Tips to avoid or heal dry winter skin
Updated: January 7, 2009
Advice from Carle Clinic Dermatologist Dr. Ann Tice on avoiding and healing dry winter skin:
Chapped hands? Itchy skin? Welcome to winter in Illinois! The dry environment inside robs the skin of moisture and leads to drying of the skin especially in the winter. Ah, what an excuse to travel south where it is green and humid! But, for the rest of us staying here I have some suggestions:
1. Use warm, not hot water to bathe with.
2. Short showers, not long ones are better. The longer you are in the water and the hotter it is the drier and itchier your skin may become. (What!, no hot tubs?!)
3. Use mild soap and limit where you use it to just the armpits, face, feet, and bottom areas. We dont need to make the entire arm and leg areas into a full lathered bubble-fest with the soap like some of the old commercials! If you really get dirty all over by cleaning out the garage, dumping peat moss on yourself or whatever, then soap on the arms and legs is OK.
4.Recommended soaps for dry skin: Oil of Olay for Sensitive Skin, Cetaphil soap (regular or antibacterial or their cleanser), or Dove for Sensitive Skin.
5.Moisturize right after getting out of the shower-pat the skin off with a towel then immediately (while the skin is still damp) apply moisturizer to as much of the body as you can reach if you are very dry. Apply it daily.
6.Greasy is better in moisturizers, but they dont always feel so nifty. (The greasiest ones are best applied at night before bed). Oils like baby oil are not as good as thick lotions because the mineral oil in baby oil just sits on top of the skin and is not absorbed well. My favorite lotions for daily use: Cetaphil lotion, Moisturel, Lubriderm Advanced Healing, and Curel. Slightly heavier: Cetaphil Cream. Greasy but best for very chapped: Aquaphore, Eucerin Cream, and Vanicream (Carle Rx pharmacy- this one also hypoallergenic).
7."Splits" in the hands or feet: a very tough, resistant problem! If one thing worked, I would tell you just that! The hands and feet have thicker skin and as it looses moisture, it tends to dry up like mud in an old streambed and cracks deeply between areas. On the skin this gives tender splits into the skin. Prevention works best-ASAP in the fall, moisturize continuously - especially with each hand washing (i.e., many times during the day or if its the heels that crack, twice a day). Cetaphil cream and Neutrogena Hand cream are nice.
Protect hands with gloves with gardening, cleaning the garage, or with vinyl gloves with wet work. If the splits or fissures still occur, file off the thick hard edge near the split with an emery board and try any of the following suggestions. One may work for some and sometimes none of them work for a person! (I said this was a tough problem!)
1.Use Polysporin Ointment over the split and a Band-Aid-for at least 3-4 days after the area seems all healed. If you stop this as soon as it seems healed, the area is still inflamed and can "pop" back open again.
2. Try applying NewSkin or "liquid bandaid" several times daily (again for 3-4 days after it seems healed). These products are like a "super glue" and help keep a layer over the split and keep it together.
3. Use a tiny amount of Polysporin Ointment just on the inside of the split then cover with a Steri-strip (find at medical supply stores). Steri-strips are like thin medical strapping tape- they have tiny fiber strands in them for strength. It will stay on longer if a special adhesive called Mastisol is used, too. The Steri-strips might need to be reapplied if you are working heavily with your hands.
4. Crazy but might help: "yellow wax". This is the yellow wax circle found in the plumbing section of hardware stores and used to stick the toilets down to the floor (no water gets through this stuff!). Its tacky (literally and figuratively!), but some suggest keeping small chunks of this around each sink in the house and applying a very thin film to the splits each time after hand washing. I have seen it work on heels, too, but its a bit messy.
So there you have it, the best suggestions I can come up with. A trip to Florida with the humid weather still sounds better? Well, keep applying those moisturizers and enjoy the cooler weather. --------Ann Tice. M.D.
