They say, you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but the skin’s outermost layer can reveal a lot about your skin’s health. The stratum corneum or the skin barrier is the key to maintaining optimal skin health and damage to this layer can lead to a host of problems. If you’ve ever faced dryness, flakiness, itching or redness, chances are you have damaged your skin barrier.
But how does the skin barrier work and how can you protect it in the future to prevent further skin damage? Let’s dig deeper.
Understanding Your Skin Barrier
The skin barrier is the protective covering on the epidermis (the outermost layer of your skin), also known as the stratum corneum, that serves as a barrier between the layers underneath and the environment. It protects your skin and your body against multiple stressors you face on a daily basis such as bacteria, viruses, fungi, pollution, dust, ultraviolet radiation, and more.
If the skin barrier malfunctions, gets damaged, or doesn’t work as it should, the deeper layers of your skin get exposed to these environmental stressors. This can hamper your skin’s ability to repair itself, exposing you to a plethora of infections. It can also cause your skin to lose moisture more quickly, leading to dehydration and dryness. Transepidermal water loss is very common in those with a damaged skin barrier.
Damaged skin barrier leads to skin dryness
The skin’s natural moisture content is what’s responsible for maintaining its suppleness and elasticity. It ensures that the production of fatty acids and sphingolipids within the skin continues as normal. However, when the skin barrier is damaged, the skin tends to lose its moisture content faster, thus affecting the natural functioning of the skin.
Dryness or dry skin is often a direct result of an impaired skin barrier. And restoring it can help balance out skin dryness.
Enhancing the Skin Barrier's Strength
Repairing the skin barrier is a multifaceted process — one that requires changing one’s environment as well as the skincare routine. You ideally want to avoid harsh sun exposure, too many pollutants, and exposing your skin to extreme temperatures when you’re in the process of restoring and healing your skin barrier.
In addition to this, you need to opt for clinically proven skin care products that have been clinically proven to help with skin barrier repair.
Prolipids technology helps catalyze the skin to generate the right ceramides — lipids that make up 30-40% of the skin barrier — needed to replenish itself and maintain its texture and elasticity. It aids skin barrier repair. Similarly, the Hymagic ™ 4D technology uses four different molecular weights of sodium hyaluronate along with hyaluronic acid, pentavitin, and provitamin-B5 to provide deep hydration to the skin, helping it regulate its own processes. It can increase hydration by up to 155% within one hour and reduce transdermal water loss by up to 32%.
Take Steps to Protect Your Skin Barrier
The skin barrier is perhaps the most important component of protecting and restoring your skin and keeping it safe should be a top priority, especially in those with dry skin. For this make sure you opt for clinically proven solutions and expert-backed skincare products such as Hymagic ™ 4D to restore your skin barrier.
