OUTSMART THE URBAN GRIND

Heat, pollution, and screens are wrecking your skin's calm. The fix isn't more products, it's smarter protection and repair

- 

Here's the thing: city life is great for your calendar and brutal for your skin.

Between heat that wilts your moisturiser by noon, AC that drinks your face for sport, traffic fumes doing their tiny tango on your barrier, and screens beaming blue light at midnight, urban living rewrites your complexion faster than any trend. The fix isn't more steps. It's smarter ones-protection by day, repair by night, and a routine built for the climate we actually live in.

Modern dermatology has a name for this mashup of heat, pollution and UV hitting you at once: environmental stress. As Yale dermatologist Mona Gohara put it in an interview about caring for skin in a warming world, less atmospheric protection "allows for less of a shield from cancer-causing UV rays," while humidity and rising temperatures "can lead to more irritation on the skin." For readers in the Gulf, that's your daily forecast every summer, and many winter afternoons, too.