Winter skin problems

[Jon Allen]

With the cold, dry air, my skin has officially entered its winter phase.  Skin on my legs and chest (stomach) will dry up, get itchy, red, flaky, even bleed, thanks to my running.  Drives me nuts.  I put lotion on sometime, but it stings! 

Does anyone else have this problem?  What do you do to prevent and treat it?

[Paul Petersen]

Yes, my knuckles bleed and I get cracks in the tips of my fingers. My primary solution is to tough it out until summer.

For the finger-tip cracks, superglue can help quite a bit.

[Josse]

I love taking hot showers in the winter, but unfortantally this make the dry skin problem alot worse.  Get a good skin cream and use it daily, I use Cetaphil moiturizing cream.  If it is to the point of bleeding you can use A+D original ointment it works great. 

[Sasha Pachev]

I have observed positive effects on my skin when I eat lots of garlic. It becomes smoother, and little zits start to dry out and disappear.

[Bethany]

Stay well hydrated! Skin is your largest organ and needs a lot of water to stay moist- especially when it is dry outside.

[jtshad]

I lately have been having the dry skin problems on the back of my ankles (achilles area) to the point of painful cracking and bleeding.  I have been using "Renew" moisturizer cream from Melaleuca and it has cleared it right up.

[Jon Allen]

I like your little push for Melaleuca products there, Jeff.

[Sean Sundwall]

When I lived in Utah, the dry climate wreaked havoc on my skin. I had elbows and knuckles that looked like elephant skin. As soon as I moved to Washington, that all went away.

You can probably do something to treat it but adding a little humidity to the Utah climate would do the most good. 

[Dawson Hinton]

I have been using some stuff called Aquaphor by Eucerin.  It is almost the same as Vasaline, which might be too thick and greasy for some people.  The Vasaline is probably cheaper anyway.  When my hands get really bad ( to the point of bleeding) I will put a bunch of Vasaline all over them and then put some gloves on right before bed.  In the morning when I take the gloves off, my hands are much better.

[Cory Birt]

I agree with Dawson.  I've been using Aquaphor for some time now.  It seems to work well for me.  I much prefer it over Vasaline.  In my view, it's not as greasy as Vasaline.

[Adam R Wende]

My knuckles and elbows will crack and bleed. I use vaseline on my face and lotion on the other parts. Also I notice that as others have mentioed hydration helps a lot. I'm usually bad about drinking water but in the winter the cracked skin helps motivate me.