subject: Moisture And Hydration [print this page] When moisture content of skin remains at 15 to 20 percent, skin is as supple as baby's skin. When moisture content decreases to 10 percent or lower, skin is dry and flaky and wrinkles may be formed. Sometimes, you see words like moisturizing or hydrating in skincare product description. These two words seem to be interchangeable; in fact, they have different meaning to your skin!
While the terms moisturizing and hydrating look similar to most consumers, there lays a great difference. When you apply moisturizing cream, the cream forms a protective layer to lock moisture to your skin, which is known as moisturizing. When you skin is dry (there is no moisture to lock up), you need to replenish moisture to your skin and this is known as hydrating. Therefore, it is important to hydrate your skin first before any moisturizing procedures.
Moisture is one of the most important substances to keep our skin supple and radiant. Baby's skin may contain doubled the amount of moisture of a woman's skin, so that is why baby's skin looks supple all the time. From the age of 25 onwards, moisture level decreases significantly for a woman's skin due to the loss of collagen and aging problem. Without proper hydrating procedures, moisturizing cream alone may do little help.
While you may find a lot of expensive hydrating creams or hydrating treatments available, they can be expensive and yet ineffective. This is because skin cells need moisture internally instead of externally. To replenish moisture internally, the best and cheapest way is drinking water. Water is the real need of our skin cells and without a proper level of water supply, those hydrating creams and treatments may not be effective!
How often do you drink water? Most people answer that they drink water when they feel thirsty. In fact, thirsty is a signal for extremely low water level in your body. That means, you should drink water before your moisture level is too low or even when you are not thirsty. In addition, do not drink small amount of water but at least 100ml of water every time. This is because the small amount of water is not able to replenish moisture to your body but only reduce your feeling of thirsty according to doctors.
While you should drink water regularly during a day, there are some special times during the day that you should drink water. Water should be drunk when you get up because plenty of water has been lost during your sleep. The other important time is before you go to sleep. You should supply your body with water in order to dilute the high blood concentration.
