3/4/2023 0 Comments Moisture barrier![]() Antioxidants-like vitamin C, E, coenzyme Q10, and fruit extracts-can support your skin's immune system and neutralize free radicals. Biotic ingredients can feed and nurture your skin's microflora, helping support the balance, calming the skin, and improving the overall health of your skin. A few to keep in mind: Aloe vera is a lightweight humectant, shea butter is a rich fatty-acid-filled butter, oat oils and extracts are ideal for sensitive skin, or squalane works well with your skin's natural oils.Īdditionally, we recommend looking for options that not only treat the moisture barrier but also tend to the other areas of the skin barrier. There are many solid ingredients out there, so just look for those you like the texture and appeal of. Look for options with a robust assortment of moisturizing botanicals and lipids to feed that lipid layer. If you forget to apply face cream or body lotion post-shower or wash, that will do a number on the barrier and contributes to transepidermal water loss.Ī well-formulated hydrator will do wonders for your skin and moisture barrier. Environmental stressors bombard the skin with free radicals and oxidative stress. Finally, things like smoking can harm the barrier. Additionally, things like consuming drying liquids (caffeine, alcohol) can contribute to internal dehydration. ![]() Not staying hydrated internally has been shown to affect the skin's dermal density. Doing this to a degree is a good thing, as it can make the skin appear vibrant and encourage cell turnover-but when you go overboard, you're removing those precious proteins and lipids that make up the outer layer of the skin. Exfoliation is the act of removing dead skin cells from the stratum corneum. Hot water can also dissolve the skin's protective oils. Much of the damage to the moisture barrier happens in the shower or wash: Sulfates and strong soaps strip the skin of its oils and damage the proteins. To get technical, this moisture barrier is called the stratum corneum-and when you look at renderings of the skin, you'll see it's the outermost layer of the epidermis. (I told you it wasn't an entirely inaccurate visual!) The proteins are things like collagen and keratin, and the lipids are your skin's natural oils and waxes (sometimes collectively called the lipid layer), such as squalene and ceramides. To go back to the brick-and-mortar analogy I alluded to in the introduction, if there was a part of the skin that resembled the brick wall, it'd be this. So what makes up this moisture barrier? A combination of proteins from dead skin cells and lipids. So keeping that moisture layer strong is essential to overall skin function. One of the ways your skin dries out is when water escapes your barrier and evaporates into the air around you-or what's called transepidermal water loss. The moisture barrier is an outer layer of skin that ensures your skin is hydrated by trapping and holding water. And to understand the moisture barrier, you need to understand all that works with it and around it. Your barrier is not just a simple brick wall: It's a living, dynamic defense system with several commingling teams and players. And just in the last couple of years, we know that it's so much more dynamic than that," says board-certified dermatologist and mbg Collective member Whitney Bowe, M.D. The bricks are dead skin cells, and the mortar is the fat. "We were taught initially that the skin barrier is this brick and mortar. In the past, we've talked about the skin barrier as something of a "brick and mortar" visual-and while this isn't entirely inaccurate, it's not the whole picture. One such part is something called the "moisture barrier." But what exactly is that, and how does it relate to the larger skin barrier? This is where it takes a bit of nuance. ![]() There are a lot of parts that go into making it function properly, and each of those parts works with the others to strengthen the skin. The skin barrier sounds like a simple concept but is actually quite complex when you get into the details.
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