As a qualified beauty therapist and skincare expert with over 30 years’ experience, my clients often ask for advice regarding controlling the ‘shine’ that they see on their skin throughout the day.
These people will often describe and treat their skin as being oily when in fact it is simply dehydrated.
Before you read on let’s clear a couple of things up – when I say dehydrated skin, I mean skin that is water parched. Dehydrated skin is a condition that affects your skin because of your lifestyle, the environment you live in and the climate. Your ‘skin type’ is something different. This is defined by your genetic makeup where skin often leans towards being either dry or oily. Thus, dehydrated skin is different to dry skin which is lacking in oil (don’t fear - I will cover dry skin in another blog!)
Knowing The Difference
Your Hydrolipidic film is the barrier that protects your skin from the outside world. When this becomes damaged your skin’s natural moisture (water) reserves escape, leaving your skin looking and feeling parched. Therefore, when your skin is dehydrated it is likely that you will have open pores which are grey at the base. Often these are wrongly mistaken for blackheads. In addition, dehydrated skin may result in a lack of radiance in the skin or the development of fine lines (lines of dehydration). You may also experience congestion and spots on your chin, jaw line and cheeks, caused by dehydrated cells that do not contain enough fluid to efficiently flush out toxins.
On the other hand, if you have oily skin you will notice a thick and waxy secretion forming on your skin. Your skin may also take on the thickened appearance of orange peel and you will be likely to have what I call ‘true plug blackheads.’
Treating Dehydrated Skin
Whilst drinking plenty of water is important to keeping hydration levels up, it is imperative to know this is not be the sole factor for alleviating dehydrated skin.
The products that I would recommend for treating dehydrated skin are our Rehydrating Concentrate followed by our new Rehydrating Cream. Both will work to rehydrate your skin from the inside out and help to repair your skin's barrier, ensuring important moisture cannot escape from your skin and helping to restore good skin function.
It is crucial that product must be applied to clean and regularly exfoliated skin. For hassle-free cleansing I recommend our Essential Miracle Cleansing Jelly or our Essential Refreshing Cleansing Gel. To exfoliate I advise using our non-abrasive Essential Exfoliating Gel that works to dissolve dead skin cells and will leave your skin prepped and smoothed.
