This is my first post.
I am a sixty-five year old male who has been his wife's hair colorist for most of the 42 years we have been married. I have slightly better taste in women's fashion than she tho' we almost always agree on her clothing purchases. She almost always solicits my advise on cosmetic purchases; and again we most always agree. I am a balls-to-the-wall old school feminist, with a concomitant knee-jerk aversion to anything that smacks of: "Why I believe I am nothing without a man."
I have been reading ingredient labels on everything well before I discovered this web site; and I all I know about organic chemistry is how to spell "organic" and "chemistry." I know even less about physics.
I drilled down to the plain English translation of a recent journal article about some kind of a tubular protein matrix that expands to absorb water and then----unsurprisingly-----contracts to squeeze it out. (I assumed some such mechanism existed to maintain hydration homeostasis.) My question is: why would not this matrix squeeze out occlusives that kept the skin overly hydrated? So for how long do even the best occlusives---I use petrolatum on myself----prevent evaporation of water?
Of course, this begs the more fundamental question: why would anyone man or women in her or his right mind want to tamper with mammalian hydration homeostasis by preventing water evaporation? What are the unintended consequences of skin moisturizing? What body systems are being disrupted by retarding "natural" skin dehydration?
Comments
Q: Why would not this matrix squeeze out occlusives that kept the skin overly hydrated?
Q: why would anyone man or women in her or his right mind want to tamper with mammalian hydration homeostasis by preventing water evaporation? What are the unintended consequences of skin moisturizing? What body systems are being disrupted by retarding "natural" skin dehydration?
A: The protein matrix of which you speak is in the lower levels of the skin. The occlusives sit on the surface. So the matrix can’t “squeeze out” something that’s located layers of skin above it.
Comment: But will not the h20 that is being squeezed out from the lower layer some how break through the occlusive on the top layer of the skin? Are you saying that it is "healthy" ----whatever that means----to keep the H20 trapped in the matrix when the skin wants it to evaporate it? In any event, why would not that same H20 simply find a place on the body where there are no occlusives and then evaporate there.
A. All you’re trying to do with a moisturizer is to prevent certain areas of skin from becoming rough and dry which can lead to cracking, bleeding and infection.
You are the scientist and I am zip but I think it is dangerous to imply to non scientists that unless they use moisturizers, their skin MIGHT bleed and crack owing to dryness. That certainly is contrary to my reading of the plain English version of the new journal article by the two physicists who concluded that the tubular protein matrix does a perfectly fine job in maintaining skin hydration homeostasis by itself without any topical amendments. If a women's skin starts to crack and bleed she had better hightail it to a physician rather than screwing around with obscenely priced OTC "serum."