Winter Skin Saver – Vichy Aqualia Thermal Mineral Balm.

I’ve raved before about the wonders of products containing spa minerals (see THIS post), and recently came across another gem product from Vichy.

Like a lot of people with dry-combo skin, winter really saps the life out of my complexion. What with constant changes in temperature going in and out of the cold, and the effects of central heating, and even having the heater blasting away in the car on an almost constant basis, my skin is left looking dry, dehydrated, dull and blotchy. Its a great look.

I recently got totally fed up of this state of affairs, and saught relief from the skincare aisle in my local Boots. If I’m ever looking for a problem to a skin solution, I usually head straight for the Vichy/Avene/La Roche-Posay area, and this was no exception.

The Vichy Aqualia range is designed to deal with issues of dry and dehydrated skin, and I noticed this lurking on the shelves, a product I haven’t noticed before…

This immediately attracted me firstly because it’s a balm, which sounds comforting and soothing in itself, and secondly because it describes itself as giving “Rehydrating Repairing Care – “Bandage” effect”, which sounded fancy but also sounded soothing and just what my desert-face needed.

In addition  – I love the fact that this comes in a pump. You get 50mls for £16.50 from Boots, however I’m not sure if a shop around on the internet would yield a lower price.

The balm contains 50mg of spa minerals – a full breakdown of these minerals can be found on the Vichy Website, I’m not going to attempt to interpret! The important thing is that this is a high concentration of the same minerals in the water sprays.

Its also free of all the other nasties you’d expect!

The balm itself looks like this;

 It has a rich but not super thick consistency, and feels a  little bit oily to the touch initially.

When spread across the skin it looks like this;

This is definitely not the kind of cream you apply and expect to sink in quickly – in fact I’d describe this as more of a mask or treatment type of cream. It sits on the skin and sinks in slowly… How long you let it sit on the skin is up to you, but my skin slowly absorbed the lot in a few hours.

After about ten minutes or so the inital “white” look to the cream had disappeared, although it still felt like there wasa sheen of product over my skin – this actually took a couple of hours to absorb fully.

You can though, tissue it off after a while if this sounds like too long. Personally I have been slathering this on before bed, and waking up with much more comfortable feeling and brighter looking skin.

Onee word of caution though – I have noticed that blemishes lurking under the skin seem more prone to revealing themselves quickly, so I wouldn’t recommend this for the night before a big event. It also goes without saying that those with oilier skin types probably wouldn’t want to touch this with a bargepole!

For me though, this has restored calm and hydration to my desert face!
I can see this being of use in the warmer months as well for sun parched skin, or even, god-forbid, sun burned skin.