6 Things You Must Do For Your Skin Before Your Next Flight

Planes are undeniably gross, a fact that is never more apparent than when the guy sitting next to you hasn't stopped coughing for the past three hours, your contacts have shriveled up in your eyes, and a child just sneezed in your ear on the way to the bathroom. If you needed another reminder, there's also the matter of the recirculated air in the plane's cabin, which works nicely to help spread your seat mate's germs and whatever else might be lurking in the in-flight air supply. (We don't even want to know.)

Vitamins, chugging water, and frequent hand-washing can help you combat some of the health implications, but what about the external damage? Drying cabin air can wreak havoc on the skin, zapping it of moisture and taking a serious toll on its protective barrier, so by the time you get off the plane you're considerably less hydrated and considerably more broken-out.

To counteract all that ew, you have to act ahead of time. So we went straight to the sources, dermatologists Leslie Baumann and Whitney Bowe, to get to the bottom of how we can really protect our skin pre-flight. Ahead, a step-by-step guide to salvaging your complexion from the horrors of in-flight air — because even if you can't stop all those babies from screaming, you've gotta find a way to get some peace of mind.