you may feel less thirsty in winter due to the temperature being cooler, for your skin’s sake, you actually need more hydration.

The outer layer of skin, the epidermis, naturally produces a protective coat called natural moisturising factor (NMF). this natural skin barrier function helps to keep skin hydrated, but in winter many of us become NMF deficient, particularly on our hands and on our face as the main areas exposed to the elements.

Low temperatures and humidity changes have a negative impact on the production of NMF, which is responsible for keeping the outer-most part of the epidermis, the stratum corneum, hydrated.

As a side note, NMF is also affected by chemicals in many mainstream moisturises and shampoos, which is why sometimes your moisturiser can be doing more damage than good by removing natural hydration (amongst other things). Sodium lauryl sulfate is one of the chemicals commonly used.

Cold weather and skin texture

Cold weather also affects skin texture. In a recent Danish study, an increase in Dermal Texture Index (DTI) was observed in study participants over winter when compared with summer. DTI is a measure of the texture of outer skin cells, or the corneocyte surface texture. Do you ever feel like your skin is ‘weathered’? This is due to an increase in DTI and changes in skin texture. But don’t worry, there are ways to reduce and mitigate this and maintain healthy glowing skin all through winter.

Three steps to winter-proof skin

There are three simple things that you can do to maintain your skin during winter: 

1. Exfoliation – to remove dead skin cells and rejuvenate the skin surface.
2. Hydration – as your skin is exposed to more extreme weather conditions, it needs added moisture.
3. Nourish – just as we need nourishing foods to build our immune system in cooler months, our skin needs added nourishment as well.

Step 1: Exfoliation