10 Reasons Women Over 60 With Itchy Winter Skin Won't Give Up Their Hot Shower and Just Add This Body Oil

1. The shower you take to get warm is why your skin feels so dry and itchy all winter

Every January, the women over 60 who come into my studio have the same skin: shins that feel tight and prickly by breakfast, knuckles that look chapped, a back they can't stop scratching through their sweater. Almost all of them blame the cold. Then I ask how long they stay in the shower, and they laugh. “Until the hot water runs out. It's the only time I'm warm all day.”

Here's what that warm-up shower does. Skin stays soft because it wears a thin coat of its own oil. Every hot shower rinses a little of that coat away. Past 60, skin produces less of it, and a furnace-dried house gives it no help between one long shower and the next. So each winter morning starts a little drier than the one before, and by January your shins are the first to feel it. I call it the winter shower strip. ADIRA Botanical Body Oil has no water in it at all. Two pumps on damp skin, before you open the bathroom door, put that coat back at the exact moment most winter routines skip.

2. The hotter and longer the water, the more of your skin's oil goes down the drain

Think about washing a greasy skillet. Cold water slides right off the grease. Hot water and a squirt of soap, and it's gone. Your skin's natural oils behave the same way. The hotter the water, the faster it melts them. The longer you stand there, the more of them it takes.

Winter showers are both hotter and longer. In July, most of us are in and out in five minutes. In January, it's fifteen or twenty, as hot as the tank will give, because the bathroom is 64 degrees. Then you step out and shiver, because water drying off wet skin pulls the heat right out of you. So the next morning, you put off that moment and stay in a little longer. Try this next time: look down at your legs as you step out. The steam coming off them is water evaporating off your skin, and it takes some of your skin's own moisture with it. In a dry, heated house, that moisture keeps leaving long after the steam is gone.

“But doesn't an oil just sit on the surface?” It's the question I hear most. Think about that skillet again. If it's cast iron, you know what comes after the hot, soapy water: a thin coat of oil rubbed back on while the pan is still warm. Nobody expects that oil to soak through the iron. It goes back on the surface because that's where the hot water took it off. Skin works the same way. Hot water never reaches deep; it strips the very top layer, and that's where the tight, dry winter feeling starts. So that's where the oil goes back, and on damp skin it's absorbed in about a minute instead of sitting there shiny.

“I used to joke that I showered until the water heater gave up. My husband didn't think it was funny, and neither did my shins.” — Gloria, 70, Rochester, New York

3. Keep the hot shower. Just oil up before you open the bathroom door

Every skin-care article says the same thing: short, lukewarm showers. With respect, those articles weren't written in North Dakota in January. I've never once talked a client over 60 out of her hot shower, and I've stopped trying. The hot shower stays. What changes is the last thing you do before you reach for the doorknob.

Turn off the water. Pat lightly with the towel so your skin is still damp, and step out onto the bath mat. Right there on the mat, while the mirror is still fogged, press two or three pumps of ADIRA over your legs, arms and belly, before you open the bathroom door. The bathroom is still warm and steamy, the last moist air your skin will see all day. Oil on damp skin spreads thin, sinks in within about a minute and holds the shower's water in. So when you open that door into the dry hallway, your skin already has its seal back. Then straight into your robe, with nothing oily on the flannel.

“I still take my shower hot enough to fog up the whole upstairs. I just keep the bottle on the sink now and do my legs before I open the door. Three weeks in, my shins don't itch through my slacks anymore.” — Arlene, 72, Cedar Rapids, Iowa

4. It isn't baby oil: what goes back on is close to what your skin makes

Some women try the baby oil from the medicine cabinet first. Baby oil is mineral oil. It stays shiny on top of the skin and ends up on the robe and the sheets. What goes back on after a hot shower should be close to what came off.

That's why ADIRA is made with squalane and jojoba, close cousins of the oils your own skin makes. Sunflower, rosehip and passionflower seed oil are rich in linoleic acid, a fatty acid your skin uses to build its barrier but can't make on its own. Rice bran and argan add plant sterols. Vitamin E and bisabolol, the calming compound found in chamomile, soothe that tight, itchy dry-skin feeling. On damp skin, it's absorbed in about a minute. Lotion adds water, and water is exactly what winter air takes away. This puts back what the hot water took.

5. Your legs stand under the hot water the whole time

Think about where the water goes. You aim the spray at your shoulders to warm up, but every drop runs down your legs for the full fifteen or twenty minutes. And legs have the least oil of their own to lose: shins make very little to begin with. So they're the first place the winter shower strip shows, tight and ashy by mid-morning and itching inside your fleece-lined leggings.

So give your legs the first pump. Sit on the edge of the tub with your feet on the mat, and work it up from the ankles while your legs are still pink from the water. The tight, pulled feeling eases from the very first morning, and many women see visibly softer, smoother legs in 3–4 weeks.

“My shins used to get so flaky my pantyhose snagged on them. A month into this, they slide on smooth for the first time in years.” — Bonnie, 74, Billings, Montana

6. Hands you thaw under the hot tap stop feeling like sandpaper

Come in from shoveling the walk or getting the mail, and what's the first thing you do? Run your frozen hands under the hot tap. Then the dishes in hot, soapy water. Then the hand soap, again and again. Winter hands get hot water ten times a day, then go right back out into the cold. By the first real snowfall, the backs of the hands look red and papery, and the skin over the knuckles feels tight every time you make a fist.

Your hands get the same two pumps as your legs: whatever oil is left on your palms after your shower goes into the backs of your hands, knuckles first. Then keep a second bottle next to the dish soap, and after the last hot rinse of the day, press in one pump while your hands are still damp from the towel. It's absorbed before you've put the last plate away, so nothing ends up on your mittens or the TV remote.

7. The bedtime warm-up shower no longer ends with dry, itchy legs under the covers

A lot of women shower at night in winter, to get warm before climbing into a cold bed. It feels wonderful for about an hour. Then the house cools down, the furnace air goes to work on skin the hot water just stripped, and the legs start to itch right about the time the lights go out.

Same change at night: two or three pumps in the steamy bathroom before you open the door, then straight into your flannels. Oil has no water in it to evaporate, so skin stays soft and comfortable through the night, even when the furnace kicks on again at midnight. That tight, itchy dry-skin feeling settles down, and the women who try it tell me the same thing: the hot-water bottle is the only thing they reach for under the covers now.

“I shower at night to warm up before bed, and I used to be scratching my calves by eleven. Now it's shower, two pumps before I open the door, nightgown, and I'm asleep before my husband finishes the news.” — Rosemary, 76, Scranton, Pennsylvania

8. Start the first morning you catch yourself staying in “five more minutes”

Everyone has that morning in the fall. The first real cold snap, the bath mat cold under your bare feet, and you stand under the hot water a little longer than you meant to. That's the day the winter shower strip starts. Most women don't notice it until the itch shows up a few weeks later.

So make that morning your cue. The day you catch yourself saying “five more minutes,” put the bottle on the edge of the sink, where you'll see it before you reach for the door. Skin feels less tight within the first few days, and within 3–4 weeks your legs and hands look visibly softer and smoother, well before the coldest stretch of January. If that morning has already come and gone, start tomorrow.

9. $19.97 a bottle, with one for every place the hot water runs

Think of everything bought for dry winter skin: the big tub of thick cream, a hand cream in every coat pocket, the “extra dry skin” body wash, the bath beads that make the tub slick. Nearly all of it goes on after the bathroom door is open, on skin the dry hallway air has already started on. None of it goes on in the steam, when it counts.

With today's Buy 2, Get 1 Free, ADIRA works out to $19.97 a bottle: three bottles for $59.90. One by the shower, one by the kitchen sink or on the nightstand, and one for the person in your house who stays in until the hot water runs out.

10. You get 90 days to feel the difference, right through the holidays

You've been told to give up your hot shower for years, and it never stuck. This asks nothing of the kind, so ADIRA takes the risk off the table. Keep the shower exactly as hot and as long as you like it. Add two pumps before you open the door, every morning, as the cold settles in. If your skin doesn't feel softer and more comfortable, you get a full refund within 90 days.

Put the bottle by the sink tonight, where you'll see it before you reach for the door. And if it works, pass this along to whoever in your family stays in the shower until the mirror disappears.