Moisturizing: What It Can Do For You

I want to make something clear here: The surface moisture in your skin is composed of water from your sweat glands and oil from the sebaceous glands. Whenever you think of moisturizing, remember that you are trying to supplement the amount of water in your skin, not the quantity of oil.

However, it’s important to remember that when you age, your sebaceous glands produce less oil, meaning there’s a lesser natural oil barrier to protect against evaporation of water made by the sweat glands. This is why moisturizing becomes increasingly important with age. Although some moisturizers behave as a buffer to avoid moisture loss, sealing in what natural moisture your skin has, others behave as humectants, drawing moisture in from the environment and adding it to the top layers of your skin, temporarily plumping dry surface cells. Neither, alone, is sufficient.

But there is a whole new breed of supermoisturizers currently available that do more: They penetrate beneath the epidermis to moisturize the cells below, plus they increase cell turnover, improve skin texture and diminish fine lines- that’s, they physiologically modify the skin. The problem is finding a product that does all this.

Not long ago I spoke to a skin research scientist, and here’s how he told me to test a moisturizer’s deep-penetrating potential and effectiveness: Stop using it for two weeks. If you’re using a physiologically active product, the skin will continue to appear moist and healthy (just like if you were continuing utilization of the product) during those two weeks. The reason: It takes fourteen days for the cells in the outer layer of your skin to turn over and be replaced by the new fresh, hydrated cells. If you are using a moisturizer that acts only like a barrier, you will find drier, scalier skin within twenty-four hours after you stop using the product.

How to Moisturize Once you find a deep-penetrating moisturizer that works for you, get into the habit of utilizing it every day after cleansing and toning, while the skin is still damp (so you seal in moisture) and before you put on your makeup; and each evening, too, after cleansing and toning, again while skin continues to be damp and at least 20 minutes before you go to bed to give it time to be absorbed through the skin so it won’t come off on your pillow.

Whatever you do, don’t be misled by the myth that the skin must breathe during the night and so should not be moisturized. It’s tough to make skin hold its breath.

On the other side of the coin, you shouldn’t be taken in by the idea that the more moisturizer you slather on, the more you’re lubricating the skin; you might wind up just clogging your pores. How much is too much? Take a dime-size amount of cream and smooth it on your neck and face; if you run out before you finish, you’re applying it too heavy-handedly.

Another frequent mistake: Many women think that the heavier the moisturizer they use, the more they’re moisturizing their skin. Wrong! The dull, sallow appearance of some women’s skin is due to their utilizing a too-heavy moisturizer. The reason: The thicker the moisturizer (and the more it you use), the slower the rate of cell turnover. If you use a too-heavy cream, you are actually slowing cell renewal because the reproductive cells within the basal layer think that the moisturizer is really a dead skin layer and, to compensate, they produce fewer new cells to maneuver up to replace them.

How you can know if you use too rich a moisturizer: Once you apply it, note just how long it takes before your skin feels oily. Should you apply it first thing in the morning and your forehead and cheeks feel greasy an hour later, that’s a sure sign that you’re using too rich a formulation.

What exactly should you use? A deep-penetrating moisturizer, to be sure. And, generally speaking, if you have dried-out skin you’ll do better with a cream formulation; if you have oily skin you’ll fare better with lighter lotion formulations.

If you consider the ingredients inside your moisturizer, you will find that water is the first or second listed (keep in mind that ingredients are listed in order of the predominance, greatest first). This may seem odd, since you don’t wish to spend money on water. But water alone can’t moisturize the skin; you’ll need other ingredients. The water in the product is there to be absorbed through the skin; the oil is there to keep it from evaporating.

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