Why does my skin need different care in winter?

Warum benötigt meine Haut im Winter eine andere Pflege?

Even though winter will soon be over and a more “skin-friendly” season is approaching, we would like to briefly address the problems of the cold season in our latitudes in this blog post. Because one thing is for sure: the next winter will come in any case.

Winter stress for the skin

You’ve probably already noticed more than once that your skin – not only on your face – itches more often in winter, is more prone to blemishes or is at least generally drier. The following factors are mainly responsible for this:

– Cold temperatures and low humidity outside

– Heated indoor rooms with partly dry air
– Large temperature differences between outdoors and indoors

In general, our skin is exposed to drier air in winter than during the warmer seasons. For physical reasons, cold air can store less moisture than warm air. The fact that warm air indoors is also drier than in summer, for example, is due to the effect of heating and is often exacerbated by air ventilation units, for example. The cold also causes the blood vessels to constrict, as the skin tries to retain internal heat. This throttled blood supply prevents the skin from being adequately supplied with nutrients and oxygen.

At temperatures below 8° C, our sebaceous glands also function only to a limited extent and only little protective lipids are produced. The natural lipid film of the skin is thus damaged and the water from the skin surface evaporates even faster, causing additional moisture loss.

The large temperature differences between outdoors and indoors put additional stress on the skin.

Our skin flora is ultimately affected and thus the natural barrier function is disturbed and restricted. In addition to an unpleasant, tense and sometimes itchy feeling, this can also result in skin impurities or lead to small cracks in the skin, e.g. on the hands.

Dos and don’ts for winter skin care

Before you slather all sorts of stuff on your face to restore moisture to your skin, let’s first look at how you can address the causes:
Indoors:

Make sure that you can keep the humidity in the indoor areas where you mainly stay – especially at home and possibly in the office – between 40-50%. You can achieve this with a humidifier and with proper ventilation. Do not overheat the rooms, especially your bedroom. Your skin (including mucous membranes) and your bank account will thank you.

Cleaning the skin:
Do not use hot water for cleaning, but it may be lukewarm. Do not clean your skin too often and only with mild cleansers. For your face, you can use our Jungkraut Botanical Power Face Wash, which contains mild surfactants and inulin, a natural probiotic that regulates and maintains your skin flora. Depending on your skin, you may even cleanse your face more often with just lukewarm water and no cleanser at all. If you follow these small tips, your natural skin barrier should already be less affected and your skin should lose less moisture.

What about additional care?

Here, too, it is important to strengthen the natural skin barrier. To do this, the composition of the care products should be as similar as possible to that of our skin. Optimal is a mixture of natural fats as well as powerful actives, such as those found in our Alpine Performance Face Fluid.
Depending on the situation, this may not be enough for your skin – for example, if you are a really wild man in winter and spend a lot of time outside in the freezing cold, or if you generally suffer from very dry skin. Natural squalene, for example, is a good choice here. This is a light oil that is already naturally present in the protective layer of our skin and which you can apply pure in addition to your Face Fluid. If you are in extreme situations, such as staying for hours in sub-zero temperatures, you can also exceptionally use Vaseline to protect your skin. This forms a protective layer and thus effectively reduces the evaporation of moisture and protects the skin from drying out. However, due to its petroleum-based content, Vaseline is definitely not something we would recommend on a daily basis. For environmental as well as health reasons.

As you can see, our skin is under a lot of stress in winter, but good skin care doesn’t have to be complicated.