Winter Wonder-Hand: 5 Moisturizing Ingredients For Your Hands This Season

When wintertime rolls around, it brings with it holiday cheer, time with loved ones, and a biting chill in the air that can chap the skin on your hands faster than you could say "jingle bells". For dry skin of this magnitude, your regular, year-round lotion just isn't going to cut it -- and dry hands improperly taken care of can crack and bleed, severely putting a damper on your wintertime festivities. So if you're wondering what ingredients you should look for in your chilly weather hand cream for the softest hands imaginable, then here's what you need to know:

Shea Butter

One of the more famous moisturizers, shea butter, is an incredible way to keep your skin soft and healthy this winter. It has a pleasant, light scent, and also works as an anti-inflammatory, in case your skin has become inflamed, along with being chapped.

Glycerin

Glycerin is incredibly useful when the winter chill sets in; it works by pretty much sucking the moisture from the air around you into your skin, preventing it from chapping. This works best if you apply a moisturizer with glycerin after a shower when there's plenty of moisture to trap.

Petrolatum

Just a warning, this ingredient is kind of waxy and can feel thick and uncomfortable if you try to use it during the day. As a nighttime remedy for dry skin, however, applied underneath gloves (to keep the lotion in and off of your bedding), it's second to none. It attracts moisture to your skin but, more than that, stops you from losing moisture in your skin during the day -- just make sure you don't touch anything you can't wash with it on.

Lanolin

This next moisturizer is probably more familiar to you as wool wax, used to keep babies' skin soft (not to mention nursing mothers' nipples) and for high-grade lip treatments. Though lotions with lanolin can be rather pricey (and if you have a wool allergy, it's best to stay away), the comfort and hydration that it can bring to your skin can be all the lotion you'll ever need.

Lactic Acid

It disinfects, it exfoliates, and it keeps your skin super soft, all at the same time -- it's lactic acid. An important ingredient in any wintertime moisturizer, lactic acid helps 'waterproof' your skin, preventing you from having to reapply your lotion over and over again throughout the day. 

Contact a dermatology clinic for more information and assistance.