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elcome to Atlantic Dermatology, located in Wilmington, North Carolina. I'm Dr. Crane.
I'm a board certified dermatologist, and I'm here to talk about Dry Skin. Dry skin is a
problem which we see quite a bit of. In the winter time its worse, but you can actually
have it all year round. Now, many times the dry skin will first start on the legs and
arms and it can come up on other areas of the body. So if your having a tough time with
dry skin there are some things that you can do. Number one: Keep in mind that our skin
has oils that are naturally being manufactured and being put out onto the surface. The more
we shower, or the more we take hot showers, and the more we soap all over, the more it
strips us of our natural oils and the dryer our skin becomes. Don't use a real aggressive
soap. something like Dove soap or Dove for sensitive skin thats okay. And you don't even
have to soap all over because soap breaks down and strips us of out natural oils. So
if you just soap on the face, groin, underarms, feet and leave the other areas alone you'll
tend to do better. Go ahead and moisturize and you want to moisturize up within the first
minute or two of stepping out of the shower. You want to use a moisturizing cream, not
a lotion, but a cream. Creams are thicker than lotions. Creams are more oils and waxes
where lotions contain a lot of water. So what will happen if you put a lotion on your skin,
a lot of the water evaporates. If you put a cream on your skin, because its more oils
and waxes, its going to stay. If you're still having a tough time with dry skin after doing
all those different things, then you may want to see your dermatologist and the dermatologist
could really help. there are prescription moisturizers which have lactic acid in them
and uric acid, or uria, and those really help quite a bit. Or sometimes dry skin Eczema
will occur and thats when your dry skin is so dry that it turns into a red weepy condition,
which we call dry skin Eczema. If you have Eczema or red weepy, itchy places that start
to come up on the arms and legs.