Moisturizers

Moisturizers 
How important are they?

Moisturizers are basically made up of oil in water. Moisturizers lubricate the skin making it feel soft and smooth. They are generally made up of large molecules so they remain on the surface of the skin and help prevent water from leaving the skin.  In a sense they are protecting your skin…keeping things from coming in and going out. 

Believe it or not, moisturizers do very little in preventing wrinkles and aging. Your grandmother that gobbed on her night cream and had beautiful skin really had beautiful skin from genetics and sun protection not the night cream.  Moisturizers plump up your skin making wrinkles appear smoother. The only way a moisturizer helps with aging is if it has sunscreen or  active ingredients like Retin A.

The moisturizers that are medical grade should only be found in doctor’s office. The expensive, fancy “anti-aging“ creams found at cosmetic counters have very little effect because they do not have any medical strength ingredients.  Also, products claiming to have “collagen and will build more collagen” make me crazy! Collagen is too big of a molecule to get through the epidermal skin layer to the dermis and the dermis is where collagen lives.

Another eye opener is, not everyone needs to moisturize.  If you are not dry, then you don’t need to moisturize. It is as basic as that.  Oily skin doesn’t need more oil.  Climates and age do affect skin’s moisture so the need to moisturize depends on the person and environment.

The moisturizers that I most recommend found in a drugstore are:  Cetaphil, CeraVe, and Moisturel.  Some I carry at Surface Clinical are: Elta MD’s Daily Moisture with SPF 40, Skin Medica’s Ultra Sheer, Rejuvenize, and Dermal Repair, and Neocutis and Vivite have several options.

Hope this helps,

Liz