Top 3 Winter Skin Tips
Think you can't make it through winter without getting chapped lips or cracked hands? Rachael's dermatologist, Dr. Anne Chapas, shares her top 3 tips to help your skin survive the season!
• Shower smart. "Everyone likes to jump into a nice long, hot shower this time of year, but you want to actually do the opposite," she explains. "You want to take a short shower, only five to ten minutes, and you want to use warm water instead of hot water because hot water really saps your skin of those natural moisturizers."
• Wash strategically. "You actually don’t need to take a shower every day," Dr. Chapas says. "In the wintertime, you can get away with it every other day as long as you just wash areas that have a lot of sweat glands, like around your neck, your underarms, and between your legs. You also want to tone down the really fragrant, anti-bacterial soaps and use more moisturizers because the soaps actually take the oils out of your skin. So you really want to use a nice fragrancy body wash, for example."
• Don’t skip the moisturizer. "Moisturizer is not just to make your skin feel soft, it’s actually sealing in the water into your skin," Dr. Chapas points out. "You’ve got three minutes when you get out of the shower to pat off and put on that moisturizer while your pores are still open. It will seal in the water." Dr. Chapas says that you don't have to buy the most expensive brand for it to be effective. "Just buy the biggest jar you have and look for the ingredients - you want to look for lanolin, mineral oil, hyaluronic acid, lactic acids and even shea butter because those seem to be the most effective moisturizers."
In addition to those tips, Dr. Chapas advises not to forget about the humidity in your environment. "It's not just the outside environment that’s dry," she says, "but your inside environment, too; space heaters really dry out your skin, so if you can add a humidifier that will really help your overall skin moisture. You can do it yourself and just put a little jar of water near your heater, or even leave a wet towel on the doorknob and that adds moisture to the environment as well."


