My skin is always dry, especially my hands, and especially in the winter. Every winter, my hands get super red and flaky and sometimes painful. I’ve tried a million kinds of moisturizers and several different hand soaps (always antibacterial, which I realize is hard on skin, but I’m a germophobe also), but nothing has done much good. Does anyone have a recommendation?
get a pet sheep.
if you use a liquid antibacterial get one with grease in it.
Bag Balm and Corn Huskers Lotion are moisturizers that some people swear by that are a little different from normal lotion. I would put on Bag Balm and then some thin cotton gloves before bed for a few nights.
Buy a humidifier. I’ve always had the same problem and it’s helped a lot. Also, I know this is weird and maybe only in my head, but instead of creams and lotions, I’ve always had much better results by rubbing plain chapstick on my hands. Blot away the excess, of course. It keeps my hands pretty comfortable for a while and also stays on better through hand washings.
Wear gloves whenever you go outdoors, even for a short while or when driving your car. This advice was given to me by a pharmacist when I asked about my thumbs splitting.
Eucerin works wonders for me. Also: totally agree on the advice about wearing gloves religiously when outside in the winter.
I use SpectroDerm Eczema on my hands when I get a bad outbreak. It’s the most moisturizing and long lasting lotion I’ve found.
This. even vasoline will work wonders.
Hand sanitizers which contain emollients or moisturizers (which is pretty much all of them now) can be used any time you want to clean your hands and they are not visibly dirty. Studies how they are less irritating and drying to your skin than soap and water. They may cause some transient stinging when you apply them, but they’re not drying out your skin.
These things have been such a boon to nurses. It’s not uncommon for me to need to clean my hands 50 or more times a day. Before hand sanitizers, my knuckles would bleed sometimes, they were so dry. Now I can limit my soap and water washes and yet still have good hand hygiene and soft knuckles!
Snap-On medicated hand cleaner. Contains lanolin, which is great for skin. The antibacterial agent is not hard on skin. Find a local dealer (ask an auto repair shop when theirs comes by) and you can buy a single can.
I sympathise, my skin dries and cracks like nobody’s business,
Burt’s Bees. the milk and honey hand lotion worked a treat for me and my missus when we were skiing but seeing as I only had a little bottle of it (damn you stingy American Airlines business class washbag!) we had to ration it and fight to the death for the dregs.
We use Mary Kay Balancing Moisturizer Formula 2. It works very well, is not too greasy at all, and has the added benefit of being nearly odorless (important for my wife as she has MS and one of her “MS bonuses” is a heightened sense of smell).
Vaseline works just fine. I don’t have any think cotton gloves, so if my hands get really bad, I smear them with Vaseline and then sleep with socks on my hands.
It sounds like you could be experiencing allergic contact dermatitis from triclosan, the chemical used in antibacterial soaps and other products. Try using a mild non-antibacterial hand soap and see if your skin improves. (It will get rid of the germs just as well!)
Three suggestions from someone who also has a very dry skin:
Mix equal parts of glycerine and water and apply a few drops every night
Try Hydrafresh from L’Oreal
Apply Almond Oil , it is expensive but very widely used in Asian communities
The Snap-On hand cleaner uses pcmx (parachlorometaxylenol) rather than triclosan. I’ve found it effective to where I’ll often use it rather than antibiotic ointment on a small wound. The neat thing is by using it to wash, you find hand-washing transforms from a damaging procedure to a healing one.
Thanks for all the ideas. I will definitely give many of them a try.
Is Bag Balm really that good? I’ve heard of it but never tried it.
And I had the idea that hand sanitizer was harder on skin than soap, for some reason. If that’s not the case, that should help my poor hands!
Oh yeah, and does anyone know if triamcinolone acetonide cream would help? A doctor gave me that for flaky skin on my face once and I have a bunch of it, but I don’t know what all it’s good for.
This.
The dry skins is caused by dry air due to the massive amounts of heating that goes on indoors during winter. A humidifier helps to get moisture back into the air. When I first moved here I suffered a lot and relied on one for years.
Have you tried making a point of using the moisturizers on a regular basis immediately after washing your hands? I tend to wash my hands a lot too, and I found that doing so kept my hands from drying out.
Most people do, because we equate alcohol with drying. And, honestly, dry skin *was *a problem with the first generation of hand sanitizers, which were essentially rubbing alcohol made into a gel form. But they’ve come up with all these great moisturizers and emollients built in now, and they’re no longer damaging to skin.
The last hospital I worked at put signs up all over with the source information for the studies which showed hand sanitizer to be better for skin health, because so many nurses refused to believe their hands would feel better, not worse, if they used the hand sanitizer instead of soap and water! 