Taking proper care of your skin is important for a wide variety of different reasons. For starters, your skin acts as a defense for your body against certain conditions. As your skin gets weakened and dries out, those defenses tend to weaken as well. If you find yourself suffering from small patches of dry skin or other ailments, there are a few key things that you’ll want to keep in mind.

What Causes Dry Skin?

A large number of different things can cause dry skin, including the temperature around you. Many people tend to get dry skin during the cold winter months of the year. For example, because the temperature outside starts to drop dramatically. To combat this, you can try to regulate the humidity in the air on the inside of your home by making sure that you’re always keeping your thermostat set to a proper temperature and also that you’re using a humidifier to keep the air inside as moist as possible.

Another thing that can cause dry skin is the type of soap that you use, especially in the shower. Some soaps tend to be harsher than others and, as a result, will quickly dry out your skin. This is one scenario in particular where people tend to suffer from small patches of dry skin on areas of the body that they wash more regularly than others.

Always pay close attention to the types of chemicals that are being used to create the soap that you’re using. Purchase a soap that is less harsh than others to try to combat dry skin all year long. Soaps that are hypoallergenic, vegan or organic are better purchases for combating this problem.

Conditions

It has also long been proven that dry skin is a side effect of not just certain types of conditions that you may be experiencing, but also the treatments for those medications. More specifically, both diabetes and a thyroid gland that is under active can both cause dry skin if you’re not careful. If you are suffering from these types of conditions and find that your skin is dry, red and itchy, you should make sure that you are supplementing a very important vitamin into your diet for the best possible results.

What Vitamin Helps Dry Skin?

If you want to go the dietary route in taking care of the dry skin condition that you find yourself in, the three main types of vitamins that you’ll want to experiment with are Vitamin A, Vitamin C and Zinc. All three of these vitamins can be found in a wide variety of different types of foods. You can also purchase supplements and other types of pills to add larger amounts of these vitamins to your body in the event that your diet alone just isn’t cutting it.

As with any type of supplement, however, you’ll always want to consult with a medical professional first before making any type of decision. A medical professional will be able to make sure that these vitamins are not going to interfere with any other type of medication that you may be taking.

+Dr.Cheryl Lee  is a dermatologist who has dedicated her career to research and treatment of skin ailments. She writes regularly at her blog cherylleemd.com