Last week I popped into the Cetaphil launch where I got to eat way too many slices of mini pizza and downed a bunch of Cosmopolitans served from their fancy pants ice bar.

The event’s theme was rather ‘Frozen’-like, what with products sitting on ice, which was frustrating as it made it rather difficult to slip the display products into my handbag. I mean, a girl can never have enough Cetaphil cleanser, right?

Anyway, it turned out I didn’t have to risk frost bite to get my hands on Cetaphil products ‘cos we left with a nice goodie bag and I was also sent a few Cetaphil goodies earlier on in the month, two of which are these babies.

I’ve really enjoyed using the fragrance-free body moisturiser. It’s got a lovely lotion-like texture and absorbs super fast. As for the body wash, it’s a bit of a Godsend ‘cos, now that it’s winter, I live in the shower and bath with the hot water cranked up to as hot as I can tolerate and this actually ends up dehydrating your skin. (You’d think that knowing this would make me stop, but nope, nope, nope.) Fortunately, the body wash helps with damage control as its specially formulated to cleanse without stripping and contains loads of hydrating ingredients like Shea butter, sunflower seed oil and glycerine as well as soothing allantoin.

While the South African packaging doesn’t talk about it, Cetaphil’s Restoraderm lotion and body wash feature the same formula as the duo in the states that helps ease eczema symptoms. How exactly? It’s all about filaggrin, so gather round jungle friends, I’m about to fill you in on it.

People suffering from very dry skin or eczema lack the production of natural moisturisers like ceramides and are also more than likely deficient in the aforementioned filaggrin. Despite sounding like a baddie in Game of Thrones, filaggrin’s actually a good guy – a protein that helps the outer post layers of your skin flatten out and create a protective barrier. If you don’t have enough filaggrin, the outer layer of your skin kind of looks like a roof where some of the tiles are lifting away and this lets irritants in and moisture out. Sadly, the amount of filaggrin you have is controlled by your genes and those who don’t have enough are actually dealing with a mild gene mutation. (For me, this kind of explains a lot because my little sister’s the eczema-riddled allergy baby in the family so confirming that she is indeed a mutant made a lot of sense.)

But let’s get back to Cetaphil’s Restoraderm range. It uses a combo of ingredients (arginine and sodium PCA) to help encourage certain cells to break down into much-needed filaggrin. Can we get a ‘ta da!’ up in here? So, whether you suffer from eczema like my mutant sibling or simply want to blitz winter dryness with the big guns, consider swapping out your current ‘hydrating’ body wash and butter for the cleverer duo that is Cetaphil’s Restoraderm body wash and lotion. In essence, you’ll be giving your skin an instant ‘drink’ as well as teaching it how to behave with every application.

Love, love

Leigh

P.S. I’ve got a li’l promo alert for you. While Dis-Chem is currently offering Cetaphil’s body wash and lotion at the best price (R209,95 vs Clicks’ R275,95) Clicks is running a promo until 20 June where if you buy any 3 Cetaphil products you get one of them for free.