Usually, Christmas and new year occasions fall on chilly winter, where the extreme drop in temperature makes your skin dull and dry. Along with that, parties add on to your skin woes. The shopping stress, late-night outings, consuming alcohol in excess , irregular sleep cycles, stressed party schedules, and many other things which you don’t even realize have a greater impact on your skin health.

How parties harm your skin?

First, you need to be aware of some common situations and activities that lead to skin disaster, which you fail to recognize.

Alcohol and sugary cocktails/mocktails

It is a well-known fact that alcohol dehydrates your body. Excess and repetitive binging leads to dehydration and halt in the production of new skin cells in your body. When your body gets dehydrated, vital organs use up all the other sources of moisture, mainly skin. Skin becomes dry, parched, irritated, and blotchy.

Sugary cocktails or mocktails also pose a risk to your skin as sugar cause inflammation in your body leading to breaking down of vital hormones called collagen. Collagen helps in maintaining your skin elasticity and strength. Lack of these hormones leads to dull skin and wrinkle formation.

Stress

When you plan a big party for your family or friends, you come under extremely stressful situations in organizing them. A release of stress hormones called cortisol affects your entire body by hampering its blood flow, collagen production, and decreasing the ability of the skin to repair itself. This leads to skin fatigue and poses the risk of developing premature skin aging.

Makeup

It’s common to have makeup when you got to parties, but if you sleep with your makeup, you are punishing your skin. It’s often seen that the majority of people who drink overnight tend to sleep without getting freshened up. Your makeup attracts bacteria that clog your skin pores, causing infections. This leads to increased sensitivity of your skin, speeding up the aging process, the formation of fine lines and wrinkles.

How to overcome these damages?

Well, now you know how you are harming your skin unknowingly. Its better you need to take remedial measures against this.

Moisturize

Winter weather imparts less moisture in your surrounding environment, which leads to less moisture absorption and more evaporation of it from the skin surface. Cold weather also narrows down your blood vessels, which affect the oil and sweat glands on the skin. This takes away the natural protection of your skin, making it vulnerable.

Thus moisturizing is important in winters. Make sure you are using thickened ones and avoid the light ones that you use in summers. Regular moisturizing also helps your skin to get the necessary hydration that is lost due to dehydration.

Avoid hot showers

Everybody loves to have a hot water bath in chilly winters, but bad news for you, it must be stopped. Hot showers rip off the essential cells in your skin, known as keratinocytes. Keratinocytes protect your skin from the outer environment and enhance the ability of your skin to moisturize. Take a bath with lukewarm water along with mild soaps.

Taking a bath with your regular soap along with hot water imparts more damage to your skin. It makes it more sensitive, making it prone to flaking and dehydration. Lukewarm water baths must not exceed 10mins. After that, pat dry your skin, then apply the moisturizer immediately. After a warm bath, the pores of your skin are still open, which will constrict after a few minutes, so it’s important you moisturize your skin immediately for better absorption.

Stay hydrated

Winters often make you less thirsty and encourages drinking hot drinks such as coffee, tea, etc, in large amounts. This lessens your water intake, which can cause dehydration. Water must be consumed at certain intervals throughout the day to keep you hydrated. Water improves the overall functioning of your body. It supports your skin structures for efficiently carrying the collagen. It also detoxifies your skin, which is important to make your skin protected from any internal harms.

Apart from this, it also compensates for the loss of water caused due to excessive alcohol consumption.

Avoid long term exposure to the sun

Winters encourage us to find warmth, and the natural way to stay in warmth is sitting in sunlight during the daytime. The intensity of the UV rays is the same as that during the summers. Prolonged exposure poses a risk of damage to your skin, and also, if you reside in snowy regions, there is more exposure of UV rays to you than in normal areas. Snow reflects back UV rays at a greater intensity than land and water. It is important you spend less time outside.

Vitamin C

Fatigue, dullness, and dryness of the skin can be overcome by the application of vitamin C. It is also an antioxidant that helps your skin from free radical damage, sunburns, and helps in the production of collagen. This helps in fighting off the damages caused due to stress.

Some foods that are rich in vitamin C are broccoli, cauliflower, kale, lemon, cantaloupe, orange juice, red, green or yellow peppers, papaya, tomatoes, and strawberries.

It is important you enjoy your Christmas and New Year holidays with your friends and families. But enjoying as well as taking care of your skin health also holds vital importance.

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