On 3/10/2016 7:44 AM, Mayayana wrote:
| Unsolicited piece of advice #4,387: use moisturizing creme on your skin
| to keep it from getting dry and cracking.
|

I guess one unsolicited piece of advice deserves
another.

You leg should have never got to that point. You're
not just needing moisturizing cream. You're needing to
pay attention to your body... and actually live in it.
I'm repeatedly amazed seeing how many people don't
actually feel their bodies, letting them get out of shape,
eating junk, ignoring posture... Then I turn on the
evening news and see ads for drugs to treat hearburn,
headache, constipation and sleep problems. None of those
things should happen at all under normal circumstances,
yet many people think of them as normal.

I think people vary a lot in terms of skin -- whether
theirs is sensitive or not. For what it's worth, I like to
keep the house very cool in Winter. 62 day/55 night.
It's much kinder to skin and sinuses than "room
temperature". The relative humidity is higher. It's also
conducive to wakefulness.
Occasionally in the Winter I get calves dry enough that
they itch. Then I put on safflower oil after a shower,
mixing it with the water to spread it out. I also like
the generic, 365 fragrance-free body lotion at Whole
Foods, especially for my hands. It's mainly rapeseed oil.
I have a brother who now swears by the blend of petroleum
jelly and lanolin used on cow udders, but that would be
for extreme skin damage.

If you look at moisturizing creams you'll see that most
are merely petroleum jelly with gimmicky trace additives.
A few are vegetable oil-based. The former are greasy but
protective, good for extreme outdoor exposure or badly
damaged skin. The latter are better for daily moisturizing.
The prices can go wildly high, with claims of miracle
ingredients. (If you look at unit pricing stickers in CVS
you'll see that prices go up over $2,000/gallon. Even
the most intelligent, level-headed women can be ninnies
when it comes to scams in pretty bottles.)

I go to a dermatologist who pushes Amlactin, an
absurdly overpriced blend of petroleum jelly and lactic
acid. It's all snake oil. But I'm guessing the Amlactin
people have some kind of inside connection with
dermatologists.

You should exepect to pay a bit more for vegetable
oil-based products. The ingredients are higher quality.
But there's also a lot of snake oil in that market. In
that case it's New Age snake oil and "magic from the
East" snake oil, but it's still snake oil. The main ingredient
is just oil. I like the cocoa butter or rapeseed oil products
because they're closer to human skin oil than petroleum
jelly. The latter is greasy and hard to wash off, more
for emergency treatment than for moisturizing. As far
as I can see, the only reason to prefer creams over
plain vegetable oil is that the former seem to have
anti-oxidant preservatives. In some cases vegetable
oil can go rancid on the skin, producing a sort of bitter
smell. But lathering up with plain oil before fully drying
off after a shower is an easy, non-greasy way to
moisturize the whole body.



I found a cream that has Vit E and Tea Tree Oil in it that works well on
very dry skin. For just normal use of skin lotion I use Aveeno Stress
Relief as a 24 hour moisturizer. It works pretty well, I think.

--
Maggie