For me, skincare has always been a sensitive issue. From a very young age, I knew that I had a ‘bad skin’ because it felt and looked different. It was far from being glowy, moisturized and/or attractive.
Thankfully, I didn’t allow it to deter me so much. As much as I was affected by it, I was mostly indifferent. I figured that I would eventually grow older and have the means to ‘fix’ my skin.
My skin is characterized by such uniqueness that I can identify it in my sleep. It is
- Generally dry
- Dehydrated (which I discovered recently)
- Ashy (even worse during the winter)
- Scarred (proof of my clumsiness over the years)
- With a dose of Keratosis Pilaris (mostly over my thighs and legs; a condition I also discovered recently).
Now, as you have figured this is probably not normal and I should have begun some sort of treatment to get my skin back to a ‘normal’ spectrum. Well, I like to think that at various points, I tried to treat my skin but went about it wrongly.
So, here are the various phases of treatment my skin has undergone:
Phase 1
Growing up, my mum was mostly clueless about skincare generally so she always just tossed me some petroleum gelly to deal with my dryness. Yes, she was very aware that my skin was dry but didn’t know that it needed to be specially treated. Well, I tried to blame her for a while for allowing my skin to become what it currently was but then I stopped. There was really no use. So during this phase which went well into my teenagehood, I tried all sorts of body creams and lotions but they all left my skin back to square one: dry and dehydrated.
Phase 2
As I got older, I discovered my interest in organic skincare. For a moment, I thought it was gonna be my holy grail. I mean you can’t possibly go wrong with skincare from nature. So for the past few years, I poured all my energy into whipping all kinds of body butter with Shea butter as a base. I used it back to back year in year out with the hope that someday, my skin will revert back to normal. But unfortunately, it wasn’t so. The only thing that my body butter did was prevent my skin from looking ashy. As there was an absence of moisture content, it eventually still left my skin dry and dehydrated. Again, back to square one. If I had known, I would have also given private label CBD skin care products a try before completely abandoning this phase. I probably would have gotten some results.
Phase 3
I moved to Manchester, England last winter and I finally saw my skin in the worst possible state. Yeah, I was literally a fish with scales. I mean, I came in a rush during the winter with a jar of my body butter with the intention of exploring all sorts of moisturisers and hydrators until I found my holy grail. Well, as soon as I landed, I found my way to Boots to get a decent moisturizer with Hylalouric Acid and dumped my body butter for good. (I eventually used it as a sealant on top of my lotion briefly). I bought a bottle of Neutrogena Hydroboost Body Lotion. Like every other drugstore lotion on the market, it was decent enough. But I knew I had to get a replacement soon because it still left my skin slightly dry and dehydrated. It was almost like my skin was in dire need of moisture so it sucked every single drop it came across.
The Current State Of My Dry Dehydrated Skin
About a month or so thereabout, I talked about my skincare troubles on my Instagram and got feedback from someone that went to a dermatologist to try products with Urea. Yep! As you might have guessed I went to get myself a bottle of Eucerin Extra Dry Intensive Lotion with 10% Urea and I have been using it since then. In a subsequent post, I’ll write about my first impressions of the product but can I just said that the Keratosis Pilaris/Strawberry Legs on my thighs are clearing up!
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