Choosing a Moisturizer for the Winter

Today, I’m going to talk about moisturizers for dry winter skin because moisturizers are such an important part of both preventing and treating dry skin. Certainly, in the wintertime, your moisturizer is going to be a little bit heavier or a little bit richer than it was in the spring or summer. Creams tend to be heavier than lotions although lotions, of course, spread more easily. And in the wintertime, it’s OK to have a little bit of oil in your moisturizer as long as it’s not for a part of your body that’s prone to breaking out with acne like your face or upper chest or back. Let’s look at some ingredients in these three different types of moisturizer by Eucerin. The first is a cream, which is the heaviest, and this is their original moisturizing cream and, you may know that when you read ingredients on skin care products, they’re listed in order of decreasing concentration so the first ingredient is the one that’s there in the greatest quantity. The first ingredient here is water, the second is petrolatum which is a fancy name for petroleum jelly which is essentially like Vaseline, and the third one is mineral oil; that’s why this is so thick and viscous and heavy. In their original moisturizing lotion, the first ingredient is water and the second one is mineral oil. There’s no petroleum jelly, and then it goes on to the other ingredients. And then they have a lighter lotion which they indicate is lighter on the label by saying “light feeling, absorbs quickly.” The ingredients here are, first is water, and the second one is sunflower oil, and you don’t get down to petrolatum until the third or fourth ingredient. There are other important ingredients to look for in moisturziers, especially in the wintertime: aloe vera, ceramides, dimethicone, hyaluronic acid, glycerin, Shea butter and silicone are all very good ingredients for moisturizers. But the most important thing to tell you about your moisturizers in the wintertime, make sure you re-apply them frequently in order to get the most benefit from your moisturizer.