How to look after damaged skin during the winter
With its misty mornings, golden pink skies, and frosty scenes, Winter is undeniably beautiful. However, from aggravating long-term skin issues to introducing new challenges, winter can be the toughest time of year for skin care!
The air outside is much dryer than the summer months, and indoors the humidity is reduced drastically by heating and radiators. Additionally, our winter diets tend to shift towards heavier, often sugary foods, especially during festive periods like Christmas. Combined with the common winter cold, these factors can lead to your skin looking lacklustre and feeling less resilient. 😔
But the good news is, winter is also the season for fresh starts and rejuvenation! There is a lot you can do yourself at home to pamper your skin back to health with the tender loving care it deserves – and we’re here to tell you how.
Here are some of the warning signs your skin is struggling, and how you can combat them:
The most common sign: sensitivity
You might be surprised to learn that your skin should never be sensitive. It is often a sign of an underlying issue, specifically problems with the hydrolipidic barrier (your skin barrier). This barrier plays a crucial role in regulating skin hydration, retaining moisture, and protecting against harmful elements.
If applying your usual creams and lotions causes your skin to sting, turn red, or become puffy, it's a signal that your skin barrier is damaged, and you need to gently nourish your skin back to health.
To help rebuild and protect your skin barrier, we recommend incorporating products rich in ceramides, niacinamide and antioxidants into your skincare routine. We particularly recommend a high strength topical Vitamin - having tried numerous brands our favourite is made by Alumier because the formulation is totally unique!
It’s a good idea to reduce the use of acid based exfoliants or potent actives that can further irritate sensitive skin. And keep your hydration levels up by drinking about 2 litres of water a day, and include omega-rich superfoods like salmon and avocados in your diet to support skin health.
If you're finding these changes aren't enough, we encourage you to book a skin analysis with us. We will meticulously assess each layer of your skin, and advise a very gentle course of treatments and the right products to get your skin back to its dewy, plump health in no time!
Winter skin sensitivity - Caroline’s damaged skin barrier
Some of you may recognise Caroline, one of our long term clients whose Acne we treated. Caroline also suffers with sensitive skin worsened by stress, hormones, and the winter. Caroline’s skin barrier was severely damaged, resulting in redness, rashes, and lots of sensitivity. We started off very gently with a topical product - oral Omega 3, and a topical prescription Oat based cream. This soothed the sensitivity enough for us to treat Caroline with a deep hydrating treatment and add the Alumier Aqua Mask to her skincare routine, and we’re delighted to say her skin is back to its lovely glowing health!
Redness and Veins
Rosacea is a condition with visible central redness and broken veins – often focussed on the cheeks and nose. It’s a really difficult condition for individuals to manage at any time, but Winter's rapid temperature changes and dry air can worsen these symptoms.
If you’ve noticed your Rosacea getting worse, it's crucial to incorporate skincare products with anti-inflammatory agents and antioxidants as these help stabilise blood vessels and reduce the amount of damage to your skin.
What can you do at home? We suggest building up actives gently giving the time for the skin to acclimatise before moving on. As well as Vitamin C, prescription items like azelaic acid and salicylic acid can be transformative when sensitively introduced. These are formulated to soothe inflammation and strengthen your skin. Eating a wide and varied whole food diet can help supported by probiotics when required.
In our clinic, the ideal treatments for Rosacea during winter are chemical peels and laser therapy. Less sunlight in winter means the healing process is much easier, so we can intensify these treatments, meaning we can quickly achieve amazing results and get control of your flare ups. Reach out to us today if you’d like more advice.
Dry, Flaky or Cracked Skin
Dry, flaky, or cracked skin often indicates underlying issues that have been made much worse by the winter conditions, such as hormonal imbalances, medication side effects, inadequate water intake, or vitamin deficiencies. When skin dries to the point of cracking, it means the protective barrier is damaged, which can make infection more likely. Take these immediate steps to begin your skins recovery:
Hydration: Make sure you're drinking at least the recommended daily water intake, and to counteract dry indoor air, you can place water pots on radiators to replace some or the lost moisture in the air.
Skincare Products: Your skin needs to start generating its own hyaluronic acid and reduce water loss across its area. This will keep the skin hydrated. There are targeted serums and retinoids that are designed to do just that, but if your skin is really suffering, these may cause irritation or soreness. It’s important to have a chat with us first before adding anything new into your routine.
Professional Treatments: For really severe dryness, we can help your skin with gentle, energy-based treatments and injectable skin boosters (we call them “injectable moisture!” for deep hydration and immediate relief!)
The good news is: Winter is the ideal season for skin transformation!
Winter is the perfect time to start working on transforming your skin. If you have specific skin goals or want to tackle longstanding skin issues, we’ll create a targeted treatment plan for you. And, the lower levels of UV light in winter allow us to really boost the intensity of the most effective treatments like laser and peeling, which require careful recovery management.
It’s also a great time to manage pigmentation. It might seem less noticeable in winter due to reduced sunlight, but underlying damage lingers and often looks much worse by the time summer comes around. Winter is the optimal time to treat it, so that your skin looks its best by summer!
What can you do next?
Need help getting your skins health back on track? Book your consultation today, and we’ll have you looking and feeling great in no time. We’ve recently invested in an amazing new piece of technology – the Opatra Skin Analyser, which will form part of every skin consultation. It provides an in-depth analysis of each skin layer, from which we create tailored treatment plans that will deliver amazing results for your skin. 💝 As a special winter offer, book a skin consultation in January or February and receive a £150 discount on any new skincare plan! 💝
Or, if you just fancy treating yourself, book in for one of our seasonal skincare packages that we’ve carefully curated, and enjoy a luxurious pamper in our lovely salon. The results will leave you glowing!
We hope this helps, and we really look forward to seeing you in the salon soon!
Sharron and Mica x