Your Skin Food: Vitamin C

Why Should You Use a Vitamin C Product?

The answer is sim­ple: don’t We All Want to Look Like Demi Moore and Date Ashton Kutcher? Vitamin C is a com­mon ingre­di­ent in many skin care prod­ucts because it has plenty of clin­i­cal sci­en­tific stud­ies prov­ing the following:

* Potential of ascor­bic acid (Vitamin C) to improve the clin­i­cal appear­ance of pho­toaged skin and to reduce facial wrin­kles
* The level of vit­a­min C in the skin decreases with age, espe­cially in the epi­der­mis
* Topical vit­a­min C has been reported to improve wound-healing

In addi­tion, Vitamin C has been reported to improve the clin­i­cal appear­ance of pho­toaged skin and to enhance the syn­the­sis of com­pos­ite elastin fibres and of collagen.

When to use

We rec­om­mend usage in the morn­ing before your mois­tur­izer and sun­screen. There are some mois­tur­iz­ers that have antiox­i­dants such as Vitamin C in the same for­mu­la­tion. Most prod­ucts with Vitamin C do not work because it is not effective.

For the results from the stud­ies to be repli­cated for your skin, the per­fect storm has to occur.

1. The amount of Vitamin C in most prod­ucts is not high enough of a con­cen­tra­tion. For a prod­uct to be effec­tive, the con­cen­tra­tion has to be over 10%.
2. The form of the prod­uct and pack­ag­ing affects the prod­uct per­for­mance and effi­cacy. If Vitamin C is oxi­dized, then it can actu­ally be harm­ful for your skin. Find a white or col­or­less vit­a­min C product.

Now comes the impor­tant part… What to Look For in a Vitamin C Product?

There are many sci­en­tific com­pounds of Vitamin C but the most effec­tive sci­en­tific form for your skin is L-ascorbic acid. Two deriv­a­tive com­pounds of Vitamin C are also pop­u­lar ingre­di­ents in broad skin care mar­ket: ascor­byl palmi­tate and mag­ne­sium ascor­byl phosphate.

Another Reason to Use Vitamin C…

There is a con­tro­ver­sial paper writ­ten by UC Riverside Chemists in 2006 claim that chem­i­cal sun­screen (octyl­methoxycin­na­mate, ben­zophe­none 3 and octocry­lene) may actu­ally soak into deeper lay­ers of the skin and cause free rad­i­cal dam­age or skin cancer.

Ironically, the spe­cial chem­i­cal ingre­di­ent of most sun­screens which block UV are absorbed into the skin and over time, expose the top layer of skin it was sup­pose to pro­tect to more sun dam­age and aging. Scientists sus­pect this may cre­ate more free radicals.

The best advice is to use sun­screens and re-apply them often but to also wear an antiox­i­dant such as Vitamin C under the sun­screen to com­bat any poten­tial free rad­i­cal dam­age. (Source: http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/article/8448)

When sun­screen is applied on the skin, how­ever, spe­cial mol­e­cules — called UV fil­ters — con­tained in the sun­screen, cut down the amount of UV radi­a­tion that can pen­e­trate the skin. Over time, though, these fil­ters pen­e­trate into the skin below the sur­face of the epi­der­mis, the out­er­most layer of skin, leav­ing the body vul­ner­a­ble to UV radi­a­tion. (Source: http://www.naturalnews.com/020771.html)

When skin is exposed to sun­light, ultra­vi­o­let radi­a­tion (UV) is absorbed by skin mol­e­cules that then can gen­er­ate harm­ful com­pounds, called reac­tive oxy­gen species or ROS, which are highly reac­tive mol­e­cules that can cause “oxida­tive dam­age.” For exam­ple, ROS can react with cel­lu­lar com­po­nents like cell walls, lipid mem­branes, mito­chon­dria and DNA, lead­ing to skin dam­age and increas­ing the vis­i­ble signs of aging.