Blame it on the seasons, environmental stressors, or even your age - no matter your skin type, you'll likely experience dry skin occasionally, leaving you searching for a moisturizer to quench your thirsty skin.
At NuFACE, we approach hydration a bit differently. Any moisturizing cream can temporarily relieve your dry skin, but to restore hydration on a deeper level, your skin needs nourishing ingredients to help it absorb and retain moisture.
We'll explain what causes dry and dehydrated skin and how to add hydrating products to your skincare routine to enhance your skin’s natural moisture levels.
What Is Skin Hydration?
Skin hydration is dependent on the amount of water found in your cells. The more water in your skin cells, the plumper, smoother, and healthier your skin appears. When your skin's barrier function is working optimally, it locks in that essential water needed for your skin to look healthy and hydrated.
A breakdown in your skin's barrier function causes your skin to lose water - we call it Transepidermal Water Loss (TEWL). This causes your skin to feel parched, tight, itchy, or irritated. No matter how much face cream you use, your skin still feels uncomfortable. Learning the difference between dry and dehydrated skin is essential to fix the underlying issue.
What Is Dry Skin?
You may inherit dry skin or develop it with age and hormone changes. Without surface oil (sebum), the skin's moisture evaporates, potentially leading to the skin condition known as “skin dehydration.”
What Is Dehydrated Skin?
Dehydrated skin is a condition that is when the skin lacks moisture and occurs due to external and internal factors, such as lack of sebum production, aggressors in the environment like sun exposure, surfactants in our skincare, changes in our macro and microclimate, such as central heating, air-conditioning to name but a few. These aggressors break down your skin's natural barrier leading to Transepidermal Water Loss (TEWL), where the moisture in the skin evaporates, leaving it feeling tight and appearing crepey and irritated.
Dehydration doesn't discriminate and affects all skin types and conditions; it can happen just as quickly to oily, breakout-prone skin as to dry or sensitive skin. Dehydration can happen if you aren’t drinking enough water, but it may also occur during certain seasons or if you’ve sustained damage to your skin barrier (like a sunburn).
Does Every Skin Type Need Hydration?
Yes — even oily skin needs hydration, which is why oil-free moisturizers exist. So whether your issue is a dry skin type or a lack of hydration, correcting it requires ingredients that increase hydration and help preserve moisture in the skin. In addition, proper skin hydration can leave your complexion looking dewy and nourished, as opposed to dull and lackluster.
What Are the Effects of Dehydrated Skin?
If you’ve never experienced skin dryness or dehydration, staying with your regular skincare routine might seem the safest bet. But, unfortunately, dehydrated skin that isn’t corrected can lead to more skin issues.
Fine Lines and Wrinkles
When dehydrated, skin is naturally less plump, making fine lines and wrinkles more noticeable. Couple that with the natural loss of collagen you experience with age (you’ll lose 1% of your collagen production per year starting at age 20), and your skin can begin to show signs of aging faster than it usually would.
Loss of Elasticity
In addition to collagen loss, you’ll also experience a loss of elastin as you age. This reduces your skin’s ability to snap back into place when stretched. Dry and dehydrated skin can also cause the skin to lose elasticity, making sagging skin more pronounced.
What Are the Best Ingredients for Hydration and Moisture?
When dry, dehydrated skin is the problem, look for powerful ingredients that restore natural moisture levels. You’ll want a balance of both humectants and emollients.
Humectants. These ingredients work to attract water and pull it into your skin. Ingredients like hyaluronic acid, snow mushroom, and aloe are examples of humectants.
Emollients. Unlike humectants, emollients soften the skin barrier, smooth over rough patches, and create an occlusive barrier on the skin to protect it and effectively lock moisture inside. Shea butter, snow mushroom, and ceramides are all examples of emollient ingredients.
To tackle dryness and dehydration, use emollients and humectants found in NuFACE Microcurrent Skincare that help nourish the skin to restore balance. Here’s a breakdown of some of our favorite ingredients and where you can find them in our product lineup.
Hyaluronic Acid
Hyaluronic acid is one of the most hydrating ingredients available. With the ability to hold 1,000 times its weight in water, hyaluronic acid plumps the skin, keeps it hydrated, and protects against moisture loss.
You can find hyaluronic acid in our Aqua Gel Activator and Silk Crème Activator. Both are must-haves for ensuring proper microcurrent conduction with any NuFACE Device.
Aqua Gel Activator: Perfect for skin types that crave hydration, the Aqua Gel Activator is lightweight and formulated with hyaluronic acid and IonPlex®. Our formula ensures effective microcurrent delivery and skin-balancing hydration, and you can experience hydration that leaves skin feeling smoother and softer for up to 24 hours.
Silk Crème Activator: We recommend our Silk Crème Activator for those searching for deep hydration and anti-aging benefits. Like our Aqua Gel, our Silk Crème contains hyaluronic acid and IonPlex® for deep hydration. It also includes 8 Phyto-Actives, nourishing skin ingredients to help increase skin firmness and reveal a brighter complexion without exfoliation or using products that can cause redness and irritation.
Peptides
The collagen in your skin is a protein comprising amino acids that form peptide chains. Supplementing peptides in a hydrating serum can help support the skin’s collagen production and maintain overall hydration levels.
Antioxidants
In addition to these ingredients, using an antioxidant serum that contains essentials like vitamin C and vitamin E can help protect your skin barrier and strengthen it by reducing oxidative damage from environmental stressors, thus helping to prevent moisture loss and improving skin hydration levels.
What Are the Benefits of IonPlex®?
IonPlex® is a precise blend of ions (charged mineral particles) and minerals from glacial water that conduct the microcurrent while helping promote cell health and hydration. These ions work with the current of our NuFACE Devices to help deliver microcurrent through the skin's surface to deeper layers below, even reaching the facial muscles to help tone, lift, and contour.
By combining skin-active, gold-standard ingredients with the essential minerals in IonPlex®, we can target skin hydration in a new way. Using our activator conducive gels and NuFACE Devices, we can ensure deeper, lasting hydration and firmer, brighter skin. In addition, IonPlex® formulas are FDA-cleared and deliver benefits that nourish, hydrate, and restore skin long after your microcurrent treatment is completed.
Sources:
Why does skin wrinkle with age? What is the best way to slow or prevent this process? | Scientific American
Elastin: Structure, Function, Skin Care & Supplements | Cleveland Clinic
Hyaluronic acid: A key molecule in skin aging | PMC
