In this post, I share 5 ways you can tell if your skin is dehydrated:
Your skin feels tight and stiff. Skin seems as though it has lost its elasticity and suppleness.
If you gently pull a small portion of your skin and let it go, you will notice it takes longer than usual for the skin to fall back to its place.
This way of testing if your skin is dehydrated is called the pinch test.
Skin feels a bit flaky, red, itchy, and sensitive.
If your skin is dehydrated, you will notice some dry, flaky patches. These patches and flaky skin are usually not all over the face. They are confined to small portions—here and there—scattered.
You will notice some fine lines on the skin. These lines are more visible when you hold a small portion of the skin and look at it closely.
These fine lines are not the ones we get when our skin ages. These dehydrated fine lines are shallow—much shallower than the fine lines from ageing.
Because of these shallow lines, when you apply makeup on your face, you will notice makeup settles in these fine lines, so makeup looks lumpy and not smooth.
Skin appears dull.
Old cells in the skin regularly fall off and make way for younger cells. This process is called cellular turnover, and the skin’s moisture content is essential.
Dehydrated skin has lower amounts of moisture, affecting cellular turnover. Cellular turnover does not happen at the regular intervals that it should. When old cells don’t fall off regularly, skin becomes dull and loses its glow.
You might notice a sudden increase in the oil (also called sebum) on your skin – more oil than usual. This means your skin is dehydrated.
But why does skin produce more oil when it is dehydrated?
Oil (sebum) and moisture help the skin stay tip-top. These two work together to do their best to keep skin in good shape.
When the moisture content decreases (dehydrated), the skin goes into overdrive. It starts producing more sebum, as much as it can, to compensate for the loss of moisture. The skin cannot produce the lost moisture, so it produces its friend, oil.
If you have oily skin, when it is dehydrated, your skin will feel oilier than usual.
If you have dry skin, when it is dehydrated, it will feel oily, which is quite unusual for dry skin.