36: Why Your Skin Is So Dry (It’s Not Just Dehydration)

Dry Skin Isn’t Just Skin Deep

You’ve changed the lotion.
Switched to non-toxic products.
Drunk more water.
Tried the supplements.

And your skin is still dry.

What if your skin isn’t the problem?
What if it’s the signal?

In today’s episode, we unpack what dry skin is actually trying to communicate — and why stress, burnout, and nervous system imbalance may be the root cause.

Before we go deeper: if you are experiencing sudden rashes, allergic reactions, or skin flare-ups after medications or medical procedures, please seek medical attention. Acute skin reactions should always be evaluated.

Now… let’s talk about the everyday dry, crackly, “why-is-this-happening” skin.

What We Cover in This Episode

• Why the skin is often the first place burnout shows up
• How stress shifts your body into emergency mode
• Why your body prioritizes survival over skin repair
• The connection between breathing and moisture
• How mouth breathing contributes to dryness
• Why lotions alone won’t fix the root issue
• Practical nervous system resets you can start today
• How to protect your skin barrier naturally

The Burnout Connection

When you're chronically stressed, your body goes into survival mode.

It prioritizes:

• Heart
• Brain
• Lungs
• Liver
• Kidneys

Skin repair? That moves down the priority list.

Stress also disrupts your skin barrier, making it harder to hold moisture — even if you're drinking water and using clean products.

Dry skin can be a subtle red flag that your nervous system is overextended.

Breathing & Moisture Are Connected

Fast, shallow, chest breathing (especially mouth breathing) keeps you wired in a sympathetic “fight or flight” state.

Your airways need moisture to function properly.
When stress increases breathing demand, your body reallocates moisture internally — and your skin can reflect that loss.

Translation?
Chronic stress can literally dry you out.

Two Practical Resets

1️⃣ Breathing Reset (2–3x daily)

• Inhale through your nose for 4
• Hold for 7
• Exhale through your mouth for 8
• Repeat 4–6 cycles

This longer exhale helps activate your parasympathetic nervous system — the repair mode.

2️⃣ Skin Barrier Reset

• Shorter, warm (not hot) showers
• Apply non-toxic lotion immediately after drying
• Rotate natural oils to support barrier diversity

Remember: your body loves variety and rhythm — not rigidity.

Final Encouragement

Dry skin isn’t always about hydration.

Sometimes it’s your body waving a quiet flag saying:
“I need restoration.”

If this episode resonated, please rate and review the podcast. Share it with a friend who keeps buying new skincare products without seeing change.

And if you want help decoding other body signals, grab the Body Signal Decoder.

With you on the journey,
 Dr. Brook

🎧 Stay Connected + Explore More Support:

📲 Come say hi on Instagram: @drbrooksheehan

⭐️ If you loved this episode, would you take a moment to leave a five-star review on Apple or Spotify. It helps more women learn to listen, trust, and transform their health.

Transcript

Dr. Brook Sheehan (00:00)

Your dry skin is actually a very big clue. Your body's waving that flag telling you burnout is around the corner. This is not when you wanna run to lotions or potions. Your body is actually spending more energy on staying safe. What is necessary? We need the heart beating. We need the lungs. We need the digestive tract. We need the kidneys. We need the liver. We need the brain. Yes, we need the skin, one of the first places that starts to kind of show up externally when there's this internal low battery.

Welcome to the body speaks podcast with me, Dr. Brook Sheehan. Join me, on a journey, in discovering how to interpret the subtle signs your body uses to communicate with you - the whispers, the screams, and everything in between. Your body truly holds the answers for your health and wellbeing. It’s time to discover them, together. Let’s dive in.

Dr. Brook Sheehan (00:00)

Hello friend, I am so excited you are here today. I am Dr. Brook. If this is the first time you are experiencing the podcast, welcome. For those of you who are returning and listening to another episode, thank you for being here. I hope that all of these episodes in the library bank of podcast episodes have just been really helpful to help you understand what your body is saying.

One of the things that I want to talk about today is something us women experience all the time and we try so hard to actually fix this and make it go away At least that's what we think we're doing, we think we're making it go away. But we still cannot figure out what is happening. No matter what we try, no matter what we do, no matter how much we apply, apply, apply, buy, buy, buy, nothing's working.

And that my friend is dry skin. What in the world is our skin trying to communicate? What is our body trying to say with this signal? What is going on? Now we hear a lot, especially for those of you who are in the wellness space, who are already doing the things about non-toxic living and trying all of the alternatives, the natural alternatives to these lotions and potions that the skincare industry wants to sell us, right?

And we're trying and we're doing all the natural remedies, but nothing is happening. And that is what we are going to get in today. What in the world are you trying to say to me, Skin? Why am I having maybe these insane breakouts or what is going on when I'm having these pockets of rashiness or redness or just cannot for the life of me get my dry skin to respond well.

Now I will say from the very, very beginning here, anytime the skin is showing up any kind of rashy behavior, I do want to make a statement here. It is imperative that you keep an eye on that kind of stuff because the skin is your body's largest organ.

Largest organ of your body is your skin. And so when things are happening internally, they can start to reflect externally. I have had patients over the years experience shifts with medications that they're on and their skin flares up and reacts. I've had people get MRIs or CT scans and having contrast in those and their skin react to that.

It's important to pay attention to things that are coming up all of a sudden, almost like an emergency. The skin is flaring up. That is not something to mess around with. There is so much. Now I won't go into all the biochemistry and all the nuanced science that is going on in those situations when you're having allergic reaction to things.

But if you are having allergic reaction to something, it is imperative that you get it actually looked at and addressed with a medical professional, your medical professional. Because if we just try to will the rash to go away that just all of a sudden flared up or we're continuing to do what it is that our body is screaming about, right?

I talk about with the CT or the MRI and that contrast that body is screaming about it like, whoa I did not like that this is causing a reaction to my need to pay attention to that we cannot let that loose because what ends up happening if you continue now, granted most people are not getting contrast with MRIs and CTs over and over and over within a short amount of period a lot of that is in you know lengthy times and so that might be a little bit of a different scenario, but I'm talking about if you're taking a certain medication or the dosing changed or it's a brand new medication or you're trying something for an allergy or whatever you might be attempting to try.

Like, my gosh, I just took a antibiotic and I am breaking out all over the place in these really rashy scenarios, okay? Those things you do need to look at. As a child, I had chronic ear infections growing up and I was on amoxicillin for those and...

I cannot, I can no longer take any saline antibiotics. I had to wear an allergy bracelet when I was giving birth to my daughter because of that, because I took it so many times over and over and I'm talking short and short and shorter periods of time because these ear infections just kept coming. I never had to get tubes in my ears, thank the Lord. But the infections kept showing up. And so taking all these antibiotics, cause that's the normal thing you do in conventional medicine and that's how I grew up very conventionally not holistically.

So we didn't know the natural things to these things. But in that case I developed an allergy I started breaking out all kinds of rashes, all over my body, itchy. I just I remember mom. What is this? What is this? I was probably 13 or 14 years old at this time and, having had them for years, but my body finally said, enough is enough. I'm over

I just want to be very, very clear if there is those kind of presentations on your skin. Turn this episode off, call your primary care physician, maybe go to urgent care if you're not getting ahold of anybody and get it looked at and addressed because you definitely don't want those things to persist because it can be deeper underlying issues.

Then you can come back to this episode after you are done getting all of that addressed and you can learn other amazing things about your skin and what certain signals mean in your skin. So we know breakouts, lot of you listening are very holistically minded. We know breakouts are not just because the pores in your face are blocked or they're causing oil buildup or all these, there's internal things going on. Most of you are aware of that.

And I would say a lot of you are aware of that in terms of like also the gut being involved and the liver being involved and so forth. So we got to look at things systemically. But when we're at a standstill and we've done all the detoxes, we've tried all of the supplements, we're taking care of our liver, we're doing the cleanses.

All of that and you're not noticing any shifts, this is a big one that most of you are probably gonna wanna throw tomatoes at me after hearing this and maybe you wanna turn off your speaker in your car and you're like, I'm so mad. But honestly, we cannot and I mean cannot dismiss the fact that stress, yes stress, plays a huge role in your skin health.

Yes, yes, yes, yes. Why is that? I'm gonna go through three different things on what your skin is doing when it's crazy dry, when it's all crackly, when it just doesn't look healthy, and no matter how much water you're drinking, it's not enough, no matter how much lotion you're using, it's not enough.

I'm gonna give you some tactical things you can do right now to help support your skin and to help bring life back into it so it doesn't look like the Sahara desert, but it looks like that moist, rain foresty vibe to it, okay? We don't wanna be the desert, we wanna be the moist, rain foresty vibe with our skin. And stress plays a huge component to that.

So let's talk about this. First one is your dry skin is actually a very big clue. Your body's waving that flag telling you burnout is around the corner. If it hasn't already happened, burnout is around the corner. I've talked in other episodes about sneezing and what sneezing identifies in your body or what your body is trying to say through that. Episode 21, quick plug for that. Go back and listen to that. You will learn a ton about what to do when your body sneezes.

What do you do when you're having these crazy dry skin issues? It's a sign of burnout.

This is not when you wanna run to lotions or potions. In fact, this dry skin, you cannot miss this because it will only get worse. So when you're stressed out on a burnout issue, doing all the things, burning the candle at both ends, taking the kids, working, running your business, everything that you have going on in your life, your body acts like it's an emergency mode.

And in emergency mode, when you're running, running, running, running, doing all this stuff, your body is actually spending more energy on staying safe, trying to regulate that nervous system, get the cortisol all under balance and less energy on fixing small stuff. You don't, I mean, okay, don't fight me over this and go, Dr. Brook, that's wrong. What I'm going to say here.

You technically, although you do, your skin can go in terms of what is the priority to keep the whole entire system alive and well. What is necessary? We need the heart beating. We need the lungs taking breaths and pumping back and forth. We need the digestive tract. We need the kidneys. We need the liver. We need the brain.

Yes, we need the skin, but the skin is going to be one of the first places that starts to kind of show up externally when there's this internal low battery. We're in that energy mode. So it's not going to keep our skin moist and looking like the rainforest. It's going to bring us over to the Sahara desert side of things. And it's just like, no, no, no, no, we don't want that. It does mess with our skin barrier.

I mentioned the skin being the largest organ of the body. Stress will mess with that skin barrier and it makes it harder for your skin to hold onto water. So you can be drinking all the water, doing all the things you would normally be doing, eating all the healthy foods that you normally are eating. But if there's so much stress in your system, that skin cannot and will not repair until you learn to bring that nervous system back into balance.

And it's learned. It is a skill set. It is something that you have to be proactive about. It is not like, okay, well, when the kids are 15 and driving, I'm no longer going to be stressed. There are things you can do. I'm going to be sharing that with you. Stay tuned. Okay. Don't turn this off because you're so upset because I didn't tell you that you needed to use this product. And this is your magic lotion or your magic pill to get this better.

Here's another thing about your skin and moisture and why it can get so dry when you're in a burnout state is because breathing and moisture are connected. So your nose and your airways have to add moisture to the air that we breathe in. So the air that we breathe in doesn't have a lot of moisture. Now, depending on where we are, of course it could, right? That's why people use humidifiers and the devices to bring more moisture in the air, we want more humid situations in certain cases.

Most of the time, the air that we're breathing in needs to have moisture attached to it so that it can be used properly by our lungs. So our lungs do not get dried out. Our lungs, of course, I know you know this, even not understanding the body at all. You're like, duh, we need our lungs. They can't be dried out. That sounds absolutely insane.

Well, when we're in a state of stress and we've got all this stuff running through our body and our body's identifying that, my gosh, yeah, Dr. Brook, I do have dry skin. I am drinking a lot of water. I am doing everything that I've normally done before and I can't figure this out. Well, this is a big part of it is because if you're breathing through your mouth a lot and you're not breathing through your nose, you're getting that fast and shallow breath, you do get dried out more easily.

You'll start to notice it in your lips. You'll start to notice it in your mouth. You'll have a lot of dry mouth symptoms and you'll start to notice it in your face. No change in any of your products and you'll start to see negative shifts in there and then you'll want to change your products without wanting to actually change what the actual core issue is. So that is what we're getting into today. That's all the good stuff that we're unpacking.

So your body is using a lot of moisture to help keep your breathing system comfortable. So you're going to feel that dryness in your mouth, in your lips and in your face, primarily because of the way that oxygen exchange is happening through that portion of our body. We want to be mainly breathing through our nose, not through our mouth.

Exhaling through the mouth is a very good thing to do. Breathing in through the nose, exhaling through the mouth. That will help actually settle your nervous system a little bit. You've got to be consistent. This is not making it a full-time job. This is not saying you have to spend the next 10 minutes in a breath work class and doing all these things.

I'm talking about things that you can do while your sandwich bread is toasting in the morning or while your coffee is being made, being intentional about these things that you're doing. I'm gonna get into that. I'm getting a little ahead of myself because I get so ramped up and excited. So bear with me guys, bear with me.

So as you're breathing that faster chest breath and you're breathing through the mouth and not the nose, like I was just mentioning, that kind of breathing keeps your body feeling wired. It's actually throwing your nervous system off instead of being calm. So you're in that more sympathetic tone. When you're running from a real predator, a tiger, the last thing your body is thinking about is I need to bring oxygen through my nose.

Let me close my mouth. A lot of us are running with our mouths open like, oh my gosh, the tiger's coming. Right? And so it does cause us to stay wired and it doesn't focus on repair like fixing that skin barrier, as I said. So I know I said I got ahead of myself, but what is the solution piece? What do we do when we have this dry skin Dr. Brook? I want you to do two, one of two things.

You can incorporate both of them. You don't need to incorporate both of them every day. This does not need to be a rigid, religious practice. This can be honestly something that you do. Some days you really just focus on the breathing and then the other days you do the other thing. So here it is. You're going to do a breathing reset and you're going to do this two to three times a day.

Again, it could literally be while your coffee is brewing, while your toast is in the toaster, while you're, I don't know, doing help, the kids are doing something, whatever, there's moments in your day you can make this happen. Don't tell me that you can't. I live a very busy lifestyle. I know what busy is like, but I also know what it looks like to really honor and care for my body. Do I do things perfectly? Absolutely not. Do I always get it right? Absolutely not. Will you always get it right? Will you always do it perfect?

Absolutely not, and that is okay because perfection is not the goal. It is about having a beautiful relationship with our body and learning to listen to it when it's telling us certain things or when it is signaling certain things. That breathing reset you could do two to three times a day.

That is simply breathing in through your nose, holding for about seven seconds, and then exhaling through your mouth for eight seconds. So your inhale, I didn't mention that, but it's gonna be for four seconds. Four seconds in, hold for seven seconds, exhaling for eight. On that longer exhale that you're doing, you're actually going to bring your body back into that parasympathetic rest and digest state.

Now, is this going to be a one time fix it all thing? No, I said two to three times a day and being intentional about doing it. You can do four to six cycles of this, meaning one out, that's one, in, out, that's two, right? Having that cycle that like four to six cycles of that really can just help settle your nervous system in such a way

And you'll start to see these really good changes that are happening internally in your body. And in turn, your skin is going to mirror that health that is happening inside, right? That's what we want. We want what's happening on the inside to be mirrored on the outside without having to do so much of the external lotions and potions and all the things that we're doing.

And we can occasionally enjoy a Starbucks Frappuccino, if that's your thing without feeling like I've just sent my body off the deep end. The other thing, here's the second one, is the skin barrier reset. I mentioned the skin barrier. The body's number one organ is your skin. Anything that touches your skin, those lotions and potions. And like I said, friend, you probably already are using non-toxic products, amen.

Applaud that effort because 26 seconds after touching your skin, whether it's a soap that you wash your hands with in the bathroom or a face cleanser or a body wash, anything that touches your skin, 26 seconds before it is in your bloodstream. That is insane. That is insane. That is so quick, so fast. So I know you're using good products, but if you're not getting results with your skin, what we, a lot of times, resort to is my gosh that natural castor oil or lotion and coconuts not working I need to go to Sephora and I need to buy all the stuff. No, no, no. Nope.

We're gonna protect our skin barrier. We're gonna protect our skin barrier We're going we're going to do that by taking showers. Now. This is a word for me for those of you who know Dr. Brook I crank it all the way all the way to the very end of H where I cannot get that dial on the shower to go any further. I am hot, hot, hot, hot, hot.

Now I do not consume anything. This is ironic. This is a random thing I'm learning about myself right now, processing with you all in real time. I do not drink any of my drinks hot, hot, hot. I have to have them lukewarm. That means my coffee sits on the counter before I even touch it. Sits there probably for 15 minutes before I even will take a drink.

But my showers guys, my showers, man, man, they need to be hot, hot, hot. And I, again, not perfect, but being intentional about mindfulness and what my body's actually seeking, at times I have to take warm showers. And you want to keep them shorter when you're doing the warm showers, like warm, I mean, whatever. Okay, so this is relative.

So if you are normally three fourths of the way through the dial, your warm might be the dial being halfway up, right? Right. Just in between cold and hot. For me, I would be in that three fourths category since I'm all the way at a hundred in terms of that. So keep them shorter, four to five minutes might not be like obviously done in a hair wash day. So you could just do it when you're not washing your hair and you are just shaving and washing your face and exfoliating and getting, you know, your body wash and all that.

So that's good, keep them shorter and then put lotion on right after you dry off. So that lotion, again, your non-toxic stuff, I tend to move around with the different oils at times. I'll be using coconut oil and other times castor oil and other times I'm actually using a non-toxic lotion. So it just depends on where you're at in your cycle. Switch things up, your body loves diversity. I'm gonna do an entire episode on that as well.

I've gone into it before in depth. So these are some practical ways you can help heal your skin guys. Yay. I so appreciate you. Thank you for being here. Thank you for listening to this episode. Would love for you to rate it, give it a review, whether you're listening on Apple podcasts or Spotify, it really does support the show.

It does help more women like you get to hear stuff that is very much not talked about in today's culture in health and wellness, where we are learning about different things that we should be eating or taking or doing and all of it, not saying it's bad, but we need to know what our body is saying and interpret that. So consider me your translator when the body is saying X this or Y that it's like, I'm going to tell you like I'm your Duolingo for the body.

Thanks again for listening. I know I'm being so silly and I appreciate you being here. Share this with a girlfriend who might need to hear this stuff. And if you are curious on what your body signals are saying, I do have the body signal decoder. It is in the show notes below. Make sure you check that out and get to learn what your body might be saying through other symptoms. Today we talked about skin. We're gonna get into others, but you can learn about those even before I get to those episodes.

Have a beautiful rest of your day and I will talk to you soon. Bye for now.