Skin care is a disputable topic, and myths are created easily. There is no medical evidence that lack of exercise, smoking, dirt and dust, make-up, coffee or fattening food are detrimental for skin.

Alcohol and spicy food cannot injure normal skin, but they can influence the reddened or the broken blood vessels on the cheeks and around nose, which become more explicit for a while. Anything capable of capillary dilatation and skin reddening can injure them, including huge temperature swings.

Apart from the sun bathing abuse, one of our skin hazards is dehydration.

Despite the natural covering, the moisture evaporates very fast when the air humidity is low – when the weather is hot or cold, especially when it is windy, and in the buildings with central heating. If the moisture is not compensated, our skin gets rough and dry. It can chap, thus opening the inner layers for bacteria, and as a result, get inflamed.

It may sound ironic, but the skin gets dehydrated when under water. It happens because the moisture in the skin passes through the protective epidermis membrane aiming to merge with the water surrounding the body. The more mineral substances and salts are dissolved in water, the more moisture the skin loses.

Thus, hard water is the most dehydrating. The best way to prevent our skin from drying up is to use moisturizer all the year round, as often as possible. Moreover, one should use not only face creams, but also creams for all the areas of the skin which contact with the outdoor environment.

Hands deserve the most thorough care, as they not only get weather-beaten, but also stay in water for a long time, when we are doing housework. We should also keep in mind that our neck, as well as face, is often exposed to external influence. It is also necessary to grease feet with a moisturizer from time to time.

Of course, no moisturizer can compensate for the moisture loss for a long time, because it can only penetrate into external epidermis layers. Besides this, the small amount of moist that gets into the skin, evaporates very soon. But a good moisturizer fulfills a more important task: it slows down the dehydration process like sebum and thus prevents from moisture loss. And if the evaporation is reduced, the skin compensates itself for the lack of moist from the inside.