Yet Another Moisturizer - This Time With Ceramides

I am finally getting a better understanding of how skin works, or rather, doesn't work, when it comes to eczema. In a nutshell, the outer layer of the epidermis called the stratum corneum, is your main skin barrier and it is made up of three types of lipids -- cholesterol, free fatty acids and ceramides. Since about half of the lipids in this outermost layer is made up of ceramides - these are pretty important to the functioning of healthy skin.

Apparently, people with eczema don't have as many of these ceramides as people without eczema. This means that the outermost layer of your skin, or your main skin barrier, breaks down and ends up unable to lock water in and unable to keep the bad stuff like allergens, pollutants, chemicals, bacteria, viruses, etc - out. Enter Dry Skin and Skin Infections = Eczema.

So that means, we need to replace those ceramides. Moisturizing is key but if you're like me, all the different moisturizers I've purchased over the years hasn't done much. I now realize that maybe I haven't been using the right moisturizer. What is needed is a moisturizer that contains ceramides, so that it actually repairs the skin barrier. All this time I've been trying my luck with any old moisturizer, but in actuality what I needed was a barrier-repair moisturizer.

I haven't seen the studies yet that actually prove whether ceramide-enriched moisturizers actually do repair the skin. But it's worthy a try and it makes sense to me. I looked at this list of ceramide moisturizers and went out to buy a jar of CeraVe because it was the cheapest and most readily available. The stuff stings when I put it on my face, but goes away after a little bit and man, my face is soft. I'll have to see how I progress over the next few days. Just have to think positive and visualize all those little lipids repairing the skin barrier so that my skin stays soft and doesn't get infected anymore.