Dealing With Dry Skin in the Desert: 4 Ways to Leave Dry Skin in the Dust For Good

We all know the many great things about living in the desert…
Amazing restaurants, lots of things to do… But one of the negative things that comes up from living in the desert?

The dry-skin blues.

However, the good news is there are lots of simple things we can do to counteract this!

First & Most Important: Use the Right Type of Soap!

First off, when you’re bathing or showering, make sure that you’re using a mild soap for your skin.

The goal here is to be gentle, and not remove the many natural oils your skin wants to preserve.

This means you want to avoid anything anti-bacterial, or too harsh.

Why?

Those features tend to dry out your skin even more… So stick to a soap that is gentle on the skin.

The Second Key to Hydrating Your Skin – Moisturization, Moisturization, Moisturization!

Ideally, you should first moisturize right after you get out of the shower, since it’s best to lock in that moisture immediately.

Considering the lack of humidity in our area, if you don’t lock the moisture in shortly after bathing, it’ll evaporate quickly.

This leaves no chance to preserve the moisture in your skin, which in turn leads to you feeling dry throughout the day.

Tip #3 – Jars vs. Pumps

And this next one might sound picky…

But try to get a cream or an ointment-based moisturizer.

These products are usually found in jars,
rather than pumps.

The main reason is that lotions in pump bottles tend to be water-based.

This means in our desert climate, they tend to evaporate much quicker.

On the other hand, creams and ointments that come in jars are thicker, and moisturize much better!

#4 – Moisturizing Hard-to-Reach-Areas

What can I do to moisturize hard to reach areas?

For this, we recommend getting some in-shower moisturizers that’ll help you cover your back, to prevent it drying out in the future.

Towards the end of your shower, simply apply the in-shower moisturizer.

It will drip down your back, and when you’re drying off, just spread it around evenly with your towel!

It’s that simple.

This way, you get a thorough coating of moisturizer on your back, all without the need to contort your body into a pretzel!

To sum it all up, there are four main things we recommend doing to trap the moisture into your skin for the day:

1. Use a mild soap that’s gentle on your skin. Avoid anti-bacterial or anything too harsh.

2. Moisturize your skin immediately when you hop out of the shower! This’ll preserve the moisture better for the day.

3. Use an ointment or cream-based moisturizer that typically comes in a jar. Pump-lotions are usually water-based, which dry out much quicker.

4. Use an in-shower moisturizer, so you can moisturize the hard to reach areas, without twisting into a pretzel everyday.

Then towel dry as normal, to stay moisturized all over your body.

Using this combination of dry-skin tips, your desert dry-skin woes should become a thing of the past

Dr. Victoria Farley
Vivida Dermatology
www.Vivida.com