To keep your skin healthy, you must understand that it is a vital, living organ-actually, your body's largest organ.Winter is a good season for curling up beside the fireplace, reading novels, roasting chestnuts-and dehydrating your skin. Windburn, central heating, and cold, dry air have the power to strip your skin's natural oils. To arm against the ravages of the season you need to treat your whole system from both inside and out. Here are some tips to help protect your skin this season. *

1. Soak not
Long hot showers strip your skin of natural oils, can break capillaries and leave you with painful dry zones along the arms, hips and shins (where the water pressure hits hardest). Try to bathe instead in slightly more tepid water and the second you leave the shower oil yourself up with a non-perfumed body lotion. Moisture needs to be locked into the skin while pores are open.

2. Face the frost
Moisturizers should be a little heavier in winter, especially when going outdoors. Moisturizers that are made of beeswax sweet almond oil, shea butter, collagen or vegetable squalene are preferable to the cheaper alternatives that contain mineral oil and petroleum. These ingredients tend to clog the pores.

3. Shed your skin
Sloughing off a layer of dry dead skin cells readies the skin to receive more moisture. Use an exfoliating, light facial scrub 2-3 times a week.

4. Eat oily
Unsaturated fats help the body absorb protein. If you have an urge to splatter a salad in virgin olive oil or devour a whole can of sardines go for it. There is a reason arctic people eat oily fish-they need it and in winter so do you!

5. Pucker pretty
Olive oil, sesame oil and vitamin E are excellent balms for dry lips. Commercial lip balms that contain shea butter keep lips soft and conditioned.

6. Move about
Nutrients come to the skin when your circulation is pumping. It also lifts winter blues to exercise.

7. Mist and spritz
Spraying your face with lavender or rose water does not serve to radically moisten it but it definitely eases the tightness that comes with sitting in a heated room. Eye creams, lip balm (non petroleum-based, please) hand creams and a purse size spritzer should go everywhere with you in winter.

8. Go herbal
Red wine, coffee, hot chocolate and strong brewed tea can become obsessive comforts in winter. Sadly these beverages seriously dry out your system. Experiment with herbal teas and be sure to drink lots of water!

*Excerpted from "Winterproof your Skin" by Anna Johnson