If your skin feels dry or is often red and irritated, the most likely culprit is a lack of hydration. The skin has a moisture barrier that locks hydration in and keeps your skin healthy.
If this barrier is damaged or you don’t know how to hydrate skin from the inside, applying expensive moisturizers won’t help.
Luckily, it’s easy to hydrate skin quickly if you follow a few simple steps. Let’s see what they are.
What Is Skin Hydration?
When we hydrate skin, we usually treat it with moisturizing products to keep it smooth, soft, and in optimal health. However, moisturizers like lotions and serums can only go that far.
Often, skin hydration is the final step in our skincare routine, right before we apply sunblock and makeup.
Yet, if we don’t learn how to hydrate skin from the inside, we’ll never get the beautiful, radiant skin we deserve.
Signs of Dehydrated Skin
Before we get into the best ways you can learn how to hydrate skin, we should consider what you need to look for to understand dehydrated skin.
If your skin is dry, you may experience a host of symptoms, including a rough texture, dullness, redness, irritation, and flakiness. Dehydrated skin is sensitive and prone to conditions like eczema and discolorations.
On the other hand, hydrated skin is supple, smooth, plump, and naturally radiant. So, how can we get there?
How To Hydrate Skin From the Inside With Enough Water
First and most importantly, the old adage of drinking water throughout the day, even when we’re not thirsty, cannot be stressed enough.
However, drinking enough water won’t necessarily hydrate the skin. Instead, it will flush out the toxins that can make our skin look dull and flaky. It also supports the body’s overall level of hydration, which helps the skin stay healthy alongside other body organs.
Try making unsweetened herbal teas and bone broth, and drink them alongside your water throughout the day. Besides hydrating you, these beverages provide antioxidant vitamins and minerals that greatly benefit the skin.
Limit Caffeine and Alcohol
Drinking water is a great solution if you want to know how to hydrate skin from the inside but stay away from coffee and alcohol, which dehydrate your body and your skin.
For great, hydrated skin, limit your caffeine consumption to one cup in the morning and replace that afternoon cup with a refreshing cup of unsweetened, caffeine-free iced tea.
Likewise, a glass of wine with dinner won’t hurt but don’t overindulge if you want beautiful, hydrated skin.
How To Hydrate Skin With the Right Moisturizer, Lotion, or Cream
The right moisturizer is the best way to hydrate skin. Nevertheless, you must find a cream, balm, serum, or lotion that fits the needs of your skin. Look into ingredients that are beneficial for skin hydration, like ceramides, hyaluronic acid, and vitamins C and E.
If you want to know how to hydrate skin the right way, first determine your skin type. Once you know if you have normal, dry, oily, or combination skin, you’ll be able to pick the right product to keep your skin hydrated.
You can also make your moisturizer from scratch to control the ingredients that go into it and achieve perfect hydration. For example, you can try a natural DIY face serum for glowing, hydrated skin with only a few ingredients.
Try a Hydrating Sleep Mask
Sleep is very important for health, and hydrating your skin while you sleep is easier than you think. Use a hydrating mask with powerful, soothing ingredients like aloe vera and plant hydrosols overnight, and you’ll wake up with smooth skin and feel like a million dollars.
You can buy hydrating masks, but it’s also easy to make our replenishing gel face mask recipe, which you can use whenever you feel your skin needs pampering to recover its healthy glow.
Don’t Smoke
Smoking ages you. It dries out your skin and encourages fine lines to pop up everywhere, but most obviously around your lips. Smoking and dehydrated skin go hand in hand, so if you need one more incentive to stop smoking, do it for your skin’s health.
Besides, when you give up smoking, your entire body will benefit, including your taste buds, which will rediscover the finer nuances of food.
How To Hydrate Skin With Enough Sleep
When we don’t sleep enough, it’s hard to try tips about how to keep skin hydrated. It’s also counterproductive because, in the absence of at least seven or eight hours of sleep each night, our bodies don’t function well, and skin hydration suffers.
Besides, according to research, quality sleep can increase your ability to recover your skin’s moisture barrier better than poor sleep. As you sleep, your skin heals and recovers from daily stressors, so use slumber to your advantage.
Use a Humidifier
Humidifiers can reduce the likelihood of dry skin in low-humidity environments. Even if you live in a humid area, it’s better to use a humidifier during the winter months when your central heating unit strips humidity from the air.
A clear sign that you need a more humid environment is if your lips chap easily. While a humidifier isn’t useful when you try to find out how to hydrate skin from the inside, it will make it easier to maintain the hydration you get from the right diet.
Don’t Dry Out Your Skin With Skincare Products
Skincare products help us keep our skin in top shape when properly applied. However, they can also become the enemy if we use the wrong products or we overuse them.
Don’t apply products that contain harsh ingredients, like high-alcohol toners, antibacterial cleansers, scented products, and exfoliating washes that can irritate sensitive skin. These ingredients can dehydrate skin and create other problems, so do your research and avoid products that are unsuitable for your skin’s needs.
How To Hydrate Skin From the Inside with Fatty Acids
What we eat is very important to how hydrated our skin is. Many diet fads recommend staying away from fat, which can dehydrate our skin and prevent our bodies from getting adequate nutrition.
You should indulge in foods rich in fatty acids, like tuna, salmon, meats, avocado, olive oil, and nuts. Besides offering natural sources of fatty acids that strengthen your skin’s natural moisture barrier, these skincare superfoods also provide you with zinc and collagen, which can speed up your skin’s repair process.
Strengthen Your Moisture Barrier With Petroleum Jelly
Sometimes, despite our best efforts, our skin still doesn’t hold enough moisture. When that happens, petroleum jelly is your best friend.
It’s affordable and does wonders to repair moisture barrier damage because it’s an occlusive, namely an agent that forms a barrier over your skin to trap the moisture within. Research has shown that it can prevent water loss by 98%. That’s what we call the big guns!
Minimize Stress
As with all things, stress can wreak havoc on our skin’s hydration because it impairs the function of our moisture barrier and delays our skin’s efforts to repair itself.
To avoid dehydrated skin, you should keep stress to a minimum. There are many ways to destress, from practicing mindfulness to going for nature walks or relaxing with a warm bath. Why not try our gorgeous DIY bath salt recipes for a lovely, relaxing soak?
Your skin will glow, and your mental wellbeing will soar with these luxurious salts rich in natural ingredients.
Switch Your Pillowcase
Your pillowcase won’t hydrate your skin, so if you’re wondering how to hydrate skin from the inside, it’s not the right answer. However, it can protect your skin, so pick a pillowcase made from a fabric that’s soft and less absorbent than cotton.
Fabrics like silk, satin, and bamboo are nonabrasive and can protect your skin’s moisture barrier while you sleep.
Final Thoughts
Keeping your skin hydrated can feel daunting. But provided you seek the advice in this post, you’ll be on track for flawless looking skin.
But did you know you can learn to make many of the products we’ve discussed in this post? Take a look at some of the DIY bath and beauty recipes you can find right here, on my blog! You’ll be whipping up lotions and face creams in no time.
I hope this post has given you something to think about today. Let me know what you find is the most effective way to keep your skin hydrated? There’s always room to learn new skincare hacks!
