Your skin is always dehydrated no matter how much you moisturise? We found out why (and how to solve it)

You slather on moisturiser at every opportunity, use all kinds of masks and creams religiously, but your skin still feels tight and dry, and you see visible fine lines on its parched surface.

What’s going on!? How do you get to that holy grail level of hydration for your skin without looking like a greasy mess?

One reason why you have this persistent problem: weakened skin barriers.

What is a weakened skin barrier?

Imagine your skin as a waterproof layer wrapped around your body. Although it is waterproof on the outside, there is still moisture present in the inner layers of healthy skin, providing essential water for your cells to function.

Applying moisturiser over your skin is like spreading a layer “film”, preventing water from evaporating out of your skin, thus trapping the moisture within and keeping your skin hydrated.

Unfortunately, if your skin barrier is weakened, moisture can “leak”, or evaporate, more easily, and bacteria may be introduced as well.

Weakened skin barriers may be partially behind skin conditions like eczema, or perpetually dry skin. Having perpetually dry skin means dealing with on-off itching, flaking, rashes, premature ageing, and other such skin problems. It doesn’t sound cute, right?

What can you do about it?

Thankfully, the right topical products can help your skin barrier recover its integrity, while re-hydrating your skin at the same time.

What this means is that, unlike regular moisturisers that only re-hydrates your skin, there are topical products that can also repair your skin barrier.

Atopalm Real Barrier, in particular, is a range of skincare products from Korea that has been treating skin barrier recovery very seriously since their launch in 2008.

They’re one of the top selling brands in Watsons Korea, and for good reason – they have innovated a globally patented technology called MLE (Multi-Lamellar Emulsion) that specifically helps to recover your skin barrier function.

This is how Atopalm Real Barrier products work:

Without going all technical on you, MLE basically uses two types of ceramides (Ceramide 9S and Ceramide 5SP) to regenerate the natural structure of healthy human skin, effectively restoring your skin barrier and keeping all that good hydration in.

Skin barrier recovery is even more important for those of us who have sensitive skin, so naturally these products would be suitable for all skin types. It contains a 3-Calming Complex of panthenol, madecassoside, and allantoin to calm and soothe irritated skin.

Where do you start?

Our hot and humid climate might give people the wrong impression that we don’t also struggle with dry skin issues, but we’re sure that all the Singaporean women out there can testify that this isn’t true.

Our cries have been heard, and Atopalm Real Barrier has finally landed on our shores and into our local Watsons, can we have a hurrah?! No more flaky skin, or being reminded time and again by our facial therapists about how dehydrated our skin is.

Atopalm Real Barrier Extreme Cream

If you are overwhelmed by the wide variety of Atopalm Real Barrier products you can choose from, start from this one. The Extreme Cream harnesses the power of hyaluronic acid to pull water into your skin, but also contains MLE and the 3-Calming Complex to also rehydrate and repair your skin barrier.

I have tried it out for myself, and I have to say: don’t be intimidated by the thick texture of the cream – it absorbs quickly into the skin and doesn’t leave any layer of grease at all into your skin.

It also makes for a great night moisturiser, when you really want to make sure your skin doesn’t dry out further from air-conditioning, or if you want a boost of hydration for the next day. I found that my skin looked healthier and more hydrated!