A viewer wrote in, will shaving her legs frequently in the wintertime cause excessive drying of the skin of her legs? Shaving your legs, in addition to removing unwanted hair, is really a form of physical exfoliation. So the razor, at the same time that it’s removing the unwanted hair, is also removing superficial dead cells. Removing those dead cells has no impact on the moisture content of the skin and also has no effect on the epidermis’ barrier function to hold moisture in, so really shaving itself, will not cause over drying. But here’s the catch. The shaving gel, cream, foam or just soap that hopefully you’re using to help prevent saving irritation will remove oils from the surface of the skin. The function of those oils is not only to lubricate the skin but also to help hold in the natural moisture of the skin. So anytime you repeatedly or excessively wash your skin, which is really what’s happening when you’re using shaving gel and so on, that will make you prone to over drying your skin and the cells of the legs have very few oil glands, so you don’t have much oil to start with. So if you frequently shave your legs in the wintertime make sure that you regularly use a very good moisturizer and be sure to apply it immediately after shaving your legs so it can help to lock in the moisture that your skin absorbed while you were shaving.
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