Dry Hand Skin Repair Kit
This is dermatologist-recommended skin treatment for severely dry, chapped, painful hands and cracked fingertips. To heal dry, cracked, and painful hand skin you need to deeply hydrate your hand skin so that it will heal. You also need a gentle, but effective, hand cleanser that won't over-strip precious skin lipids needed for healthy skin.
Hand skin is unique because it's so thick, which means it's also slow to heal. Plus, damaged hand skin takes a beating because you use your hands all day long, even when they are chapped.
To heal dry, chapped, cracked, and painful hands, you need the best products that work synergistically to repair and prevent dry hands.
The skin care products that you need to help heal chapped hands include:
- A non-drying hand soap to use all day, every day, for hand washing.
- The best non-greasy, but moisturizing and protective, hand cream to apply after washing throughout the day - as often as possible.
- A deeply hydrating skin treatment at night that can soak into your thick and damaged hand skin to help it heal.
- A gentle way to keep fingertip skin from becoming so hard and thick that it cracks.
My Dry Hand Skin Repair Kit is a dermatologist's treatment to heal severely chapped hands.
This kit includes everything you need:
Naturally Best Bar Soap: A gentle, fragrance-free and non-drying natural bar soap that rinses off easily and quickly. Rinsing all soap residue off of your hands is important to prevent retained soap residue from pulling out precious skin lipids that keep hand skin strong and able to fend off dryness. This soap is also naturally rich in hydrating glycerin. (Please note that eco-friendly Naturally Best Bar Soap was added to the kit as of 4/23 to substitute for the discontinued Natural Foaming Liquid Hand Soap.)
Dry Skin Hand Cream: My hand cream is the best intensive, non-greasy hand cream for daily use and beats all other products - this is no ordinary hand cream! The trick is that it is non-greasy, healing and 'sealing', which makes it a really good hand cream to use throughout your day after hand washing. Frequent application of a good hand cream is an essential step for healing your hand skin - greasy hand creams are messy and impractical. Dr. Bailey Skin Care's Dry Skin Hand Cream hydrates and protects without greasy oils, so you can apply it to your hands all day long after washing and your hands will heal. The tube is also a good size to carry in your purse, to keep in a coat pocket (there's always a tube in my lab coat), to keep by the sink, etc. Put a tube by every sink at which you commonly wash your hands to make moisturizing convenient. This is how you heal your dry, chapped hands and brittle nails and keep your skin healthy all year long, no matter how hard you are on your hands.
Bag Balm and Cotton Gloves: This combination is the secret night repair therapy to deeply hydrate your dry, chapped, and damaged hand skin. It also helps to heal brittle and cracked fingernails.
- These gloves are the best-fitting therapeutic cotton gloves with a comfortable, but snug, wristband to keep gloves on while you sleep.
- Bag Balm Ointment is unsurpassed for healing chapped hands. It's been a healing remedy for the cracked, hardworking hand skin of housewives and gardeners for over 100 years.
Bag Balm is an American farm and folk remedy that's been around since 1899. This lanolin rich and slightly antibacterial ointment was originally used to keep cows' udders from chapping during cold Vermont winters.
The farmers who applied it to their cows found that it healed their chapped hands and Bag Balm rapidly gained popularity for human use. Over the years, Bag Balm has become known as a multi-purpose wonder treatment for the entire family. Bag Balm is also a home remedy used to relieve chapped, scratched, wind-burned or sunburned skin anywhere on the body (feet, heels, elbows, etc.) and splitting, brittle fingernails. It can be applied to cuts, scrapes, or abrasions to help skin heal.
Pro-tip for cracked fingertips:
I recommend occasionally using an emery board nail file to file off any buildup of hard fingertip skin to help prevent cracking. Yes, it's true; fingertip fissures can be treated and prevented by gently filing excessive and dry hard skin. Think of your fingertips like leather, they get thick and dry with use. Gently filing down the thick skin helps you keep your fingertip skin properly moisturized and soft, and this prevents cracking. Use the Bag Balm and gloves at night to keep the skin soft. Apply the Dry Skin Hand Cream throughout the day for hydration, and help prevent painful cracked fingertip fissures.
This kit is what I use to keep my own hands healthy. I'm a dermatologist who washes her hands often during a work day, a gardener who is hard on her hands, and I'm a mother and homemaker who has her hands in household chores. We are tough on our hands and this kit helps keep our hands soft, healthy and free from chapping no matter how hard we work them.
Ideal hand care for:
- eczema
- contact allergic and irritant dermatitis
- psoriasis
- hand dermatitis
- calloused hands
Key ingredients:
- aloe vera
- coconut oil
- dimethicone
- jojoba oil
- lanolin
- olive oil
- vitamin E
- green tea
Free of:
- sulfates
- fragrance
- formaldehyde
- phthalates
Cruelty free kit. Skin care products made in the U.S.A.
You can have soft, healthy hands all year round if you understand what causes chapped hands and what you need to do to treat and prevent them. Exposure to harsh chemicals, strong detergents, and extreme weather causes the loss of skin oils and pulls water out of your hand skin, causing them to chap, crack, and become painful. Once chapped, they are fragile. Continued exposure to these elements will escalate the chapping.
With careful hand washing, the use of gloves to protect your hands from weather and chemicals, and the regular application of the right moisturizers, your skin will heal.
Dr. Bailey's Skin Care for Chapped, Painful, Dry Hands and Fingertip Fissures:
Step 1: Hand Washing
Lather the Naturally Best Bar Soap onto the damp dirty palm side of your hands only, unless the thinner more fragile skin on the back or your hands has also gotten dirty or come into contact with germs.
Be sure to rinse your hands really well; retained soap residue will always dry and irritate skin. Pay special attention to the space between your fingers and under your rings where soap residue often hides.
Use only very gentle soaps that rinse off easily such as the Naturally Best Bar Soap included in my Dry Hand Skin Repair Kit.
Step 2: Hand Moisturizing
Hand moisturizing during the day: apply a good, non-greasy hand cream such as Dr. Bailey Skin Care's Dry Skin Hand Cream immediately after toweling off from washing. Only apply your hand cream after washing because moisturizers work by trapping water that your hand skin soaked up when they were wet. Applying moisturizer to dry skin is not nearly as effective at helping your dry skin heal!
Apply Dr. Bailey's Hand Cream to your entire hand, but especially the back, which has thinner skin and is more likely to chap. Wipe off the excess cream from the palm side (I rub it onto my wrist and forearm skin) to keep from having a slippery grip and to keep it off things that you touch.
The most effective non-greasy hydrating ingredients are glycerin and lanolin. During the day use a product that is non-greasy such as our Dry Skin Hand Cream, which is glycerin rich.
Hand moisturizing at bedtime: at night give your hands a deeply healing treatment with Bag Balm, a heavy ointment that is loaded with lanolin to soften and heal rough dry skin. To do this, soak your hands in warm (not hot) water for five minutes, towel dry, then apply a generous layer Bag Balm. Put on the cotton gloves and leave them on overnight. (If you are wool allergic, use pure Shea butter instead of Bag Balm because lanolin comes from wool. Shea butter is available in the skin care section of your natural food store.)
Step 3: Wear Protective Rubber or Latex Gloves
Protect your hands when you need to touch strong detergents or chemicals. These exposures damage the skin barrier of your hands by removing skin lipids and damaging skin keratin protein. They also irritate and inflame broken hand skin. In harsh weather, wear gloves that protect your hands from chapping wind and cold temperature.
Because hand skin is thick, it can take up to six months for severely chapped hand skin to heal sufficiently and regain its barrier strength so be patient and keep using the gloves.
Step 4: Special Care for Fingertip Fissures
Rough and cracked fingertip skin is like thick old, dry, cracked leather. You need to thin it down by filing it and soften it by drenching it in water-binding moisturizers.
Soak your hands in warm water for five minutes or more, then use an emery board nail file to gently smooth your rough skin. Then apply Bag Balm daily to any cracks until they finally heal.
Naturally Best Bar Soap: (3.5g): This soap is naturally glycerin rich because it is handmade from organic saponified oils of palm, coconut, olive, and palm kernel, organic cocoa butter, organic powdered oatmeal, aloe vera, organic rosemary extract. All ingredients, including palm oil, are organic and ethically sourced.
Dry Skin Hand Cream: (4 oz.): Purified Water, Glycerin, Cetyl Alcohol, Isopropyl Myristate, Sodium Cetearyl Sulfate, Dimethicone, Cetearyl Ethylhexanoate, Hydrolyzed Sodium Hyaluronate, Camellia Sinesis Leaf Extract, Tocopheryl Acetate, Panthenol, Sorbitol, Phenoxyethanol, Disodium EDTA.
Bag Balm: 1 oz. 8 Hydroxyquinoline Sulfate (0.3% in a Petrolatum, Lanolin Base)
Cotton Gloves: 1 pair