Dryness of Winter
The season of chapped lips and dry skin!
This past week we had a friend tell us how dry she felt visiting Asheville from the Pacific Northwest–she was considering installing humidifiers in the house she is building! If you have lived here for any amount of time, you know our biggest battles are with too much humidity, not too little! In the summer, our dehumidifiers run constantly, in other seasons they run when we ‘smell the air full of moisture’, but right now our friend is right—it is dry, dry, dry.
Wind and temperature drop the humidity, even when raining or snowing. The season change also leads to a cascade of lifestyle changes which lead to dry, itching skin. We turn the heat up—dry heat—which dries out the moisture in the air. We take longer and hotter showers, which strips our skin of natural oils. We wear more clothes and thicker materials, leading to more rubbing on our less moisturized skin and causing irritation. These clothes, even if we use natural, sensitive skin detergents, contain oil stripping residues which are important to get our clothes clean but harsh on our skin. The more power-clean our detergents advertise themselves to be, the harsher they are!
For a fun read on all the things that lead to Winter Itch from the western perspective, here is a link to read:https://www.medicinenet.com/dry_skin/article.htm
From Chinese medicine, there is an additional reason, and that is our Qi. Our Qi is in the winter phase, which means it circulates more deeply in the body and does not rise up to the surface and reach our skin robustly. It does this to keep our warmth deep inside and protect us, allowing that outside layer of our body to harden and be less reactive to the outside temperatures. But less Qi on the skin means less blood and moisture, so it dries and itches until we adjust to it. The weaker our Qi was going into winter, the less we have to reach the skin at all, and we experience even less ‘irrigation’ of our epidermis with natural oils and blood. Traditionally, the Chinese would balance this with lifestyle changes, natural oil moisturizers, and a Winter Tonic of herbs that bolster up hibernating Qi. The most common herbs one would find in a winter tonic are astragalus, angelica and plants the western world identifies as adaptogens. Whether brewed in soups or soaked to make tinctures, boosting the Qi in the Winter has a long history in China—you can read about adaptogens everywhere on the internet, but if you have a medical condition, that tonic should be chosen by your health care practitioner to avoid causing more problems than just dry skin!
Wishing each of you the best as we mark changes through the holidays and solistice –
Andrew Nugent-Head