Functional Medicine Tips for Healthy Skin in Cold Weather

The drop in temperature during the winter months can profoundly affect your skin's health. Cold temperatures also indicate a humidity drop, making this weather change a double-edged sword. Chronic exposure to this type of climate can leave your skin feeling itchy and dry and cause a disturbance to skin barrier function. 

Experts express that to reduce dry skin, you must intentionally support your skin barrier during the harsh winter months. Taking a functional medicine approach for winter skin care can assist you in maintaining skin integrity by nourishing it internally and topically. 

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Impact of Cold Weather on Skin Health 

Your skin is part of your integumentary system, which has many functions but mainly acts as a protective outer covering. This is the body's largest organ, covering you from head to toe, and on average, weighs about six pounds. The three layers of the skin (the epidermis, the dermis, and the hypodermis), each provide barrier protection or warmth. 

The environment and state in which your skin is in will play essential roles in maintaining its function, durability, and resilience. In terms of cold weather, your skin can quickly become depleted since the drop in temperature also reduces humidity. Humidity in the air helps water stay in your body and allows the skin to retain moisture. 

During the cold months, the dryness in the air exposes the skin to more harsh weather conditions, which can lead to dryness, redness, irritation, itchy skin, cracked lips, and an exacerbation of existing skin issues. Certain skin conditions, like eczema, are impacted by the lack of sun exposure, which is our body's source used to produce vitamin D. Indoor temperatures add to this issue if you are heating your home, as that will dry the home air. The impact of cold weather on skin health is primarily a lack of hydration in the skin and the depletion of nutrients you may not be getting from being outdoors. 

Nourishing your skin through various lifestyle and skin care habits can help mitigate the effects of cold weather damage. Implementing an effective skin care regimen, protecting it from the environment through topical and oral hydration, providing essential nutrients for the layers of the skin to thrive, and establishing a lifestyle routine to support your skin can all contribute to thriving skin this winter. 

Nutritional Strategies for Skin Health 

During the cold months, a nutrient-dense diet can promote healthy skin by lowering the risk of dry and compromised skin. There are essential nutrients for winter skin care, which include vitamin A, vitamin D, vitamin E, vitamin C, zinc, and omega-3 fatty acids. Vitamin A aids in replacing old skin cells with new ones and aids in skin appearance. Carotenoids are the active vitamin A component necessary for skin health. One carotenoid we can obtain for our diet is beta-carotene, found in sweet potatoes, mangos, pumpkin, and carrots. This nutrient is a natural UV protector. Eating food that is abundant in vitamin A or supplementing with it can help mitigate UV causes of skin redness and damage. 

Vitamin C and Vitamin E are mighty antioxidants for the skin. Vitamin E is one of our fat-soluble vitamins found in our skin's natural oils. Eating foods high in this micronutrient, taking it in supplemental form, or using a topical moisturizer with this nutrient can help hold moisture in during the winter months. Vitamin C is also great for skin integrity and contributes to collagen production. Obtaining Vitamin C from foods like oranges, broccoli, and strawberries is ideal. There are also skincare products on the market that contain vitamin C. 

Essential fatty acids in omega-3s help decrease inflammation and improve hydration in the skin, which supports the skin barrier and integrity. Research shows that the anti-inflammatory properties of omega-3s are beneficial for conditions like psoriasis, atopic dermatitis, and acne, many of which can be worsened by colder months. Daily nutrition for healthy skin during winter could be best accomplished by following a Mediterranean diet, where you get many antioxidant-rich nutrients and omega-3 from fish and nuts and focus heavily on vitamin-rich fresh produce. 

Importance of Hydration and Gut Health

Low hydration can impact the skin and gut microbiome interaction called the gut-skin axis. In naturopathic medicine, we often say the skin mirrors your gut's health. This is because when gut health dysfunction or pathology occurs, an accompanying skin presentation will often occur. One way skin homeostasis can also is through intestinal barrier compromise. In functional medicine, this is called “leaky gut," in which bacteria and other invading microbiome organisms can pass the intestinal barrier and into the bloodstream, where one end destination is accumulation in the skin. 

When thinking of optimizing both skin and gut function, hydration intake needs to be evaluated. One study area found that consuming high amounts of water may positively affect skin health. Due to the lower humidity, increased use of indoor heating, and more use of hot-watered showers, the cells in your body, including your skin, can become dehydrated. The stratum corneum layer of our skin is where most of the hydration is locked in. When that layer has a low hydration status, you can see a degradation in skin integrity, more dryness, and a rough appearance. Water can also help skin-gut access by ensuring that bowel motility is maintained and waste is eliminated. Low water intake can contribute to constipation, which can ultimately cause inflammation in the body and rear its ugly head on the skin. Hydration for skin health is essential, especially in the colder months.

In addition to drinking enough water, probiotics can support gut health and the skin's biome. Your skin has its natural flora, which is very closely intertwined with the presentation of gut flora. Ensuring you have a balanced amount of healthy bacterial strains will help minimize leaky gut and other dysbiotic gut conditions. 

Protecting Skin from Environmental Stressors 

Skin protection can reduce the harmful effects of environmental exposures such as cold weather. Regardless of weather type, incorporating a daily skincare routine is a proactive way of supporting skin health, function, and appearance. A cleanser and moisturizer are two essential products you’ll want to include. This ensures you remove dead skin cells, clean off environmental impurities, and lock in moisture. If you get daily sunshine exposure, sunblock can provide an added layer of protection for your skin. Other recommendations from the American Academy of Dermatology include washing your skin with warm water instead of hot water to prevent excess dryness, utilizing clean, fragrance-free, and harsh chemical-free products and moisturizers right after washing your face to hold in the moisture and ointments and creams over lotions for a more effective barrier. 

In addition to skincare routines, limiting your time in harsh weather conditions such as extremely cold, overly heated homes can be helpful. Wearing warm accessories-hats, scarves, and gloves can help keep moisture and protect the skin from the cold. Indoors, adding a humidifier can combat the dryness of the air during the winter months. Combining these methods can significantly help keep your skin in a nourished state to combat the cold. 

Managing Stress for Healthy Skin 

Stress can impact many areas of health, including the well-being of your skin. You may experience this in the form of acne outbreaks when you have heightened stress or increased itching when you are stressed out. Some evidence suggests that stress can either trigger the onset of skin conditions or worsen them. Stress is known to aggravate psoriasis, eczema, and rosacea. Add cold weather to the picture, and your skin goes from physiologically stressed to an added environmental stress-induced state. 

While you can not control the weather, you can support your body’s stress response and minimize adverse effects. Stress management for skin health may look like Incorporating a mindfulness practice, getting optimal sleep, or implementing an exercise routine. Mind-body therapies such as biofeedback, hypnosis, guided imagery, and meditation have shown to be promising adjunctive therapies for managing skin response to stress as well. These complementary medicine therapies help by modulating the central nervous system, which sends chemical, hormone, and neurotransmitter signals to the skin. Calming this system down can improve cutaneous response to stress. 

Lifestyle Modifications for Skin Health 

Holistic skin care in the winter months involves implementing lifestyle changes for healthy skin. As mentioned, starting and ending your day with a skin care regimen is ideal, but being mindful of your shower routine is also essential. Hot water reduces oils on the skin while also increasing epidermal water loss, pH, and skin redness. Prolonged showers can also have adverse effects on the skin barrier. Ideally, showers should be short and cool to lukewarm to help prompt skin barrier function. 

Daily exercise is a great way to improve skin health as well. Movement encourages blood flow, and blood flow leads to vibrant skin. Your blood carries oxygen, vitamins, and minerals, which circulate throughout the body, including the skin. Exercise can also improve gut health, reduce stress, and improve sleep, all of which play a vital role in skin health. 

Much like exercise, aiming for daily quality and restorative sleep benefits skin health. The term “beauty sleep” does have evidence to back it up. Research shows that collagen production is regulated somewhat by immune system function. The immune system does most of its restoration during sleep cycles. Ultimately, getting your beauty rest is an interplay between a thriving immune system and your body’s ability to optimize nutrients (such as collagen) essential to skin integrity. 

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Healthy Skin in Cold Weather: Final Thoughts

The cold weather can be harsh to many areas of health, including skin health. Thankfully, there are some great tools to mitigate this response. You can optimize your skin health by protecting it from harsh environmental exposures, implementing a regular skincare routine, monitoring your exposure to hot water temperatures, nourishing your skin through diet and hydration, and focusing on healthy lifestyle factors. An integrative approach to winter skin health can be a game changer to how your skin responds to cold weather. With simple implementations and health hacks, you can have vibrant skin all year, regardless of the temperature.