Enriched or Greased?? (Nivea Extra Enriched Lotion)

Member Name: TigerTiger

Product:	Nivea Extra Enriched Lotion
Date:	08/03/02 (327 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Excellent for VERY dry skin, Not wasteful

Disadvantages: Greasy so cannot get dressed after applying

~~~~Aaaaaaaahhhhh!!~~~~~

For the first time in my life I have been confronted with dry skin......aaaaahhhhh. I must be getting old is all I can presume as they say your skin texture changes with age! Anyway, having spent my life to date battling with greasy or just pretty normal skin I didn't really know what to do. I spent weeks just applying more of my usual moisturiser which was both useless and expensive and then I decided to try baby oil, however it was all useless as my skin was still dry and a little flakey. So, action was needed and I went out to scour the shelves of Boots to discover a product to remedy the problem.

Nivea has a huge range of products to suit every skin type and my mum has always sworn by them, eventually I settled on the Enriched Body Moisturiser especially formulated for dry skin.

~~~Packaging & Look~~~

Nivea Enriched Body lotion comes in a 250ml squeezy bottle in the typical blue style Nivea packaging. It doesn't look particularly special, it couldn't be classified as glamorous. However,it doesn't look cheap either. It's just pretty ordinary really.

The squeezy bottle means that the cream comes out easily enough. I found that because the bottle was made of quite thick plastic this limited the potential waste as the cream doesn't just come flowing out, as I have found with many other products. A little bit came out with each squeeze and this meant I could rub it in and see whether I needed any more or not. This was good as in Boots it costs nearly £5 a bottle and when you use it all over your body as intended, you find that you get through a fair few bottles and it can be costly.
The bottle also features the recycling logo, which is always useful and means you can take it to a recycling bin, rather than just disposing of it normally.

~~The Claims of the product~~~

Nivea claims that the lotion is specially formulated to provide all over body mo
isturising. By this, I presume it means you can use it on the facial area as well. However, my face remains the one part of me which has remained slightly oily and so I used a different moisturiser on that area. Thus, I cannot really comment on its suitability for the face. The product isn't non-comedogenic though and so I would advise that people prone to spots and break outs not to use this on the face as it will probably cause even greater problems. A while back I found out first hand that Nivea products are not very good on problem skin, as they can clog the pores and so I do advise caution with this. However, that's not to say that this isn't good for the rest of the body!

Nivea Enriched Body Moisturiser has a unique blend of ingredients which have been formulated to care for dry skin leaving it noticeably smoother. It aims to reduce the roughness of the skin and to leave it smooth and supple. I always see red when products claim that they will make your skin more supple and toned. This probably stems from Nivea's other product the Q10 cream which they say noticeably improves the texture of your skin in 6 weeks. I believe that any cream if used daily will help on this front. Anyway, my point is that they make a big deal of this and use it as a selling point, when really it isn't especially true of this product more than any other (rant over!).

My skin was left feeling smooth though once the cream had blended in that it. I have to be honest though and say that the cream was quite difficult to blend in and took a lot of rubbing. On many ocassions I had to pat myself over with a towel as I felt a bit greasy and didn't want to get dressed like that for fear of ruining my clothes.

The intensive moisturisers in the cream aim to hydrate and protect the skin from further moisture loss. In my experience my skin did feel well moisturised and was still so at the end of the day when I came to re-apply. It was a long la
sting cream which took me right through the day.

Ingredients in the cream include vitamin E, which features in many body creams as it is well known for its moisturising properties. Coupled with that is almond oil which also moisturises, but also provides the cream with its gorgeous scent, both fresh and luxurious. The third important ingredient in the cream are termed "intensive caring lipids". I am no scientist and so can't really tell you for sure what these lipids are, however, it is claimed that these protect the natural structure of the skin and maintain the protective layer, keeping everything in harmony and balance which sounds good!

~~My thoughts and conclusions~~~

The product looked ok, came from a reputable brand and wasn't very wasteful, which was a good start. It smelt nice and eased on to my skin nicely.

My skin was definitely more moist than it had been with other moisturisers and it stopped flaking. However, at times it was verging on greasy and I didn't like this at all. I get annoyed when I have to spend extra time patting over my skin with a towel because I can't get dressed due to the greasiness, it all adds to the length of time needed to get ready. I like to use this in the morning and at night before I go to bed and so I need to be able to get dressed and not worry about it marking my clothes. This is a concern for me I admit. Using baby oil on my skin actually left me less greasy if you can believe it!

I have continued to use the product for the time being as I have a large bottle to get through. In all honesty I don't think that I will be using the product again as it is too greasy and I think there must be something better out there. Maybe my skin isn't dry enough? I don't know. However, it just didn't suit me.

To conclude this product potentially had a lot going for it, but with the problems that I mentioned I can't see myself using it a
gain and thus I don't recommend anyone use it, unless they don't wear clothes that is and well then it doesn't matter! :O)

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