Help your skin to survive and bloom in winter

Suffering the dry skin blues when winter hits?
Here's how to stop your skin feeling like a desert in cold weather.

When you use skin care products that hydrate skin effectively with essential skin repair nutrients you give your skin the extra help that's needed in extreme conditions.

Most skin care products have no chance of deeply supporting your skin.

That's because the levels of nutrient are way too low - even nonexistent - despite what the label might imply. Instead of beautifully hydrating and supplying restorative nutrients, most skin products, and yes, including 'organic or 'natural' ones, just sit idly on top of the skin.

So whether a skin range is 'organic', 'natural' or mainstream (cheap or expensive) - the result is, that there's usually no result...apart from temporary moisturisation.

That's what we hear from new customers about their previous experiences. And we've heard the same comment from highly experienced beauty therapists in salons.

No nutrient - no result

 Simplicité products ‘feed’ skin the nutrients it needs to improve texture, tone and health. These three words were the driving force to formulate our own skin care products back in 19902 after experiencing numerous weaknesses in both organic and high end skin care ranges.

Simplicite products are formulated to contain the highest possible concentrations of as many active nutrients as is possible to cram into a jar.

So here are some of our best tips for effectively hydrating and restoring dry skin.

Beautifully hydrated skin feels and looks younger and fresher so leap into action!

Fast Help for Dry Skin - Face

For your skin's sake we hope you're already using the best ever weapon against dryness and dehydration. This is: either of the Simplicité Face Oils applied before your nutritive moisturiser.

You may already be using a pump or so of one of these in your skin routine. 

However this may not be quite enough in extreme conditions such as winter's lower temps and humidity.

The solution is simple!

Simply use more Face Oil each time you apply it (making sure to use the Toning Spray along with the oil to help it absorb into skin). 'More' can be an extra pump or even two more.

How a Nutritive Exfoliator Helps to Banish Dryness

Most people don't exfoliate enough, often because they're nervous about doing so (more on this below).

For your skin's sake though, you do need to exfoliate regularly and often. And you certainly do need to do so when you're adding more Face Oil in testing climatic conditions (especially for combination oily skin).

You always need to help your skin absorb these fine oils and extracts - in the most gentle way, of course.

This is easily achieved when you use gentle and nutritive One Step Exfoliating Cleanser every evening after cleansing.

But don't do this with most exfoliators!

Only with the nutritive skin-feeding types.

We – and probably you do too - hear and read often that ‘grainy’ exfoliators should be used only once weekly as they’re 'too harsh'. We certainly agree with this advice in regard to most of the ‘physical’ exfoliators around.

These are certainly too harsh - they’re made of crushed nut shells, or Pacific Ocean-polluting plastic beads, even, in one prominent brand’s exfoliator, crushed rock! These ingredients all damage skin, scratching and cutting it microscopically. 

But One Step Exfoliating Cleanser is different.

No Cutting or Scratching Skin

It feels grainy to use but it DOES NOT cut or scratch the skin microscopically. The exfoliating ingredients are softened cinnamon and jojoba. These are rounded with no sharp edges.

And most importantly - One Step is a nutritive exfoliator (as are all Simplicité exfoliators). It is packed with antioxidants and plant citral, concentrated, high quality plant extracts. Other exfoliators aren't.

When and How Often to Use an Exfoliator

The best advice we can give for your best skin ever is to use One Step Exfoliating Cleanser regularly and often - that means daily or at least 5-6 times weekly.

And the best time to use this - because it clears facial pores before you go to bed - is every evening after cleansing.

One Step Exfoliating Cleanser features fresh extracts of:

• THYME - calms redness, locally anti-bacterial, astringent and promotes healing.
• BIRCH LEAF - contains gentle natural cleansers and nutritive flavonoids that strengthen and firm to repair appearance of pores.
• LEMONGRASS - contributes to overall healthy appearance of skin.

Fast Help for Dry Skin - Body 

I should know that Luxurious Mandarin Body Butter is the dream product for dry, winter skin. After all, I'm the one who, about six years ago, convinced David to make this product especially for me,  especially to use in winter.

So of course it's what I should have been using as soon as winter hit this year and the temperature and humidity plummeted. For some reason I wasn’t and the skin on my arms and legs let me know about it. It started to dry out and a couple of itchy patches appeared too. That all calmed down as soon as I started rubbing on this nutritive body cream a couple of times daily.

Luxurious Mandarin Body Butter features these medicinal grade plant extracts:

• MANDARIN – firms the skin, reduces scars. Its high plant citral content means it has specific action against sun damage.
• COCOA BUTTER – softens and deeply moisturises. The very high quality extract used melts into skin at body temperature and ‘waterproofs’ it.
• JOJOBA – through its nutritive properties gives suppleness, tone and texture to skin. 

How to Banish Itchy Dry Skin - Body

Those dry itchy dry patches I mentioned are the bane of many people, in winter especially. They’re so hard not to scratch but that’s the worst thing you can do. My GP said a little 5-cent-coin sized patch on my leg was eczema and did I have a strong steroid cream to treat it with?

A definite no to the steroid cream! David told me that I must be putting fatty acids onto my skin in winter and to use the Luxurious Mandarin Body Butter at least twice daily - on the eczema spot as well as the rest of my body.

(And why wasn't I already doing that in the cold weather, seeing that he had made it for me etc etc...)

So I did that and what a relief  - immediate soothing of that awful itchiness – as long as I kept applying it regularly. I didn't one evening and I was dying to scratch again in a few hours.

I made sure to be diligent after that and in another couple of days the raised red welt had faded to almost nothing. I find that I’ve got to keep doing this regularly through winter to keep it from getting worse. Then when the weather gets warmer it disappears.

Even More Help for Dry Skin - Body

As mentioned above, the Face Oils used in combination with the nutritive Face Moisturisers give complete hydration to facial skin. You can boost hydration for your body by using exactly this process with the Simplicité Body Oils.  Every one of these hand-made nutritive oils ensures deep rehydration and maximum nutrients for a silky smooth skin.

Which one to choose? Each Body Oil helps a specific skin concern as well as working to deeply hydrate skin. So whether you wish to tone, reduce fluid or cellulite, prevent stretch marks from weight loss or during and after pregnancy or use for massage you can also use your particular Body Oil in the morning and evening under a body moisturiser for even more hydration.