Lotion isn’t working for your winter dry skin, and your social media feed is running out of ideas. What next? Let’s build a dry skin protocol with nourishing skincare, healthy foods, and intentional habits.
Winter isn’t always kind to our skin. With harsh winds, less humidity, and more time indoors, there are plenty of factors that test our skin’s integrity. Winter dry skin is so common in America (around 77% of people report it) that most of us have experienced it personally or watched a loved one desperately reapply lotion.
Often, dry skin is less of a weather problem and more of a nutrition problem. It’s your body sounding the alarm bells that it needs more vitamins, minerals, and healthy fats to keep your skin healthy. That’s why winter dry skin remedies should always include topical skincare and skin-supportive foods.
What Causes Winter Dry Skin?
While dry air and cold temps influence dry skin, they aren’t the whole story. These seasonal shifts might just expose what’s already going on beneath the surface. Often, it’s a nutrient deficiency that drives your skin health. Due to soil changes and food processing, even the healthiest people can struggle to eat enough vitamins and minerals. So, if winter dry skin is a recurring problem, it may help to run a few blood tests just to check on your nutrient levels.
Natural Remedies to Resolve Winter Dry Skin
Caring for winter dry skin needs a whole body approach. Check your diet, examine your skincare products, and remove harsh soaps from your environment.
Dry hands and feet
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Double-check your dish soap. Cleaning agents, soaps, and detergents can irritate your barrier, especially in the winter. Check your dish soap for harsh irritants, like fragrance and sulfates.
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Exfoliate, moisturize, then protect. We hate to break it to you, but lotion isn’t a dry skin strategy. You need to remove the flaky skin and then lock in moisture. Your strategy starts with gentle exfoliation on unbroken skin, then a moisturizer and protection from gloves, socks, or beeswax.
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Lock in moisture with beeswax. Seal in the moisture from your favorite tallow balm or hydrating salve with beeswax. A natural remedy, its components help restore the skin, and the waxy finish locks in moisture.
Dry face and lips
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Topical vitamin C. Since it’s an antioxidant, topical vitamin C supports skin cell function and structure. It’s a high dose of the same nutrients your skin is probably craving.
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Beeswax and tallow. Tallow face balms and beeswax lip products add moisture and a protective barrier for dry skin. Use the tallow balm first and then lock it in with beeswax.
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Gently exfoliate. Careful exfoliation is the best way to prevent dry skin in the winter months. Use a dry brush or exfoliating mask on your face.
Dry body
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Eat your skincare. Harness that holistic approach with skin-building foods. Eat hydrating fruits, sip a morning cup of bone broth, and indulge in homemade gelatin marshmallows. Focus on ancestral foods, like organ meats, that are rich in nutrients.
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Homeopathic cell salts. One way to boost your skin health is with cell salts. These are the homeopathic version of minerals, and they’re supposed to arrive exactly where your body needs them most. Use calc fluor for cracked skin that’s lost elasticity, and use silica for brittle hair and nails that accompany breakouts.
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Whole-body exfoliation. Before your dry skin gets too out of hand, build an exfoliating routine. Use a body polish, exfoliating mitt, or homemade sugar scrub to slough away dead skin, so you can moisturize fresh skin cells.
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Moisturize after your shower. Never skip this step, especially during the winter months. Use nutrient-heavy moisturizers, like tallow balm or body oil.
Natural Skincare Products for Winter Dry Skin
Try these go-go products to resolve winter dry skin.
Grass-Fed Tallow Balm
100% grass-fed tallow is nearly bioidentical to human skin. In other words, it’s a near exact match for the nutrients that build healthy skin. Use it to replenish vitamins, minerals, and fatty acids, all while hydrating dry skin with lipids. Grass-fed tallow is rich in conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), a fatty acid that’s known to act as a potent anti-inflammatory. So when you use it on dry skin, it helps repair and soothe at the same time.
Glow Serum
If you get patchy dry areas in the winter, the Glow Serum is our favorite natural remedy. Infused with jojoba oil and helichrysum oil, this serum glides beautifully under makeup and works as a multi-functional product. Plant-based oils help balance the skin barrier with moisture, and helichrysum promotes cell repair.
Body Oil
Oils have been used for centuries to prevent winter dry skin and promote a healthy glow, even in the drier months. The best time to apply body oil is right after a shower when your skin is still damp. Slather yourself in healthy oils (like jojoba and olive oil), and then use a salve or beeswax tallow balm to lock in moisture in drier areas.
Hydrating Tallow Stick
It’s the same 100% grass-fed tallow we love, but formulated for on-the-go nourishment. Keep it in your purse for quick swipes of moisture anytime, anywhere. The Hydrating Tallow Stick combines skin-supportive tallow and emu oil for a unique fatty acid profile with beeswax to lock in all the goodness.
The Bottom Line
We’ll hold your hand when we say this…
Put the lotion bottle down.
Most lotion products are filled with chemicals, hormone disruptors, and a handful of natural ingredients that are just effective enough to keep you squeezing the bottle. Instead of paying for cheap fillers, turn to ancestral skincare. It’s been tested for generations and refined for the modern human. Our great-grandparents trusted natural ingredients to replenish dry skin, and we can too.