Dry skin is very common, particularly in the winter months and it's common also in individuals who have eczema atopic dermatitis, genetically will end up with dry skin. Dry skin is seen in the winter particularly because there is less moisture in the air and there's heating inside that sucks water out of the skin. It's been shown that there's a fat protein sandwich in the very surface of the skin keeping in moisture Sometimes there are these dysregulations of the barrier functio 50Maybe the protein that is arranged to be a part of this barrier is defective. Sometimes the fats aren't quite as they should be allowing loss of water. Essentially dryness of the skin is the inability of water to be kept in the stratum corneum, the surface of the skin.