you’re waterproof, yo.

You know a few years ago when everyone thought that because the French drink a lot of wine and eat a high fat diet that two or so glasses of wine a day was good for you?

The hypothesis was formed when scientists looked at the contents of red wine and discovered resveratrol, a compound found in grape skins and cocoa powder.

Resveratrol has been shown to benefit the lives of rodents in a lab. Further research found that resveratrol might benefit a wine drinking human if the wine drinking human consumed 12 bottles daily. Science has since found that alcohol really isn’t good for anything in the body, so that resveratrol benefit will come at many other costs.

The conventional skincare industry as a whole talks about skin like drunk scientists trying to justify blind alcoholism.

Despite what the conventional skincare industry claims, skin does not readily absorb water and it doesn’t need us to push it into the intercellular matrix either.

If the skincare industry ever took the time to get to know the cells that make up the stratum corneum, it’d know Corneocytes are dead and water resistant. If anyone in the skincare industry had read about skin structure, they’d select their ingredients based on the fact that the intercellular matrix is suuuuuuper narrow (to keep things like water out).

Water does play an important role in skin health and body function, which is why thirst exists. There’s a whole opening in our heads that readily takes water in.

As for skincare, water applied topically helps to spread oils and silicones around. It really has more of an emotional benefit (totes legit) than anything.

Check out this BBC News article about what you can absorb in your skin.