Hydration That Lasts

We’ve all heard it: hyaluronic acid holds 1,000 times its weight in water.
And that’s true, when we’re talking about the HA your body makes.

Your natural HA lives deep in the dermis, woven into collagen and elastin. It holds water where it belongs, keeping skin soft and bouncy from the inside out. But the bottled version? It just doesn’t work the same way.

On the surface, HA acts like a magnet. If the air is humid, it can pull in a little water from the environment. But if the air is dry, it goes looking deeper, pulling water up from your dermis. That gives you a quick plump, but once that water evaporates, you’re left with something worse than dryness: dehydration in the deeper layers. And over time, that can make skin more sensitive and reactive.

To make HA “sink in,” brands often break it into smaller fragments and call it “multiple molecular weights.” But here’s the trade-off: whole HA has antioxidant power. Once it’s chopped up, it loses that—and those fragments can even irritate the skin.

And when you zoom out, the bigger picture makes sense. The outer layer of your skin, the stratum corneum—isn’t water-based. It’s made of cells surrounded by lipids: fatty acids, cholesterol, ceramides. That’s your barrier. Its job is to keep water locked deep and protect it with oil at the surface. Water-soluble molecules like HA don’t merge into that lipid layer they just sit on top.

If we want hydration that actually lasts, we have to work with the way skin is designed, not against it.

The alternative: empowered, simplified hydration

For me, this comes down to stepping out of the cycle of chasing hydration, and instead preventing its loss by working mindfully with skin’s natural systems:

• Cleansing with oils so the barrier stays intact.

• Misting with a pure hydrosol to bring in true water.

• Sealing with oils or a breathable balm so that water actually stays put.

Simple, steady, protective. Hydration your skin can rely on.

Want to hear the full story and how to support your body’s own HA production from the inside out? I dive into all of it on this week’s episode of Skin Freqs Podcast