SKIN CARE: DO YOU HAVE DEHYDRATED SKIN?

The science behind dehydrated skin

When your skin is well hydrated, it looks vibrant, smooth, and fresh. But when your skin’s natural processes for maintaining hydration break down, it can start to look dull and have visible lines. No one wants that.

That’s why it’s so important to keep your skin hydrated by caring for it in a way that helps maintain cell health while sealing in moisture.

What causes dehydrated skin?

In a perfect world, your skin does a pretty good job of keeping itself hydrated, but our world is rarely perfect.

Your skin’s natural hydration process is easily disrupted by a lack of water and other risk factors that are part of everyday life, including harsh weather, extreme indoor environments, everyday stress or even daily cleansing.

Can oily skin be dehydrated?

And those of us with oily skin are not immune to dehydration. While oil provides a type of moisture, it doesn’t combat the dehydration that occurs due to a lack of water. So, all types of skin — even oily and combination — can become dehydrated.

Dry vs. dehydrated skin

Likewise, if your skin is dry, it may not necessarily be due to dehydration — but rather, a lack of oil at the surface. By watching for symptoms of true dehydration, you’ll be better prepared to treat it.

Signs of dehydrated skin

Common signs of dehydration include skin that feels tight or is dry, flaky, itchy, dull looking, rough or marked by fine lines and dark shadows. Any of these conditions is a sure sign your skin needs some extra TLC.

Some symptoms of dehydrated skin texture can appear as early as your teen years, but in general they become more noticeable as you grow older.

How your skin works to stay hydrated

Your skin has its own, complex method for keeping itself hydrated. The outer skin—the epidermis—is made up of several layers of cells are in a constant state of being sloughed off and renewed. In the deepest layer of the epidermis, membrane proteins called aquaporins work to transport water from cell to cell, helping to nourish your skin naturally. Above that layer, other cells adhere together to form tight junctions that seal in water and control which molecules pass between them.

The top layer of the epidermis then forms a barrier to the external environment using lipids, mostly ceramide, and natural moisturizing factors. Water and those natural moisturizing factors work together to hydrate the skin.

Skin barriers and dehydration

Another way to look at it is to think of your skin having five barriers that work together to try to keep it healthy:

• The defense barrier works to remove impurities.
• The microbiome barrier works to keep your skin’s organisms in a healthy balance to avoid harmful biofilms.
• The support barrier works to rebuild and keep your skin smooth and resilient.
• The moisture barrier works to keep the skin optimally moisturized.
• And the environmental barrier protects the skin from outside elements like UVA and UVB rays.

When it comes to hydration, you need to focus on your moisture barrier, which helps keep essential moisture inside the skin rather than evaporating away.

[RELATED: Why you need a regular skin care routine]

How to treat dehydrated skin

The first step to fighting dehydrated skin is to make sure you drink plenty of water and eat a healthy diet heavy in fruits and vegetables. But you can also help by upping your skin care regimen to support your moisture barrier.

Make sure you follow a regular skin care routine that includes a moisturizer morning and night. Your skin cells are constantly growing and replacing themselves, but it doesn’t happen overnight. It takes skin cells 30 days or more to turn over and regenerate. That’s why consistency is key when it comes to a good skin care routine.

Choose a quality moisturizer with long-lasting hydration to saturate your skin and fortify the moisture barrier. Artistry Skin Nutrition™ moisturizers for the face and eye area deliver supercharged moisture levels and hydrate skin for 24 hours. By sustaining higher moisture levels and improving the barrier, you can help prevent water and nutrient loss.

They infuse your skin with the nutrients and emollients it needs to help keep the moisture barrier strong and secure. One of the ingredients is white chia seed, which has been shown to help replenish and fortify your skin’s moisture barrier.

[RELATED: Are chia seeds good for you? In more ways than one!]

What skin care products are right for you?

Artistry Skin Nutrition moisturizers come in a variety of sets focused on different skin concerns: Hydrating, Balancing, Firming or Renewing. So whether you have dry skin or combination skin or are concerned about aging or fine lines, you can find one that’s right for you.

What causes wrinkles?

The anti aging products were formulated based on findings from the Artistry Global Facial Image Database with information on skin conditions and challenges from tens of thousands of people in 12 countries across the world combined with the latest molecular aging work.

Research revealed that it’s not the actual age of a skin cell that matters, but the cell’s healthiness. Healthier cells look and act more youthful, regardless of their age. And unlike age, which you cannot change, health is an area you can do something about.

“At any given age, some people may have healthier-looking skin than others,” said Jesse Leverett, a research fellow at Amway working on the project. “Our goal with Artistry formulations is to fortify the skin against factors that may cause faster decline in skin health and push the skin toward healthier-looking aging.”

[RELATED: Learn more about the global collaboration that led to Artistry Skin Nutrition products.]

How healthy are your cells?

Further research pinpointed which botanical ingredients in which combinations were best able to prevent decline of health in a cell and to restore health to unhealthy cells, Jesse said.

“This is a very important finding,” he said. “Only at Amway have we discovered a new way to improve the healthy look of skin with key botanical complexes that self-adjust to help both prevent and repair to improve the skin’s unhealthy appearance.”

That’s how the team formulated the Prevent Complex found in the Artistry Skin Nutrition Hydrating and Balancing collections and the Repair Complex found in the new Renewing and Firming collections.

Using Nutrilite botanicals

The Prevent Complex is a blend of Australian daisy, blackberry and Nutrilite™-grown acerola cherry. It boosts skin’s natural defense system by 350%*, helping to prevent and delay the appearance of early visible signs of aging.

The Repair Complex is a blend of turmeric, tea olive flower and Nutrilite-grown spinach to help restore skin’s youthful condition by 600%, helping reverse the visible signs of aging**. It also includes Nutrilite-grown pomegranate to protect skin from pollution and help soothe, calm and strengthen it to defend against premature visible aging.

“The most interesting finding was that although the synergy of the Prevent Complex causes it to excel at prevention of healthy cells from becoming unhealthy, it also can repair some early signs of unhealthiness,” Jesse said. “Likewise, the Repair Complex excels at the repair of cells that are already unhealthy, but we found it can also prevent further unhealthiness.”

Anti-aging products: Putting the science to work

Like the Balancing and Hydrating, the Artistry Skin Nutrition Renewing and Firming products act like supplements for your skin. They include makeup removers, cleansers, toners, creams and lotions to address your skin’s five key nutritional needs: purify, balance, rebuild, moisturize and protect.

What is broad spectrum protection?

Broad spectrum protection means it protects against UVA and UVB rays. If the label doesn’t indicate broad spectrum, then it only protects against UVB rays.

When selecting a sunscreen to apply all over your body – from the tops of your ears to the tips of your toes – pick a broad spectrum formula.

What does SPF stand for?

All sunscreens have an SPF, or sun protection factor. In general, this number tells you how long it would take the sun’s UV rays to make your skin red when you are using the sunscreen, compared to how long it would take to redden your skin if you were not wearing it.

For example, if you rub sunscreen with an SPF 30 into your skin, it would take about 30 times longer for your skin to burn than if you were not wearing any protection. But the intensity of the sun exposure matters. People can burn more quickly at different times of day. The American Academy of Dermatology (AAD) recommends using sunscreen with SPF 30 as a minimum.

White chia seeds at work

After that, they begin their journey to becoming a key ingredient in Artistry skin care products, specifically, the Artistry Skin Nutrition™ line, which works like supplements for the skin.

Our skin care teams love these superpowered little seeds from Nutrilite because they have the highest concentration of omega-3s, which are fatty acids essential for healthy looking skin. They use it to make our white chia seed gel, which provides vital support to your skin’s microbiome for added strength, stability and balance.

To learn more about our farms and the products made with what we grow there, visit the links below or read more blogs on Amway Connections.

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