Dry skin & a moment of science

Contrary to popular belief, wearing makeup in this harsh cold weather has protected my skin from getting dry patches. Don’t roll your eyes, I’ll explain.

Flaky skin is the bane of my life, it started in Winter 2017 and would not go away for months; then I jetted off to Pakistan for the year and with that, my dry skin disappeared literally in one day.

…and from that, I understood it was definitely UK’s cold weather that had brought me the friend on my face.

Fast-forward to 2019 January, I’m back in the UK and so is the dry skin, (to quote London Tipton, yay me!). The harsh wind and low temperature seems to be taking a toll once again and no amount of moisturiser is fixing it! It’s not just dry skin, it’s DRY skin, like it’s literally a patch of dry flaky skin (nice).

The question is - WHY. WHY ME.

No, the question is WHY is this even happening? Why does this occur? What goes on in my body for it to have such a drastic stubborn effect?

After doing a bit of research, I found out a few science-y reasons and here’s my attempt at explaining them to you - so in turn, I can understand them myself.

To understand the causes of dry skin, we need to understand how our skin works. As biggest organ our body has, our skin is made up of layers.

• The outer layer of our skin (strateum corneum) which is made up of dead skin cells, is the one that protects the living skin cells beneath.

• It is the same size as the skin below UNTIL it loses water - once it loses water it shrinks, and begins to crack and become flaky.

• To conclude: Low water content, a lack of hydration reaching your skin will cause the outer layer of your skin to shrink and in turn crack - giving the appearance of dryness as we know it.

How does our skin dry out? Although you might think you are drinking a lot of water, dry weather takes a toll on the skin and causes us to lose water.

To avoid this, you need to drink a lot of water, moisturise, and here is a secret that they don’t want you to know - wear a layer of foundation.

This little tip is from my own experience, trial and error and it has worked for both me and my best friend. On days I go out without make-up my skin feels hella dry. I wake up the next day and a dry patch appears. Initially I thought it was due to makeup, so I had stopped wearing foundation and it still would not go away.

Then, for a few days I had a few events so I had to wear makeup every day - and every day I would come home, wash my face and there would be no dry flaky patches.

Now, I’m no scientist - but the foundation seemed to be protecting the outer layer of my skin from the brittle weather. For me, according to my understanding of ‘skin biology’ that makes sense, you are protecting the outer layer which loses water in dry weather; with a layer of foundation so that your skin is not in direct contact with the wind, in turn it acts like a protective barrier.

It works for me, and I have really dry skin - so try it out?