Elbows are visible to everyone except her mistress, who can ignore the condition of the skin on these areas for a long time, until one day she realizes that ugly elbows betray her age and lack of attention to them.
If the aesthetic appearance of your skin is important to you, then elbow care is simply necessary. Without care and nutrition, with age, the skin in these areas becomes very rough, saggy, acquires either yellow, gray, or a white-powdery shade. Before the heat comes, while the hands are hidden by the sleeves, they forget about the elbows. This is wrong, because in the autumn-winter period, due to sudden temperature changes and over-dried air in the room, elbows can become dry. You need to take care of your skin regularly and all year round.
Causes of the problem
In the risk zone, first of all, there are people who do not take care of their elbows at all. Secondly, the skin on the elbows suffers in office workers, or those who work at a desk, often leaning on their elbows. Constant friction leads to an increase in the epidermis in these places, skin coarsening occurs, as on the heels. The skin of the elbows often loses its appearance in nursing mothers, who, when feeding, lie down on the bed, leaning on the elbow, creating the same friction. The causes of excessive dryness of the skin can be a lack of vitamins A, E and D in the body, an unbalanced diet or hormonal disorders.
The doctors’ case
Sometimes it happens that the skin on the elbows becomes rough due to diseases. For example, neurodermatitis (atopic dermatitis), psoriasis, eczema. Liver and thyroid problems can also affect the color of the elbows. With skin diseases, as a rule, we are dealing not just with a roughened surface: red edematous spots appear on the elbows, brightly highlighted areas of peeling, bubbles with liquid may form, or scales and cracks that cause discomfort. Any of these signs requires consultation with a dermatologist.
Prevention rules
Simple care will help to avoid roughening of the skin on the elbows. If you don’t have enough time for special elbow treatments, it’s worth getting into the habit of at least not ignoring this area when you apply the cream on your hands. Smear your elbows too! In addition, you should try to avoid friction. If you are sitting at a table, it is better not to lean on it with your elbows. The phrase that many children hear from adults: «Take your elbows off the table!» is not only a rule of good form, but also a rule of beautiful elbows.
Daily care
To maintain the beauty of the elbows, you need to thoroughly cleanse the skin every day. It is enough to take a shower with a sponge or washcloth. The product that was used during washing should be thoroughly washed off. If you regularly leave traces of soap, gel, foam on the body for washing — this leads to over-drying of the skin. After a shower, you need to wipe yourself well, without leaving moisture on the skin, and then use a nourishing cream. This is a cream for places that are exposed to more aggressive environmental influences, namely: elbows, hands, knees, and feet. It should be as nutritious as possible — fatty, ideally containing vitamin E, oils (olive, coconut, shea butter).
Do not forget about the scrub
For proper elbow care, you need to do a gommage or scrubbing procedure two or three times a week. First, you should steam the skin a little, and then apply a scrub, massage lightly and rinse everything off properly. You can use any scrubs. After the procedure is completed, everything must be thoroughly washed off and a nourishing cream applied.
Oil baths
From rough skin, an excellent remedy will help — oil baths. We take olive oil, heat it, but do not bring it to a boil (it should be pleasantly warm). Pour into a convenient container where your elbows will fit, and keep them in oil for at least 15 minutes. Then you need to wet your elbows with a napkin, removing excess oil, rub the remnants into the skin. The oil can be left until the next procedure. Repeat the baths every other day before the onset of the effect. And it will come soon, provided that there are no additional diseases, or the case is not very neglected.
To enhance the nutritional effect of oil baths, it is best to carry them out immediately after scrubbing (the scrub, of course, needs to be washed off, and the elbows dried).
Folk remedy
If you notice that the skin on the elbows has already started to darken a little, rough areas have appeared, then it’s worth trying one wonderful home remedy — every day for 10 days after a shower, you need to take a slice of lemon and rub it on the elbow, wait approximately three minutes, rinse and apply a nourishing cream. After a week you will see that the skin has become much lighter. This is provided that the skin on the elbows has not been severely neglected.
