I have dry skin, what do I do? A guide to hydration, winter and summer

Skin pulls the moment you step out of the bathroom. It flakes around the nose, and in the evening make-up sits on top instead of settling in. In Bosnia that lasts all winter, and in summer it comes back wearing a different face. Here is what actually helps, step by step, without ten products and without panic.

First, tell dry apart from dehydrated

Dry skin does not have enough oil in the barrier. Dehydrated skin does not have enough water. Those are two different problems, they are easy to confuse, and they are treated differently. Do the quick test in the morning, before you wash: push the skin of your cheek with a fingertip. If it gathers into a fine net of lines, it is dehydrated. If it flakes and stays matte, it is dry. Most people here get both at once in winter, and that is where the confusion starts.

We go through the difference in more detail in the piece on a routine for dehydrated skin.

What to do today, the first seven days

1. Turn the water down when you wash. Warm, not hot. Heat strips the lipid layer that holds water in your skin.
2. Cut the shower to five or seven minutes. The longer you stand under water, the more oil leaves with it.
3. Switch to a mild gel cleanser without sulfates. If it foams hard and your skin draws tight afterwards, that cleanser is not for you.
4. Put your moisturiser on within the first sixty seconds. Onto damp skin, not dry. That way water goes into the formula and stays under it.
5. Put a humidifier in any room with central heating. Aim for 40 to 60 per cent humidity.
6. Drink water. It sounds obvious, and dehydration on the inside still builds dryness on the outside.
7. Do not rub with a towel. Press, do not scrub. Damp skin is the best surface a cream will ever get.

Those seven are the foundation. Without them no cream performs the way its label suggests.

What to look for in a cream

You do not need thirty ingredients. You need three layers working together:

• A humectant pulls water in: glycerin, the AQUAXYL complex, hyaluronic acid, sorbitol.
• An emollient fills the gaps in the barrier: argan, shea, prickly pear, jojoba, squalane.
• An occlusive closes the layer so the water cannot leave: plant waxes, ceramides, lecithin.

A cream with all three does the job. A cream with only a humectant, glycerin in the first three ingredients and nothing else, can paradoxically dry you out in winter: it pulls water in and then has nothing to hold it with.

What to avoid outright

• Alcohol Denat. or SD Alcohol in the first five ingredients. Put it back on the shelf.
• Essential oils, lavender, citrus, rosemary, in a face cream. Irritation is a matter of days.
• Parfum or Fragrance high on the list. That is a blend of thirty to a hundred aroma molecules and any of them can irritate a barrier that is already damaged.
• Exfoliating more than once a week. Dry skin has a damaged barrier and does not need more of it taken off.
• Retinol before the barrier has healed. Retinol wants healthy skin underneath it.
• A clay mask every week. Clay dries. Dry skin needs water brought to it, not taken away.

What we sell, and what we do not

AZOURANE does not currently sell a moisturiser. For the situation described here, look for a formula with argan, shea butter and prickly pear in the first five ingredients, and no alcohol high on the list.

If your cleanser is already fine, the cream on its own may be enough. If the cleanser is what is breaking the barrier, sulfates, hard foam, skin that draws tight, then fix that first. AMAAN washes with coco glucoside and cocamidopropyl betaine, there is no sulfate in the ingredient list, and the pH is measured at 5.0 to 5.5. Aloe sits fourth and glycerin fifth. It is fragranced, and the scent is cucumber rather than an ingredient in the formula.

When a cream is not enough

Daily care has limits. With any of the following, the diagnosis comes first and the cream second:

• Active atopic dermatitis or eczema that will not settle: see a dermatologist. Soothing care is not a substitute for treating a flare.
• Chronic dryness that does not respond to hydration: have your thyroid and hormones checked. An underactive thyroid and menopause both drive dry skin from the inside.
• Diabetes or an autoimmune condition: a cream is one part of the treatment, not the treatment.

Even the best cream does not replace a diagnosis when the cause sits deeper.

Bosnian winter specifically

Central heating drops indoor humidity below 30 per cent. Hard water in Sarajevo leaves a mineral film on the skin. Wind on Bjelasnica, Jahorina and Trebevic will pull the water out of your face in an hour outdoors. Dry skin here does not behave like dry skin on the Mediterranean, and it asks for different care.

• Two applications of cream a day through the worst months, December and January, is entirely reasonable. Go back to one in summer.
• A humidifier in the bedroom is a luxury, and you notice it inside a week.
• Sunscreen in winter too, especially on snow. Snow reflects UV straight back at your face.
• A mask with shea or argan oil once a week, in the evening rather than the morning.

Questions we get in the store

We deliver inside Bosnia and Herzegovina, from Sarajevo, in one to two working days, with cash on delivery. The store is in Sarajevo City Centar, Vrbanja 1, third floor, open daily from 10:00 to 22:00. Reading this from somewhere else, tell us where you are and we will write when we can send to you.

See AMAAN if the cleanser is part of the problem.