Town & Country “The Totally Free Beauty Hack That Has Changed My Skin”

A tiny routine switch with a big payoff.

BY JAMIE ROSEN PUBLISHED: Town and Country Magazine

Every time I lay my head in the cradle of a facialist's table, I brace myself for—and even encourage—criticism. "Be brutal," I always tell them. "I can handle it." Overwhelmingly, the response is the same: my skin is dehydrated. Frankly, it seems impossible. I try to drink two liters of water a day (the jumbo bkr bottles on my desk and at home help the cause), I moisturize within an inch of my life (I'm up to a six-step regimen at night. Send help.), and after years of avoiding fat in my diet, I have embraced coconut oil, avocado, and vinaigrettes with a zeal I once reserved solely for chocolate.

So how could my skin possibly be parched? "Skin is the last organ to get the water that you are drinking internally," says Nicole Paxson, a medical aesthetician in New York City. "I don't want to minimize its importance, but it's not how we treat dehydrated skin." When I visited her in the treatment room at plastic surgeon Dr. Adam Kolker's office, she revealed the common culprit: Water temperature. "Heat instantly dehydrates the skin," she told me. "It depletes skin of oil and moisture." She told me that using cool water (as cold as you can handle) to wash your face actually helps to keep the skin barrier intact, stimulate blood circulation, and maintain the proper pH level (read more about that here). All of which makes it less susceptible to irritation, and more able to hang on to all that internal and external hydration I'd been losing. Paxson is a fan of milky cleansers (she likes Biologique Recherche Lait VIP O2), and against foam and gel formulas. "Your skin should actually feel moisturized after you wash it," she says. "If it feels tight and dry, throw the cleanser away."

I'd always heard that you should cleanse with cold water. My best friend from college was an early adopter of the Erno Laszlo method of splashing your face with it 20 or 30 times a day, and she still looks like a teenager. But I never placed enough importance on it to actually do it. I made the switch after my facial with Paxson and saw an immediate difference. Whatever irritation or sensitivity I felt around my nose, especially in the winter time, went away, and my skin just started to look and feel better; less dull, more radiant. The products I was using and loving seemed to be doing their job more effectively (some credit must be given here to my winter skin power couple: SkinMedica Lytera and Chanel Hydra Beauty Micro Serum), and while I definitely don't believe in judging ourselves on someone else's opinion, I have been getting a lot more complexion compliments.

When I called Paxson to follow up, she says she hears this from clients all the time "They always say 'I thought you were crazy,'" she tells me. "But within days there is a noticeable difference.'"

I would say the toughest—and least enjoyable—part of it all has been avoiding hot water on my face while in the shower. That means not only am I not washing my face in the shower, I'm not getting my face wet at all. (This wonderful post by beauty pro Caroline Hirons says you should act as if your shower has offended you. I do that now. And it works.) I've actually come to like my cooling cleanse. Plus the results far outweigh every chilling second spent at the sink.