Red, Dry Skin on the Ankle

Red, dry skin on the ankle could potentially be the sign of a larger issue. Learn about red, dry skin on the ankle with help from an accredited dermatologist in this free video clip.

Video Transcript

I'm Dr. Lawrence Samuels, chief of dermatology at St. Luke's Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri, and founder of Rx Systems PF. Today I'm going to explain to you how to get rid of that red itchy scaly skin around the ankles and sometimes it will even extend up onto the leg. The fact that you actually have redness indicates that there's more than just that dry skin. So there's actually some inflammation and I many times have patients come in and they go I've been using moisturizers and it's not alleviating my problem and the reason is is they're not treating the inflammation first. There are various over-the-counter hydrocortisone preparations. The 1% would obviously be the most effective and it needs to be applied at least twice a day. It would be very easy to dampen the skin a little bit so that you make sure the hydrocortisone cream rubs in thoroughly. If after two to four weeks you've seen very little improvement, it may actually be time to seek a consultation from a dermatologist but for today, we're going to assume that the hydrocortisone cream relieves that redness and a lot of that irritation. Once it's done that, you need to use an effective moisturizer and I actually recommend beginning to use the moisturizer along with the hydrocortisone cream. So what would happen is after bathing or after you dampen the skin, you would apply the hydrocortisone cream, rub it in thoroughly, wait two or three minutes and then apply your moisturizer. If you have red, dry, irritated skin obviously your normal lotion moisturizers are not really going to be good enough so you really need good protein moisturizers. I happen to like the rejuvenating protein moisturizer from RX Systems PF. It contains pepties, collagen, soluble collagen, elastin, antioxidants, so it helps really hydrate that dry stratum corneum skin. So again, if you have red, dry, irritated skin around the ankles, it's important to bathe, even to use some type of reparative or exfoliating cleanser, then use your hydrocortisone cream, 1% twice a day, make sure it's thoroughly rubbed into the skin, wait two or three minutes, use your good protein moisturizer. Again this is Dr. Lawrence Samuels, chief of dermatology, St. Luke's Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri, and founder of RX Systems PF.