If you follow me on Instagram (Hello!) you'll know that I am a bit of a hand washer in times of anxiety and at this time of year that can lead to chapped hands which is incredibly painful. When this happened recently nothing was helping and I ended up with only two out of ten knuckles left unsplit. My husband was away in Washington so there was no chance of palming off any of the nappy changes or dog feeding to him so I just kept on washing and wincing. It has also been really cold here so with central heating inside and then walking the kids to school, back home to get the dogs on leads and then back out with the dogs to the park meant that my hands were being really affected by the weather as well.
I spoke to the pharmacist about it when I went to pick up a prescription and now I feel like I really have the chapped hand survival (and hopefully prevention) kit completely sussed out. There's a very bad picture, taken from an InstaStory of my chapped hand. Just so you can sort of get the idea, split knuckles and raw rash all over backs.Interestingly the pharmacist was a bit reticent to recommend any particular cream apart from Epiderm which I had tried and which wasn't really doing much. She said that anything with urea in it may exacerbate the problem as I've had eczema before, and that I should avoid anything perfumed - you'd be surprised at how many hand creams that actually rules out. I ended up getting the Norwegian Formula Concentrated Unscented Handcream. I'd used their scented one before - not actually knowing it was scented, it's just the one I'd seen in the shops with the blue rather than red lid and label - and their body lotion is the only stuff that works on the dry skin on my legs. Neutrogena are my go-to for dry skin problems.
