summer skin is doing my head in a bit

Right so it's properly hot now and I've been noticing my skin looking a bit... dull? Which is weird because I'd expect the opposite in summer. But honestly it makes sense when I think about it from a hydration standpoint. The thing most people miss is that transepidermal water loss — basically how fast your skin loses moisture to the air — actually speeds up when it's warm. So even if you're drinking loads you can still end up with dehydrated skin. It's not the same as dry skin either, that's a lipid thing, this is purely water content in the upper layers. I know that sounds like splitting hairs but the fix is different depending on which one you're dealing with. What I've been doing that seems to help: applying my hyaluronic acid serum onto slightly damp skin, not dry skin. This is one of those things that's moved from promising to fairly solid evidence now — HA needs water around it to actually bind and pull moisture in, if you put it on dry skin in low humidity it can actually draw moisture out of your skin. Which is not ideal lol. I also added a thin occlusive layer on top, just a gel moisturiser, nothing heavy because I can't stand feeling greasy in this weather. The collagen side of things — I still take my peptides every morning, and there's decent evidence that specific hydrolysed peptides support skin hydration by stimulating fibroblast activity rather than just sitting there doing nothing. Mind you this is a longer game thing, not a fix for today. The matcha catechins I pair it with have some evidence around photoprotection at a cellular level but I want to be careful here — that is not a replacement for SPF, it's more like an additional layer of defence. Still more promising than solid if I'm honest. Basically my summer routine is: damp skin + HA + gel layer + SPF, every single morning. And I've stopped using my niacinamide daily for now because I found it a bit much in the heat — just my experience, others seem fine with it.