Protection from loss of liquids

If your skin had no “cornified layer”, you would lose about 20 to 30 liters of water a day across the surface of your body. You cannot even drink that much. This loss of liquids is one of the main problems which occur with burns over large body areas.  

But even with an intact skin barrier, the skin is not completely impenetrable. We lose about 300 ml of water a day across the skin surface. The water leads to a moisture penetration of the skin, which holds the water by means of special moisture-retaining qualities.  

The water loss can be measured (transepidermal water loss = TEWL). This value can provide indications on the proper function (or lack thereof) of the skin barrier: the lower the “TEWL”, the more intact the skin!