Have you ever had any experience with dehydrated skin?
Dehydrated skin is quite different from having dry skin. When skin is dehydrated, it is usually irritated to the point where the barrier function of your skin is compromised and moisture escapes. When this happens, your skin feels dry and rough to the touch, even scaly. Irritated skin usually comes with redness, itchiness and sometimes, when you put some skincare products on it, you may even feel some burning sensation.
My skin has always been oily so it came as a big surprise to me that I suddenly suffered from dehydrated skin. I know what could cause skin to become dehydrated – repeated contacts with harsh ingredients (such as alcohol), exposure to harsh climates, allergy, eczema and stress, to name a few – but I never actually singled out what could be the exact reason why. Apart from moving to a new place, I almost didn’t change any of routines, so I had no idea why I came from having relatively problem-free skin to very problematic skin!
Anyway, it was about 2 months ago that I started to notice the changes. Every morning, after I finished washing my face with my regular face cleanser, my skin started to look red and it felt slightly itchy. I’ve always had problems with some mild redness, so I ignored it and continued with my moisturizer, which usually soothed my skin and tone down the redness. But when I did apply my moisturizer, I felt some burning sensation and the redness did not disappear. As the day progressed, my skin kept on feeling drier and drier and became very very itchy! When I touched my skin, I could feel how rough and scaly it was, which really scared me. I tried putting on some “safe” cream during the day (product containing no alcohol or fragrance) thinking it could provide extra hydration, but it irritated my skin even more. I also tried putting on some thick night cream and hydrating mask, but it didn’t help. The next morning, I still woke up with dehydrated and hyper sensitive skin.
This is how my skin looked like during one of the worst days I had (no makeup)
