Do you have rough skin in certain parts of your body? Do not be ashamed, this is a common (and unaesthetic) condition that many people experience during their lives, especially after a certain age or because of their profession, state of health, climate they live in and personal care.

Skin is our external protection and rough skin is somehow a consequence of this function. In some areas of our body that are usually more inclined to stress and potential friction, skin cells reproduce much faster and in big quantity. Those parts are the hands, the feet and some junctures, mostly elbows and (a bit less) knees. Dehydration and stress contribute for these parts to become much thicker and rough. Rough skin can take a yellow/darker color, can peel and become very callous and ugly to see.

At the beginning is only matter of aesthetic but, if neglected, rough skin can get dangerous. Roughness can degenerate in a thick callous area that might provoke pain and difficulty while walking (talking about the feet, of course). It can crack, bleed and get infected (since, as we said, these areas of our body are particularly exposed to friction and stress they are usually more likely to get fungus and bacteria if they are wounded). In order to avoid these unpleasant degenerative states, we should take some simple but effective precautions to get rid of rough skin as fast as possible.

Rough Skin on our Hands

Our hands are victims of daily stress: days of extreme cold, continuous exposure to dirt and washing with low quality soap, scratches etc. These stressful events cause the skin to dry: the most external layer of skin cells, exhausted, do not manage to hold liquids and nutrients. Of course there might be also a medical skin condition that contributes to this loss of hydration and osmotic balance. Once the skin is dry, it becomes harder, less vital and more likely to get damaged.

In order to avoid this unhealthy process of deterioration you should:

Use natural soap on a daily basis: chemical soaps are extremely aggressive and might damage the epithelial tissue triggering the process of dehydration.

Exfoliate: do your hands look opaque and not smooth? This might depend on a layer of dead cells that you have on your hands. A gentle exfoliation does not damage your skin. Instead it helps new cells to come out, improving immediately the general aspect of your hands. You can rub them gently with a natural facial scrub, washing them before and after with warm water. Our Dead Sea Minerals Scrubs gently exfoliate your body and your face, treating them at the same time with a mix of powerful and completely organic minerals. It would ensure you the complete removal of dead cells with a boost of regenerative substance for your new skin layer to glow.

Hydrate: immediately after the peeling, and certainly at least a couple of times per day, you should hydrate your hands with natural serum and creams that are specifically studied to boost cell regeneration and hydration. If dry skin is your problem right now, you should make sure that the substances contained in your moisturizer will provide you with the help you need.

Protect: if you do not diminish the stress you are putting your hands through, there is no treatment that can help you. Keep following the above mentioned measures without stopping but try to change your behavior as well. Do not expose your hands to cold or hot hair (for example cover your hand in the winter and use napkins to dry them after you wash them) and protect them from extreme friction (contact with chemicals, hard manual work etc.).

Pamper: even when your hands look healthy and the rough skin is gone (or you are just trying to prevent it) you should be generous to your hands and pamper them as much as you can. Periodically you should give your hands an extra-hydrating mask. Dead Sea mud is particularly appropriate for this kind of treatment and will leave your hands soft and beautiful like you have never seen before.

Rough Skin on our Feet

Even if we would like smooth and soft feet, the daily pressure that they bare (our weight, long walks, constrictive shoes etc.) can cause our feet to become “hard like a hoof” and to get an unaesthetic color. Often, a strong sense of discomfort is associated with these phenomena and in order to avoid deep cracks, real pain and further degenerations is better to intervene immediately with simple but effective methods.

As premised, you should know that if you want to improve considerably the condition of your feet you should start an intensive rehabilitation process that might take a couple of weeks. Commitment is the key to success, especially considering that your feet will undergo a certain amount of stress even during the treatment (you cannot expect them to heal completely if you treat them only once!)

Feet Spa: immerse your feet in a footbath with warm water and essential oils for about 15 minutes. You can prepare the footbath also with lemon or vinegar (instead of essential oils). In this case, reduce the time of immersion to 10 minutes. For better results, we suggest you to try out Dead Sea salt, specifically prepared fro these occasions. Once you finish with the the footbath, scrub your feet energetically with pumice stone, trying to remove the white skin that you see (those are dead cells and are responsible for your discomfort and bad looking skin). Rinse with warm water, dry and moisturize immediately and abundantly. The process should be repeated daily till the cracks or the white skin disappear and your feet go back to be soft and hydrated. Dead Sea Minerals products are extremely effective and might shorten the treatment period because of their strong healing power.

Cream and socks, a perfect couple: Especially at night and in general whenever you can, do not limit yourself to put cream on your feet. After you moisturize them, cover them with cotton light colored socks in a way that you will create a protective barrier and will allow the cream to be absorbed completely and penetrate deeper.

Rough Skin on our Elbows

Elbows are the junctures that are most likely to get dry and unaesthetically hard. Skin is sensitive there and subject to continuous movement. During winter and in the summer, they are continuously exposed to contrasting temperatures: hot air from radiators dry them off during winter while the strong cold air of the AC is like a deadly wind during the summer, when they already might suffer for lack of humidity. If, by chance, we also suffer from psoriasis or other skin diseases, rough skin and cracks on our elbows can become intolerable.

Exfoliation and hydration are the remedies also for this area of our body. In this case we should generously indulge with organic body scrubs while showering (never more than twice a week though!) and abounding with emollient lotions to moisturize them several times a day. Our Dead Sea emollient creams have a strong hydrating power and reinforce the ability of the skin cells to retain water. Dead Sea minerals, in fact, favor a healthy osmosis and build a sort of protective barrier around the epithelial cells.