Maximizing Moisture in Your Skin

Getting the most out of your skin care products is tricky and we want to help you get the most cost effective products. As a general rule you will want to balance aesthetics and goals and we utilize an ingredient approach: each ingredient we recommend for our patients has a role. We want to also discuss options and determine if you as patients have to like it and have it feel good, and finally does it really meet the need we are trying to accomplish for your skin. The first step is sunscreen, after that we want to talk about moisturizing your skin., and we use the science behind the study of skin to determine what we are going to recommend. We have a progressive dehydration of skin cells as they progress from lower to upper layers, which is why just exfoliating improves the overall moisture content of your skin. Our skin has a substance filligrin is part of the skin cells and it forms a natural moisturizing factor. Naturally moist skin is about is 30% water, and water is held in to the skin by that gorgeous plump lipids (fat laden!) upper layer. When we want to improve your skin, we make an assessment of whether we recommend trying to supplement or replace the architecture. Dry skin has a number of components we are trying to combat:: it may contain malnourished cells, odd excreted proteins, the layers may loose their natural organization, lipid layers may be missing altogether and these are just some of the things we can improve with proper skin care. The body can moisturize itself, and when we recommend products we want to aid that process. Did you know you lose a lot of water, medically about through the skin we lose about 12-14 g/cm2 of water per minute! Effective products to stop this rapid rate of loss from our skin might include petrolatum products for instance: reduces water loss by 99% (and you need at least 1% water loss for skin to repair). Many products do have various mineral, seed or herbal oil components, including, sesame seed oil, jojoba, flaxseed, hemp, soybean, borage oil, etc and these products do retard evaporation. Meaning that these ingredients don’t directly hydrate skin, they an environment for self repair to your skin. Other ways to add water to your skin would include the use of what is called a medical humectant, or a natural moisturizing substance. Some products act like sponges that hold water, so hyaluronic acid or “HA”, is a sponge that soaks up water, and it’s the water that allows it to fill not the HA itself, but it does this so effectively it is often recommended over other moisturizing agents.