If it’s hot outside you get thirsty and your body’s natural water content evaporates more quickly. It’s not just your mouth that gets parched, your entire body, including your skin, feels the impact of rising temperatures. Although it’s often ignored, your skin is an essential organ that needs special attention and care. After all, not only does your skin dictates your health and age, it provides a protective layer to the rest of your body. Before discussing the smart summer skin care tips let’s scratch-out the causes of dry skin.
Causes of dry skin
Your everyday activities, especially those that are intended to improve your overall health, can have a big impact on the condition of your skin. Know the 6 causes of dry skin that you probably don’t even notice:
- Bathing too often. Summer often makes people crave for excess bathing. Shorten your showers, avoid unnecessary bathing, and aim for more moderate temperatures to reduce the impact on your skin.
- Too much chlorine. What else can be good than relaxing in your pool? But the chlorine used to keep your pool safe and clean is a harsh chemical that can damage your skin, hair, and eyes. To wash the impact, you can take a brief shower as soon as possible after leaving the pool to rinse away chemicals.
- Washing your hands frequently. Thorough handwashing is crucial to keep germs and illness away, but all that washing can wreak havoc on your skin. Possibly, use a soap that has moisturizing ingredients along with the anti-bacterial agents. Follow up each wash with lotion to seal in moisture.
- Excess hand sanitizer. Hand-sanitizers with more than 65% alcohol content are the most effective but they are extremely drying. If possible, use sanitizing lotion after the handwash. Make sure the routine applying lotion after handwash becomes second nature.
- Air conditioning exposure. Air conditioner gives you cooling relief and helps reduce the natural evaporation that occurs when you’re hot and sweaty. But it also makes the indoor air drier, which absorbs moisture from your skin that you probably don’t even notice.
- Soaking up the sun. Sun-kissed skin as a healthy glow is a myth mostly among white people. Also, tan-red as a summer skin care is a clear sign of skin damage, and the darker the tan, the greater the damage.
Basics of summer skin care
Keeping your skin supple, soft and well-hydrated is simply as possible during the summer months as winter. Use these tips to create a healthy summer skin care nature:
- Use proper sunscreen. Use proper sunscreen with an SPF of at least 30 any time you venture outdoors. The sun dries out and damages your skin quickly even on an overcast day. Even if you’re near water, the reflections can magnify its intensity.
- Moisturize often. Make moisture part of your daily routine, not only when you get out of the shower, but throughout the day. Using a good quality lotion keeps your skin smooth, leaves skin feeling soft with no greasy or oily residue.
- Shorten bathtub and shower time. Spending more time in shower strips your skin of moisture. Brief your bathing time to minimize the chance of dehydration. Applying moisturizer in damp skin is most effective. So the best time to apply moisturizer is after a bath or shower. A thick coat of lotion immediately after bath keeps skin soft and supple for long. Exfoliate your skin regularly. It sheds dead skin cells and makes it easier for the moisturizer to heal deeply and reveal healthy-looking skin. Be gentle to your skin’s exfoliation with a schedule to your skin’s unique needs so you don’t irritate it.
- Hydrate frequently. With an external way of maintaining the skin’s natural barrier, you also need to keep it hydrated from the inside out. When you’re dehydrated, your body sucks water from any source it can, including your skin. An absolute mantra is to drink at least 8-11 8-ounce glasses of water a day and keeping a bottle of water on-hand all time can provide easy on-the-go hydration.
- Consume hydrating foods. Similar to sipping water, you can also increase your body’s overall water content by eating the right kinds of foods. Many types of foods have a high percentage of water, like berries, melon, cucumbers, and zucchini.
Whether work stress has given way to aging fears or acne-free advertisement dramas have awakened anxiety breakouts, you’ve now solutions for them. Above summer skincare tips will strengthen your skin under the most stressful of situations.
