Maintaining healthy skin is essential, and not just for aesthetics. Your skin is the largest organ of your body, designed to protect you from external aggressors. The outermost layer of your skin acts as a shield, keeping everything inside safe.
Supporting your skin barrier is essential for skin health. The team at Furtuna Skin understands that a compromised skin barrier can cause more than just unhealthy-looking skin. We’ll talk about the skin barrier, what can damage it, and how to correct and protect it.
What Is the Skin Barrier?
It’s common knowledge that the skin is composed of multiple layers. The epidermis is your skin's outermost layer and the location of your skin barrier. The uppermost portion of the epidermis is also known as the stratum corneum.
This layer of your skin is made of thick cells called corneocytes that act like a concrete wall of protection against the outside world. These cells bond with lipids and act like glue to hold the cells together. This bond is why your skin barrier is also known as your lipid or moisture barrier.
The skin barrier also contains cholesterol, which it uses to help create vitamin D, fatty acids, and ceramides.
What Are the Functions of the Skin Barrier?
The skin barrier has two main functions: protecting you from environmental irritants and ensuring proper hydration.
External Irritant Protection
The skin barrier works to protect you against the barrage of irritants that come from your environment. Damaging rays from sun exposure, extreme temperatures like heat and cold, environmental pollutants, and bacteria that can damage your skin cells are all fended off by your skin’s protective barrier.
Hydration
Your skin barrier ensures that the water you drink and the hydration you add to your skin is retained inside your body. Without your skin barrier, you could experience severe water loss.
What Damages Your Skin Barrier?
Damage to the skin barrier happens from both external and internal sources.
External Threats
Harsh environments can damage your skin barrier and cause it to lose some of its function. There are many sources of external threats, which include:
- Free radicals. Free radicals cause your skin to age faster than it should. Sources of free radicals include the sun, pollution, cigarette smoke, and even some household cleansers and detergents.
- Chemicals and allergens. The chemicals in some everyday products can cause damage and irritation to our skin barrier. If you’ve ever used a new fragrance and experienced an allergic reaction, that might be because the product is damaging your skin barrier.
- Alkaline products. Cleansers and scrubs that change the pH balance of your skin can negatively impact the skin barrier. Your skin’s pH balance is naturally slightly acidic. Your skin’s pH balance is regulated by the microflora living on your skin, also known as the acid mantle.
- Overdoing it. Over-exfoliating, or exfoliating too frequently, can strip the stratum corneum of essential lipids and cause dryness and irritation.
Internal Threats
Your skin barrier is largely influenced by genetics. If you have a predisposition to certain skin conditions, your skin barrier function may be compromised. Dryness is an example of a skin issue that can deplete a healthy skin barrier.
Additionally, emotional stress plays a role in the health of the stratum corneum, depleting its functionality and making it easier for you to develop skin issues or sickness.
How Can I Tell If My Skin Barrier Is Damaged?
You don’t need a dermatologist to diagnose a damaged skin barrier. It’s easy to tell if your skin barrier needs repair. Signs of a damaged skin barrier include:
- Dry skin
- The development of sensitive skin
- Itching or scaly patches
- Uneven skin tone or dullness
- Breakouts
- Areas of irritation and redness
- Skin infections
Thankfully, it’s easy to restore the health of your skin barrier simply by focusing on skincare ingredients that are nourishing, supportive, and protective.
How Can I Replenish After Skin Barrier Damage?
Not sure where to begin? At Furtuna Skin, we understand that correcting damage to the skin barrier means harnessing the power of natural oils and plant botanicals that are safe and effective for all skin types.
Plant Power
Research shows that plant oils help correct and repair skin barrier damage. At Furtuna Skin, our products are formulated with our single-origin, organic extra virgin olive oil. It provides antioxidants, emollients, and humectants to help soothe and support the skin barrier. It’s also an effective vehicle for delivering other essential oils and plant botanicals to help support your skin cells.
If your skin barrier has been compromised, our Replenishing Balm formulated with our extra virgin olive oil can help repair the damage. This reparative balm helps calm and soothe the skin, restoring skin’s natural moisture barrier, and helping skin build resistance to future barrier damage.
Less Is More
Simplifying a complicated skincare routine can help restore your skin barrier to homeostasis. Too many products, chemicals, and ingredients that aren’t essential for skin can break down the skin barrier and leave your skin dull and damaged.
For an effective and therapeutic skincare routine that contains soothing and rejuvenating ingredients to address your skin needs, the Furtuna Skin Transformation Set is a solid solution. This uncomplicated three-step process illuminates skin and supports the skin barrier and acid mantle.
Protecting the Skin Barrier
For continued protection, Furtuna Skin Daily Renewal Cream offers the ultimate in hydration and skin support. Loaded with antioxidants, our Day Cream reinforces your skin barrier against environmental threats and also helps restore radiance with a powerful blend of pre-biotics, pro-biotics, and post-biotics to ensure the acid mantle is running smoothly.
Furtuna Skin: The Skin Barrier Solution
Your skin barrier is essential to the health of your body and the radiance and visible health of your skin itself. Protecting it requires a simplified approach to skincare. This involves potent, plant-based ingredients that work synergistically with your skin to support balanced brightness and keep it functioning properly.
At Furtuna Skin, our mission is to keep your skin radiant in a way that is undefiled by chemicals, synthetic ingredients, or non-sustainable compounds. Our methods of creating our skincare products are just as uncompromising. Trust Furtuna Skin to support your skin barrier and keep it vibrant with products that restore, rejuvenate, and create radiance.
Sources:
Anti-Inflammatory and Skin Barrier Repair Effects of Topical Application of Some Plant Oils | PMC
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