Welcome to our first blog post in a series about the often misunderstood stratum corneum, the outermost layer of your skin! This layer is crucial because it’s where all your skincare products work their magic. The stratum corneum is like a brick wall for your skin, with hard, flat skin cells as the bricks and naturally occurring lipids as the mortar. This sturdy barrier protects your skin by keeping moisture in and shielding against environmental damage. Today, we'll explore the role of the base ingredients that make up a moisturizer—emollients, humectants, and occlusives—and how they help keep your skin healthy and glowing. Let's dive in!
Emollients: The Smooth Operators
Think of emollients as the softeners of the skincare world. Like a Zamboni smooths an ice hockey rink, emollients fill in the tiny gaps between the cells on the surface of your skin, making it feel silky and smooth. Emollients work by spreading evenly across the skin’s surface, creating a smooth layer that helps reduce roughness and flakiness. This not only makes your skin look and feel better but also helps to protect the skin barrier, your Stratum Corneum.
Why Are Emollients Beneficial?
Emollients help maintain the skin's natural barrier, making it more resilient to environmental stress.They give your skin an immediate boost in smoothness and softness, thus improving your skin’s texture. Depending on the climate you are in, the Stratum Corneum can often quickly lose moisture. Emollients replenish the lipids that your skin naturally produces to maintain its barrier function. These lipids can get depleted due to environmental stress, leaving gaps between skin cells. By filling in these gaps, emollients help keep your skin smooth, hydrated, and protected from external damage.
Humectants: The Hydration Heroes
Humectants are your skin’s hydration superheroes! They attract and retain moisture as the skin pulls water from the environment or from the deeper layers of your skin. This process leads to increased hydration levels. Increased hydration levels are essential for maintaining a youthful appearance. Well-hydrated skin is plumper and more elastic, which helps to reduce the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles.
Why Are Humectants Beneficial?
Humectants give your skin a hydration boost. Well hydrated skin is plumper and more elastic, which helps to reduce the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles, making your skin look firmer and more youthful. By keeping your skin hydrated, humectants contribute to a smoother, more radiant, looking complexion, enhancing your overall beauty, and fighting the signs of aging.
Occlusives: The Protective Shields
Occlusives are like the bodyguards for your skin. They form a barrier on the surface to lock in moisture and protect against environmental aggressors. Occlusives create a physical barrier that reduces water loss from the skin.
Why Are Occlusives Beneficial?
Occlusives are fantastic for sealing in moisture. They create a protective layer on the skin’s surface, helping the Stratum Corneum by shielding the skin’s barrier from the effects of climate and environmental damage. This keeps your skin hydrated, smooth, and resilient!
Climate and the Stratum Corneum: Tailoring Your Skincare Routine
The climate you live in has a big impact on your skin. In fact climate’s biggest impact is its ability to disrupt the balance of the skin’s protective barrier, the Stratum Corneum.
Adapting Your Moisturizers:
By understanding how different climates impact your skin, you can choose the right type of moisturizer to enhance the barrier function of your Stratum Corneum, and protect it from the vulnerability that climate has on this protective layer. This not only will keep your skin looking great but also protect it from the effects of aging, which are influenced more by climate than by age, ethnicity, or skin type.
By understanding the roles of emollients, humectants, and occlusives you are one step closer to understanding the science of how the Stratum Corneum - your skin’s protective barrier - works. With this, you will learn to treat your skin like you treat your body; changing the outer layer to suit the weather you are in.
I recommend Pour Moi Skincare to my patients because it's the first and only skincare brand in the world that allows you to adapt your moisturizer to your local climate. Pour Moi's innovative Climate-Smart Day Creams provide the optimal daily protective moisture layer to your stratum corneum, tailored to your weather, becoming your skin's defender of youth and protector of beauty.