Anti Aging Skin Care Products & Active Ingredients
By Skin Care Editor | July 27, 2009
It seems that anti aging skin care products are all the rage. There are even special diets and multi-nutritional supplements that are supposed to reduce or reverse those things that we thought were inevitable, namely wrinkles, age spots and sagging.
While there is good research that proves these efforts may be effective, a great many companies are simply jumping on the bandwagon. They have not done the necessary research. They don’t include enough of the “active” ingredients to be effective. In fact, most of the creams on the market contain very little of anything that could be considered active.
Recently, I evaluated the ingredients in a couple of the popular brands or anti aging skin care creams. The only active ingredients, according to the manufacturers label were sunscreens.
While sunscreens might help protect against UV radiation, which is one of the causes of wrinkles and other signs of age, they won’t do anything to reverse damage that has already occurred. The damage that we are talking about, in this case, is free radical damage or oxidation.
Oxidation causes cellular aging throughout the body. Anti-oxidants are present in all of the cells of the body to prevent oxidation. All anti aging skin care products should contain natural antioxidants like vitamin E and the proanthocyanidins found in grape seeds.
Those antioxidants help protect against free radical damage. Another one has been shown to reverse it. That one is called coenzyme Q10.
Coenzyme Q10 or ubiquinone is a vitamin-like substance found in all of the cells of the body, but researchers have noted that the skin’s COQ10 content is quickly depleted during UV exposure. Because of that, they decided to see what effect an anti aging skin care cream containing COQ10 would have on wrinkles and sun damage.
They ran into a problem. Many molecules are not small enough to penetrate the skin’s outer layers. If the solution could not penetrate into the dermis layer, it wouldn’t do any good. So, they had to find COQ10 molecules that were small enough to penetrate.
Not too long ago, it would have been impossible to “grind” the molecules down to a size that would penetrate. Today, we have the ability to reduce the size of a molecule using nanotechnology.
Once that hurdle was jumped, it was time for the clinical trials. The researchers needed volunteers that suffered only from sun damage. Otherwise, they would have to consider the other causes of an aged appearance, including reduced production of new cells and fibers.
Judging from the results of those trials, COQ10 may be the only anti aging skin care ingredient that you need. But, if you are over the age of 40, you need others.
There are specific protein complexes that have been shown to stimulate the production of new cells and fibers. There are plant extracts, like avocado, that have been shown to increase the skin’s collagen content.
In other words, there are anti aging skin care ingredients that are known to be “active”. You just need to find a manufacturer that includes enough of them to be “effective”.
The editors here at DefendYourSkin.com have discovered a product line that incorporates all of the ingredients and technology mentioned above. Click here to learn more about the natural skin care products we use and recommend.
Topics: Anti Aging, Anti Wrinkle Creams, Skin Care, Skin Wrinkles | Comments Off
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