Cold weather, as well as airplane travel can wreak havoc with our largest organ—the skin.
Top New York dermatologist Dr. Doris Day, spoke with Epoch Times about her favorite skincare ingredients and shared her advice on how to achieve and maintain healthy skin at home, or when traveling to our favorite holiday destinations.
Questions and answers have been edited for length and clarity.
Epoch Times: How does that harshness of winter differ in the way it affects the skin, as opposed to the harshness of the warmer months.
Dr. Day: In winter the air is typically dryer, it’s colder and there’s more wind. In these conditions your skin has less water available to it. And because of the wind and the dryness, water can be pulled out of your skin into the environment to balance out—because we always look for equilibrium between us and the environment.
Also, after you take a nice long, hot shower, it takes the natural oils out of your skin and when you step out of the shower, as your skin dries, water gets pulled out of your skin and it ends up very dry. When the skin becomes dry it can also becomes more itchy. Your skin can be flaky, unsightly and look dull, because of the way that the cells sit on the skin. Also when you scratch, you can create breaks in the skin which again affects water balance. Those breaks can become a source of potential infection.
As you move down away from the face, your skin naturally become dryer—the lower legs tend to be dry even in the best of times and we have to moisturize them on a regular basis, but in winter we have to pay special attention.
Due to dryness you can have increased inflammation around the hair follicles, red bumps, and if you have a history of psoriasis or eczema, those can also flare.
Epoch Times: What about the face?
Dr. Day: Your facial skin is different than your body’s skin and you have to handle it differently. Sometimes you can be using products that can be drying. If you over-exfoliate you can strip the skin and then when you apply moisturizer it can sting or burn.
