How Do You Cope With Dry Facial Skin

If you suffer from dry facial skin, you can often feel that your skin is too tight. The lack of moisture makes the skin less supple and stretchy. Dry skin is not caused by a lack of oil but by the top layer of your skin shedding too many cells too often. Dry facial skin needs hydration on the outside as well as the inside.

It is often your diet and general daily routine that is contributing to the problem. Firstly you need to ditch the diet. Starvation diets do not produce good skin – in fact they only make everyone miserable so why bother. It is much better to lose weight or maintain a healthy figure by eating nutritious food and taking part in gentle exercise.

You need to increase your consumption of vitamin C as it is responsible for building up collagen in your skin. Don’t just pop a supplement. Instead, try to eat a variety of vitamin C containing food such as broccoli, peppers, potatoes and tomatoes.

Increase your consumption of zinc and selenium as well. You will find these minerals in nuts and seeds. Try sprouting at home as this is an excellent source of all the vitamins and minerals your dry skin needs.

Add cloves, cinnamon and oregano to your meals instead of salt. Too much salt is bad for you and these spices will add flavor as well as nutrients to your meals. You need to drink milk. It is an excellent source of calcium which is needed for both your bones and your skin.

You would need to be living under a rock if you haven’t heard all the benefits a healthy diet provides. Some people try taking a load of supplements instead. I certainly was one of these. But we can easily overdose on these innocent looking pills and they can react badly with some medications. So do yourself and your wallet a favor. Try and get what you need from natural sources first and only use supplements on the advice of your doctor or health care adviser.

If you have other symptoms in addition to flaky skin, see your doctor as you may be suffering from an underactive thyroid or other medical condition. It is always best to have a full physical examination if you are not feeling 100%.

Dry facial skin should respond well to a gentle moisturizer. An emollient will soften your skin as it is made with petrolatum or lanolin. Personally I am very allergic to lanolin but it works very well for my friends. Avoid overheating your skin with hot showers and baths and try to improve the humidity of your home if you live in an area of low humidity.

My gran always told me to put my moisturizer on when my skin was damp as it locks in an extra layer of moisture. She suffered from dry skin too – it tends to run in families. Organic olive oil is a wonderful natural lubricant. Apply it to your skin and also add it to your salad and hopefully your dry facial skin will be a thing of the past.