Healthy Woman: Healing Dry Skin

— -- During the winter months, people wear layers of clothes to protect their bodies from the elements, but they don't always take steps to protect their skin. Some may end up paying for this oversight: The lack of humidity in the air, combined with dry indoor heat, can lead to dry, itchy and even flaking or cracked skin.

And while a long hot shower sounds like just the thing to warm yourself up in cold weather, it might be just the wrong thing to do to your skin.

Below, Robin Ashinoff, MD, chief of dermatologic and cosmetic surgery at Hackensack University Medical Center in Hackensack, New Jersey and an associate clinical professor of dermatology at New York University, discusses how to manage common dry skin conditions and how moisturizing skin daily can usually keep skin smooth and soft.

What causes dry skin?First of all, genetic background. Certain people just have a genetic predisposition to having drier skin or even worse, what we call eczema, which causes flaking and itching. In general, very fair-skinned, light-eyed people have a tendency towards drier skin.

Certainly humidity may play a role. You may not notice that you have dry skin if you live in a place like Florida or Louisiana, whereas if you live in the Northeast, especially in the wintertime, you'll experience your predisposition to dry skin.

You can worsen any sort of predisposition by using harsh cleansers or irritants, or by washing frequently, which removes the protective barrier on our skin and increases what we call transepidermal water loss. You lose more water through the skin if you break that barrier down. For your average person, taking more than one quick shower a day in the wintertime would probably dry you out.

How can people distinguish between regular dry skin and a skin disorder? Basically, with one thing: their comfort level. If you're starting to feel uncomfortable and itchy, or you're noticing redness, you may have a skin disorder. For example, eczema, also known as atopic dermatitis, is a type of inherited dry skin condition. It can start in childhood, and usually affects the face