Skin Hydration - How to Keep Your Skin Glowing and Radiant

Dry skin can make you look and feel older than your years.  Skin hydration is one of your primary goals in a careful skin regimen to guard against premature aging and wrinkles.  Home remedies for skin hydration are one option to explore.  After all, if you’re like most of us, you probably wonder if you really need to spend a small fortune on high end skin care lines just to maintain beautiful skin.  There’s no question that the cosmetics and skin care industry spends a fortune on marketing and advertising to convince you of that!  

The truth is that you can use home remedies to support your skin hydration regime, along with the use of a good quality skin moisturizer.  This complementary approach will have your skin feeling great in no time.
So how do you go about adding hydration into your daily skin care routine, and how can you understand which home remedies are worth trying?  Let’s explore this in more detail.

Home Remedies for Skin Hydration – Hydrate from the Inside Out
It’s an amazingly simple tip, but most of use completely lose track and forget to follow it: drink 8 glasses of pure water each day!  Before you disregard this as a useless tip, consider that most top models use this “trick” for beautiful skin, and swear by it.  If you don’t drink enough water, you can kiss glowing skin goodbye.  Your entire body will be deprived of necessary moisture, and it will show in you skin as dryness and a sallow complexion.  Remember to hydrate yourself from the inside out.  Purchase a water bottle and keep it with you at all times, so you can keep track of how much water you’ve consumed throughout the day.

The next thing to think about is the air that surrounds you.  If the air is dry, it can pull moisture from your skin.  Make sure you use a humidifier to counteract dry air.  If you live in an arid climate or you’re frequently exposed to an environment with dry air, such as frequent airline flights or a dry office, then consider misting your skin with pure clean water to rehydrate throughout the day. 

You can also purchase hydrating mists for this purpose.  Using a good quality skin moisturizer is also critically important, because you will need to seal the moisture into your skin so it doesn’t just evaporate into the dry air.
Other tips for good skin hydration include limiting hot baths and showers, because harsh temperatures are drying to the skin.  Also, as soon as you step out of the shower or tub, apply a skin moisturizer or body oil to seal in moisture while the skin is still damp.

Continuing with the “inside out” skin care concept, you should eat a healthy diet that includes plenty of antioxidants from fresh fruits and vegetables.  These are known to prevent the oxidization that breaks down and ages the skin.  In addition, the fluid content in fruits and vegetables is high, so this will provide your body with added moisture.

Of course, as part of your hydration plan, you’ll want to research and find products that have been specifically designed for moisturizing the skin.  Some natural ingredients that support skin hydration include avocado oil, macadamia oil, and honey.  There have also been numerous advances in medical skin care over the past few years, introducing new formulations and advanced ingredients.  A skincare formulation called Rigin™, has been shown in clinical trials to increase skin hydration by 24% in only two weeks.

You should also consider taking vitamin and nutrient supplements that are specifically designed for healthier skin.  There have been major scientific advances and breakthroughs, including the development of “nutraceuticals”.  Nutraceutical supplements are designed to support specific health goals, such as healthier skin. 

The International Journal of Cosmetic Science completed a skin supplement study and reported:  “the study shows how oral supplementation could be helpful in improving and preventing the skin dehydration.” Results of the clinical evaluation showed how the treatment was effective in “improving skin hydration and in reducing the cutaneous smoothness and roughness and the depth of furrows, and “the improvement measured exceeded 25%.” 

In conclusion, a combination of treatments, using both oral supplements and topical skin care is more effective for overall skin hydration. (Source: International Journal of Cosmetic Science Volume 27, Number 4, August 2005 , pp. 199-204(6).  Some of the important supplements to look for in supporting skin hydration include lutein, essential fatty acids (such as fish oil), and vitamins A, C, and E, and CoEnzyme Q-10.

We all covet luminous skin with a baby soft texture.  It’s more attainable now than ever before.  Fortunately, there is plenty of additional information available to help you understand how to take action and improve your own skin.  It’s easy to do a little research and learn what products will work for the best skin hydration.  You’ll have glowing, healthy skin in no time!

Best Moisturizers for Dry Skin

Finding the best moisturizers for dry skin comes down to knowing one primary thing: the product ingredients.  If you have dry skin, you know that your complexion can look more tired, sallow, and even more wrinkled than other skin types. One easy way to combat this appearance and fight premature aging is to use good face moisturizers such as those that have a few specific ingredients in the product.  Don’t get ripped off, just educate yourself before you go shopping.

Let’s start by reviewing some of the common ingredients in many face moisturizers, and what you need to look for on the label.  You should be aware that cost does not necessarily equal quality when it comes to skin care products.  So, the secret to finding the best moisturizer is not to go out and buy the most expensive product with the fanciest bottle and label, but simply to read the ingredients.
Moisturizer Ingredients to Look For
Most moisturizers will have the basic emollients and skin conditioners, and they may also contain humectants.  Humectants draw moisture into the skin, which of course is a good thing if you have dry skin. 

Some common emollients include dimethicone, vitamin E, shea butter, aloe vera, and oils.  The most common humectant is glycerin.  You definitely should expect to find one or more of these basic ingredients in a good moisturizer.  Avoid petroleum as it is greasy and really only seals the surface layer of skin, without adding much moisture.

Next, you’ll find that many modern skin care products will have the popular ingredient hyaluronic acid.  Hyaluronic acid is created as a natural substance in your body.  As we grow older, our creation of this important cell building acid slows down, and we begin to get sagging, wrinkled skin. 

When hyaluronic acid is added to a moisturizer, it attracts water, hydrates, and even plumps up the skin:  thus filling in lines and reducing wrinkles.  Hyaluronic acid also helps to maintain the elasticity of the skin and smoothes out overall skin tone.

Better moisturizers will also add antioxidants such as vitamin A, E, C, Wakame, CoQ10, and Retin-A.  Phytessence Wakame is a newer antioxidant that comes from Japanese sea kelp.  What makes it unique is that it also inhibits the activity of hyaluronidase, an enzyme that breaks down hyaluronic acid in the skin.  In other words, it can prevent the loss of hyaluronic acid, and thus can slow down aging.

The best moisturizers will also use some of the modern scientific advances in skin care research with ingredients that can actually reverse aging.  You heard that right: you can actually find skin care products that reverse damaged skin and rebuild collagen and elastin.  Instead of adding collagen from a jar to the skin surface–where it adds little value–these modern new ingredients work differently.  They are absorbed down into the skin where they actually stimulate the skin to generate new collagen and elastin on its own. 

Cynergy TK is one of the newest ingredients to offer this amazing enhancement.  As a new form of functional keratin, Cynergy TK stimulates production of new skin cells and has been proven in scientific studies to rejuvenate skin and trigger new collagen and elastin formation.
In summary, the best moisturizers for dry skin will contain one or more of the ingredients from each category:  emollients, humectants, and added ingredients to prevent wrinkles and reverse damage. To see the best skin improvement, look for facial moisturizers with antioxidants such as CoQ10 and Phytessence Wakame, and skin rejuvenation ingredients like Cynergy TK to rebuild collagen and elastin.  With this information at your fingertips, your dry skin will be glowing and hydrated within no time!