Dry skin is caused by 2 factors. One is the damage to the skin's defensive barrier which produces excessive water loss through the skin. The other is an important reduction in the concentration of the skin's water-holding sugar and protein molecules, the complex proteoglycans and glycosaminoglycans (GAGs) molecules.

Many skin moisturizers and emollient solutions sold by the major skin care companies delay the healing of irritated and damaged skin and make the situation worse by inhibiting natural skin repair. New computer instruments have demonstrated that many popular moisturizers increase skin damage in ways similar to skin irritants. Nor are skin barrier products an answer, like those containing petrolatum and lanolin.

What our skin requires is to protect its surface and to heal the skin from the inside out, by putting the skin in a situation in which innate skin repair can happen.

Most if not all the popular moisturizers and emollients currently sold by the main skin care brands contain high proportions of detergents and detergent-like chemicals, ignoring many years of solid evidence that such detergents degrade the skin's natural defensive function and damage the skin. Also, many of the dyes and optical diffusers used to give the appearance of healthy skin are damaging to skin.

Dry Skin Treated Naturally

Lipids and fats in the skin confer the epidermal barrier to transcutaneous water loss. These lipids in the upper skin area named the stratum corneum are disposed in layers named lamellae. The lower skin layers contain more typical fats like triglycerides and phospholipids while the upper layers have more ceramides, cholesterol and free fatty acids.

Waxes and oils seal the skin's surface and avoid exaggerated water loss. Cosmetic moisturizers loosen the skin's defensive barrier and hydrate (wet) the skin proteins but have the long-term effect of damaging the skin.

A skin-care solution is only as good as what it contains and how those ingredients can help your skin work better. In fact, moisturizers (or any skin-care solution claiming to have an effect on skin repair, wrinkles or sagging skin) must definitely contain an elegant combination of antioxidants, cell-communicating ingredients, and intercellular substances as they help skin keep a healthy level of hydration, build collagen and avoid cellular damage.

Not the popular dry skin products that have been in the market since the 1920's, when the cosmetic industry started to promote oil/water/detergent products for moisturizing instead of the vegetable oils that had been employed for thousands of years. This was similar to the fallacious campaigns, we may all recall, that intended to stop mothers from breast feeding their babies and promoted their replacement with synthetic infant formulas sold for profit.