Found a lifesaver for winter dry skin

Monoi oil by The Body Shop is my new HG moisturizer for winter. In a desperate hunt for a solution for extremely parched skin, I found this to be a miracle (you can read more about it here).

Makeup Alley reviewers also gave monoi oil the thumbs up as a great way to smooth frizzy hair out.

Perhaps it was my five-week hiatus in the tropics that made me sensitive to this winter season. I thought I nailed it after I bought a humidifier in 2008 but I felt dried out — inside and out.

While my dehydration-related headaches were gone (lots of green juice and water to the rescue!), flaky dry skin still plagued me. I would slather on lots of shea body butter but the skin on my legs especially would feel stretched and itchy from the extreme dryness.

When my usual mustard seed oil (I have a review here on this product) did not work, I rummaged my pantry and used extra virgin olive oil and coconut oil.

I even tried layering different types of oil on my legs but 12 hours later, my skin would flake.

I also tried Palmer’s Skin Oil Therapy that is a cocoa butter formula with vitamin E but it made my skin even drier if you would believe it. I really wanted to like this product especially since it won the Australian Beauty Awards last year. There are a few suspicious chemicals in the ingredients list that could be the culprit: cetearyl ethylhexanoate, isopropyl myristate and tocopheryl acetate. A quick search online told me that the first ingredient I listed is an “ester of Cetearyl Alcohol and 2-ethylhexanoic acid (octanoic acid)”. Hmm, alcohol is always bad for dry skin. Whatever it was, it didn’t work.

I also finally got down and dirty with pure vitamin E oil to help fade my sand fly bites. For those you who have had this before, you know it takes a long time for these scars to fade. My eczema patches on my limbs drank up the vitamin E oil, and within two weeks, the patches have healed.

So, monoi oil plus vitamin E oil are my two staples this winter.

Oh and I have been ingesting a lot of cucumber (silica heaven; great for building collagen) and coriander (cilantro to my American readers) for drawing out toxins, just to put that extra punch into my skin regime.

What are your winter beauty must-haves?

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