You’ve been told to apply lotion after the shower, but do you know the reason why?
I’ve got three words for you: epidermal water loss.
Dermatologists explain this phenomenon as a common occurrence after showering and bathing. What happens, after you shower is your skin loses its natural moisture barrier when the water evaporates/dries off of your skin. This in turn causes your skin to dry out, flake, and other issues such as psoriasis, rosacea, etc.
What Is Lotion?
Lotion is a water-based formula that is typically made up of other emollients such as glycerin, carrier oils, fatty alcohols (different from regular alcohols) and other moisturizing ingredients.
That being said there are different formulas that do consist of more oils, butters, and heavier moisturizers that are recommended for the drier skin types. These are under the names of body butters, body creams, even body oils to mix into lotions to make them more moisturizing.
Science behind using a lotion?
It is proven that lotion helps to not only lock the moisture into your skin, but moisturizes your skin’s natural barrier so that excessive dryness as well as epidermal water loss do not continue.
There are some studies that have shown that applying lotion daily have proven to be more effective helping the skin “anti-age” in a way. This means that applying the lotion daily has the effect to slow down the process of aging skin, but only if it is done routinely.
Same with having a skin care routine. Those that actually stuck to a routine of applying face cream daily showed signs of “younger” looking skin simply because their skin was moisturized vs. those that didn’t appeared to have dull/dry looking skin.
Of course, that being said moisturized skin does have the appearance of looking younger because it appears to look moisturized and not dried out.
Other factors can effect the way your skin looks long term is if you were a sun worshipper/and or are currently. UV rays are incredibly damaging to our skin and there is not amount of lotions or potions that can turn back time.
Having a balance diet plays a huge role on how the over all appearance of your skin looks. If you’re eating fast food every day don’t expect to have the skin of your dreams.
This means you need to be getting a healthy proportion of nuts, seeds, proteins, minerals, carbs, and fats. They will be the important factors on how your over all appearance of your skin will be now and 10 years down the road.
To conclude, should you use body lotion?
If you’re a skincare fanatic, don’t just worry about the skin on your face, your body needs TLC too!
Worse case scenario it helps relieve some skin issues you are dealing with and give your skin a hydrated glow. Depending on how much you’re willing to spend, lotions rich in vitamin E, C, or A (mainly derived from the oils formulated with it) can help improve discoloration as well as chronic dryness.
Refer to these links for more in depth explanations and sources for my information: Epidermal Water Loss , UT The Importance of Moisturizing , Osmiaskincare The Benefits Of Natural Body Oils ,