I posted about a week ago about some products from Salcura and promised that a new post would be up soon. Well here is it and for those who didn't read the previous post, my husband Simon will be taking over from here and reviewing the following products ...
For a few years now
I've noticed that my hands get very dry in cold weather, particularly
in the finger webbing area. The skin gets red, rough and flaky,
which can get pretty uncomfortable. When it gets really bad the skin
actually cracks and bleeds. My Doctor prescribed me some
barrier cream when I went to see him about it but it wasn't
particularly practical. It just didn't soak in which meant I couldn't
really do anything without transferring the oily gunge onto
everything around me. I've found off the shelf moisturiser better,
the two most useful products being Aveeno hand cream and the Body
Shop's Hemp moisturiser, which is almost a paste and could be easily
applied to just the affected areas.
Over the last month, I've been trying Salcura Dermaspray Intensive liquid
moisturiser* and Salcura Zeoderm skin repair moisturiser*. Two separate products however it is recommended they are used in
conjunction.
Firstly, the Dermaspray Intensive liquid moisturiser comes in a 100ml spray bottle
that should be good for 800 sprays. The idea is to apply it 3 or 4
times a day initially and then as skin condition improves to reduce
the frequency and use as necessary to keep skin supple.
I imagine the spray
application will be really handy if you're applying to a large area
of skin, somewhere like your back, as the spray has a wide range and the instructions say you don't
need to rub it in. I've found that for doing the backs of my
hands it does benefit from a quick wipe to get it everywhere I need
it. It's got a nice, clean, almost clinical smell that I really like
– I can certainly smell the tee tree oil in it. Having said that,
it soaks in really quickly and doesn't leave any residue. My hands
are fine for typing a couple of minutes after application and the
smell has doesn't last very long.
I noticed a definite
improvement to my hands within a couple of days of trying the product
– the red patches in between my fingers were fading and weren't
nearly as itchy. Throughout the day I was needing to reapply it,
though, and for that the spray bottle wasn't the best thing to be
carting round with me. That's where the second product came in
handy.
Salcura Zeoderm skin
repair moisturiser is a more traditional creamy moisturiser. I was using it on my hands
but it is suitable for all over the body. I was finding that even
with the Dermaspray, my hands got dry throughout the day and this
helped keep the chapped skin at bay on the go more easily than the
spray bottle. Like the spray, it goes on very nicely and soaks
right in rather than lying on the skins surface. It doesn't smell
much but what fragrance it does have is similar to the spray,
although less sharply antiseptic – it's got a lot of plant oils in
it – olive, linseed, geranium, rose and lavender, and I think these
come through more than in the spray. Still, it's a clean smell, not
cloying or sweet at all, which is good for me as I don't want to
smell too pretty.
Anyway, together the
two products have left my hands in better condition than anything
else I've tried; they soak in nice and quick, they're not strongly scented and they do all this whilst being free of nasties.
They were kindly supplied for review by Salcura but both products retail online
at around the £10 mark. At this price I consider them good
value. I've spent almost as much on hand cream that wasn't green
and didn't work nearly as well.
I think that if I keep
using the cream I'll only need to apply the spray occasionally, if at
all. It was brilliant when my hands were bad – I thought of it
like an antiseptic wound wash that also moisturised and the cream is
keeping my hands in the good condition the spray left them in. When
the cream does run out, though, I'll certainly be replacing it.
So there we have it - a review by Simon.
Both products can be purchased from the Salcura website
here.
* PR Sample