Your hands need extra care!

Winter is coming, and I'm not sure about you, but my hands need more love than during other seasons. Here are some tips on how to take care of your hands WEAR GLOVES I'm not a big fan of wearing gloves, but you can spot significant changes while wearing gloves during colder days. HOUSEKEEPING? USE GLOVES! Do you do any chores in your house? If you use any chemicals like dish soap, disinfecting cleaners, bleach, etc - use gloves to protect your hands from strong substances used in dish soap and other household chemicals. There are some products with ingredients like Aloe to make dish soaps more friendly to our skin, but still, it's better to avoid using them with bare hands. IDEAL HAND WASH What kind of hand wash should you use? I don't know why, but usually, people think that our facial skincare has different needs and norms than our hands and body. Even if the skin in all areas is almost the same. Why almost? Just a quick recap of basic skin knowledge - our skin is made out of 3 layers, the outer one is called the Epidermis. The epidermis is made out of 5 different layers (starting from the deeper layers to the outer layers): stratum basale & stratum spinosum - two 'alive' layers, stratum granulosum, stratum lucidum & stratum corneum - this last one is probably the most known to you. Do we have all 5 layers on our entire body? No! Stratum lucidum appears only on the palms of our hands and on the soles of our feet. Similar to the face and body, cleansers with a pH of around 5,5 are the best for our hands. HAND SCRUB? Do you need a hand scrub? Although our hands go through lots of stuff daily, it's good to remove dead skin cells just like we do with our faces, so scrubs are amazing. I'm aware that people usually prefer enzyme and chemical scrubs - I prefer them too, but if it comes to hands I accept grainy scrubs as long as the grains are gentle & delicate. removing dead skin cells makes it easier for active ingredients to go through layers of the skin. HAND CREAM I prefer to choose delicate creams. Instead of focusing on scent, I prefer to select plain ones with good ingredients like Ceramides, Glycerin, and different plant oils. It's good to find a cream with occlusives to lock the moisture in the skin. HAND MASK I'll share with you a tiny trick, but there are hand masks sold by Korean brands which I really enjoy using - they are like sheet masks but for hands. If you don't have a hand mask, you can do a tiny trick - buy a rich, thick cream - it might be one with vitamins A + E or a moisturizing ointment. Use a thick layer of this cream and put your hands in separate plastic bags or plastic foils. Buy cotton gloves for treatments and put them on a foil or bag - if you can't find such gloves then using tiny towels works great too. Leave them on your hands for at least 15 minutes. I hope these tips are helpful :) Let me know how you take care of your hands and what's your favourite hand cream.