Written by Abby Blanke
With summer well and truly over and the cooler winter months now creeping in, I thought it would be a good time to explain the difference between being dehydrated or lacking nourishment.
They differ greatly!
You might be surprised to learn that if you don’t have enough of one, you will definitely be experiencing the other.
Let’s start with hydration.
This is exactly as it sounds! It’s the free water in the skin. I like to explain to my clients that the water in our skin are like river beds with free flowing water. All the skin cells sit in the river just gently bouncing and bobbing up and down.
We get most of our free water from our dermis, which gently releases water up into the epidermis.
Did you know that only 7% of the water in our skin is made up of the water we drink! I am not saying stop drinking water but what that does mean is we need to ensure our dermis and epidermis are in beautiful working order to keep our skin river beds full.
You can tell when you’re dehydrated as your skin starts to show really fine lines.
Those river beds I spoke about are dry and empty. Your skin doesn’t bounce back as fast when you give it a little pinch and you can look really dull.
Your skin will normally try and absorb your cleanser as soon as you put it on your skin and you will feel like you have to use alot of moisturiser.
Nourishment:
This one will surprise you.
If you are lacking nourishment then you are lacking Essential Fatty Acids. EFA’s for short. Our skin cells are made of this really fine super lucid oil.
As our cell makes its way up to the surface it releases this oil and this creates our skins acid mantle.
Unfortunately 97% of Australians are essential fatty acid deficient! Meaning we don’t have a very good healthy acid mantle.
When we don’t have this very thin fine layer of oil sitting on the surface of the skin, that is when free radicals can enter the skin and cause inflammation, redness, breakouts a whole range of skin issues.
But the biggest thing it causes is dehydration! As I mentioned, if you are lacking one you will certainly have the other.
I like to think of it like a salad dressing. The oil is all on the surface and all the juicy goodness is down the bottom.
Well its exactly the same for our skin! If we don’t have our oil, our free water in the epidermis literally evaporates straight up and out.
This makes our skin super dehydrated and prone to inflammation, dullness, lines and so many other things.
To resolve this we should really look at adding nourishment to almost every skin routine, especially now we are heading into winter.
A good quality fish oil tablet will help to start nourishment from the inside out.
To help balance back out the acid mantle, use an oil that contains rose hip, jojoba or triglycerides.
By applying this every night, it will put a healthy seal over the skin so the water can stay in the river beds, keeping the epidermis and your skin cells happy, healthy and bouncy.