the moisturizer rabbit hole tl;dr - they primarily trap the skin's own moisture and have ingredients that promote moisture pulling from deeper layers - they do not literally "moisturize" your skin --- i realised today that applying a full face moisturizer is close to useless if your face was not recently damp moisturizers broadly have 3 components - emollients (soften the skin), humectants (pull water up from deeper layers of skin), occlusives (fill any gaps reducing moisture loss) add to the fact that the outer layer of the skin naturally repels water and it becomes clear a moisturizer does not supply the moisture, it has components that either trap existing moisture or has components that pull more moisture from the inner layers so if you are in a hurry or lazy to do a face wash, at a minimum a toner of some kind maybe a hocl spray solves for missing moisture - apply it, let it dry for a minute then apply moisturizer researchgate.net/publicat...

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