Winter can make dry skin especially irritating. The December issue of Mayo Clinic Health Letter offers tips to relieve winter itch.

Soak in the tub: Keep the water lukewarm. The temperature shouldn’t be above 90 F. Adding bath oil to the water may help retain and replenish the oil in your skin.

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It starts around November. Winds pick up, temperatures creep down. Furnaces kick on making the inside of our homes crackle with dry air.

That’s when the itching begins. Some people live with dry, scratchy skin all winter, until spring when the furnace clicks off. For others, it’s a year-round penance of living in a desert.

“Dry skin is worse in winter. Here, (there’s) no humidity,” said Dr. Julia Ai of Bella Dermatology in Sparks. “It’s worse in winter here because homes have dry heat.”

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You may already have a moisturizer that works well for you during the spring and summer, but your skin care routine should change with the weather. For the winter, it’s better for you to use an oil-based, ointment moisturizer rather than a water-based one. The oil creates a protective layer on the skin which will retain more moisture than lotions or creams.
However, do be careful when choosing oil-based moisturizers as some of these may not be appropriate for your face. Shea or butter oil, for instance, may be great for the rest of your body but not for your face because they clog up our pores. When choosing a facial moisturizer, look for one that contains oils that are non-comodogenic, such as mineral oil, avocado oil, or almond oil.

During winter, you’ll probably notice that your skin is dry and flaking at certain parts of your body. This is your body reacting naturally to the skin cells that died, but don’t worry – the ugly flaking can be controlled through exfoliation. Exfoliating your skin regularly not only washes away dead skin cells; it also promotes the growth of a new layer of skin. Brush your skin with a body brush to remove flaky skin before getting in the shower. The best way to scrub your skin is when it’s dry; apply the scrub to your dry skin before turning on the water. For best results, massage your skin with the scrub for five minutes.

Although this is an excellent way to combat dry skin, you should only exfoliate in moderation; if you do this twice a week, it may lead to skin irritation, depending on how sensitive your skin is.

Here are some random winter skin care tips that can be helpful to you:

• Even if the sun is hiding on winter season, you must still apply sunscreen daily. It must be a part of your routine to apply them all throughout the year.
• Do not lick your lips all the time because this causes our lips to be chapped. Better bring a small lip balm with you wherever you go so you can apply it on your lips anytime.
• Drink plenty of water. Intake of at least 7-8 glasses of water a day is healthy.
• Exfoliate and Moisturize to keep the moisture of the skin.

I know a lot of people who don’t really like the idea of exfoliation, but did you know that exfloliating every week helps your skin in getting rid of possible build up of dead skin cells? Also, it helps in exposing the fresher layer of your skin. You still have to be careful in choosing facial exfoliants though. Use only the gentle ones and avoid products with very harsh chemicals on it. If you undergo exfoliation from time to time, you will observe that the fresh layers of the skin will be absorbing the moisturizers that you put on your skin every day.

As far as skin problems are concerned, we have technology to thank a lot. In the olden days, we have to wait for curing time or even rely heavily on medication to make sure our skin problems would be cured.

Today, thanks to laser technology, problems such as warts can be immediately addressed and cured. All it takes is a visit to a skin specialist or dermatologist and you are sure to be accommodated and treated if you so choose. But along with technology comes a price so be prepared for the cost that comes with it. You never know what is really wrong until they check you out.

You have to hand it to some people who pay much attention to their skin. A lot of them can be pretty much deceiving. We see a lot of them today such as actors and actresses. One good actress who has deceived many is Catherine Zeta-Jones. She is practically in the prime of her life and yet she looks as if she is still a lady out of college.

Proper skin care comes in all sorts and sizes. They follow a certain nutritional diet and apply various creams normally of herbal origins. Specialists can guide you but the hard part is trying to follow their instructions. So with that in mind, you just have to take your hats off to the people who have strictly dedicated themselves to looking beautiful and young.

We all know the importance of hygiene and this includes proper washing of hands before we start spreading it all over our skin. We cannot avoid the fact that we may be carrying contaminated viruses from touching anything we see along the way. But while this cannot be avoided, we can always use the proper means of avoiding this problem from getting out of hand by a simple wash of hands using soap and water.

It may sound simple but the frequency to which we do it is important. Not all people may do it as often. It would be best to do so especially if we find ourselves touching various things.

Recent polls have shown that when it comes to acne treatment not many people know exactly how to deal with it, the most common reaction for those who suffer of this condition is to keep touching the affected area in order to burst the zits, this is it nervous reaction which can get chronic without the person even knowing. The problem with people who keep touching the affected areas is that by touching them they think the problem is going to go away but in fact, it gets worse.

Current diverse peoples with dirty hands and fingernails will only help propagate such infections and irritate the already affected area, even if a person’s hands seems to be clean there are several types of bacteria that a person can carry just because he or she touched an object that might have had such microorganisms.