Anti Aging Natural Skin Care with Wakame Kelp Extract
Tuesday, August 24th, 2010
Here’s a look at some of the more effective anti aging natural skin care solutions. There are plenty of “marginally” effective ingredients. The ones covered here are a little better than that. Let’s start with wakame kelp.
Wakame kelp or seaweed is highly nutritious. So it is often used as a component of many health food recipes. The benefits to the skin’s health are several. The first benefit has to do with a compound called hyaluronic acid.
If you have compared any of the ingredients in the anti aging natural skin care products currently on the market, you have probably seen one called hyaluronic acid. It is one of the most popular ingredients right now.
The popularity is due in part to the compound’s use as an injectable to stretch out wrinkles and fine lines. Hyaluronic acid and other compounds are injected into the skin’s fatty tissue layer to improve firmness and reduce wrinkling. When applied topically, however, it does nothing.
Another reason for its popularity has to do with the following fact: The skin’s hyaluronic acid levels decline with age.
This is one of the causes of the lost elasticity and lost firmness that occurs with age. Lost firmness leads to wrinkles. Once again, applying it to the skin’s surface does nothing to increase the skin’s hyaluronic acid content.
Scientists have discovered the reason for the decreased levels as we age. It is due to increased activity of a family of enzymes called hyaluronidaise. They naturally break down hyaluronic acid. When we are young, the body simply produces more. So there is a balance.
Extracts from wakame kelp have been shown to inhibit the activity of hyaluronidaise by 52% after 5 days of use. That means the skin’s hyaluronic acid levels will rise by about the same percentage. The result is a more youthful look due to the improved firmness and smoothness.
Anti aging natural skin care products containing the extract will also help protect against free radical damage caused by UV rays and exposure to environmental pollutants. The compound in the extract providing that benefit is called sulfated polyfucose.
Finally, wakame kelp extracts help to maintain the skin’s moisture balance by providing essential minerals like sodium, potassium and calcium. Kelp actually contains more calcium than an equivalent serving of milk.
Every anti aging natural skin care product should contain wakame kelp extracts, but most don’t. A lot of them contain seaweed or marine algae. But not all seaweeds provide the same benefits.
Briefly now, let’s look at grape seed oil. Grape seeds contain numerous antioxidants. The skin’s antioxidant content also decreases with age.
Some antioxidants can penetrate through the skin’s layers when applied topically. Others should be present in your diet. Dermatologists recommend eating more fruits and vegetables to help counter antioxidant loss.
Free radical damage is one of the main causes of cellular aging everywhere in the body; inside and out. Our only defense against free radical damage is the antioxidant.
The antioxidants in grape seed oil can penetrate into the skin’s layers. So that makes two ingredients that should be in all anti aging natural skin care creams, grape seed oil and wakame kelp. You might want to learn about some of the others.
To find natural skin care products with wakame kelp extract and grapeseed oil click here.
On Anti Wrinkle Creams with Celebrity Endorsements
Thursday, June 24th, 2010Expensive celebrity-endorsed anti wrinkle creams are being advertised on television and in glossy magazine ads. The question in most people’s minds is whether or not they really work.
The skeptic will assume that they don’t, while the hopeful person will give them a try. No matter who you are, you will be pleased to know that some of the compounds included in these products are effective.
You just won’t find the effective ingredients at the right concentration in all of the heavily advertised products. Those companies are counting on you to buy because you admire the celebrity spokesperson. They have no evidence to support their claims.
What you want to look for is a company that publishes the results of clinical studies on their websites. Those are indisputable facts.
While the compounds used in those studies might not work for every single person, they work for most people. One requirement is that you continue to use them on a regular basis.
People often give up if they don’t see immediate results. What you have to remember is that the best anti wrinkle creams provide few immediate results. They work on the long-term to improve the skin’s health, which as times goes by improves its appearance.
What’s wrong with your skin’s health? Toxins, damage from sunlight, low levels of important compounds like hyaluronic acid, decreased production of elastic fibers, lack of new skin cell growth…those are some of the things that are wrong with your skin’s health.
Some of them are natural parts of the aging process. But, that does not mean they are unavoidable. Judging from the latest research, avoiding them simply requires giving your skin more nourishment.
The skin’s outer layers get a great deal of damage and have very little protection. One of the things that protect the skin is sebum and we wash that away every time that we shower. So, the first thing that anti wrinkle creams should do is perform the same function performed by sebum. They should protect and moisturize.
The second thing that they should do is improve the skin’s antioxidant content. Antioxidants protect against damaging free radicals. The antioxidant coenzyme Q10 has been shown to reverse sun damage and wrinkles.
It took three months of daily use to see a 30% reduction in wrinkles. If you stop using the effective anti wrinkle creams containing coenzyme Q10, you will stop seeing benefits and the damage can be redone.
The third thing that the creams should do is improve the skin’s elasticity. It is lost elasticity that causes sagging and contributes to the depth of wrinkles. The best ingredient for improving the skin’s elasticity is called Functional Keratin. It has been shown to provide a 40% improvement in elasticity after only 18 days of use.
When it comes to fast-working, there is nothing that works faster than Functional Keratin. But, the best anti wrinkle creams combine it with coenzyme Q10 in order to provide even more results. You won’t see celebrities endorsing products containing those ingredients. But, that doesn’t mean they’re not available.
A Natural Wrinkle Cream That Can Reverse Wrinkles
Monday, June 14th, 2010
A natural wrinkle cream was recently shown to reverse wrinkles by 30%. Another has been proven to improve the skin’s elasticity by over 40%. Yet, studies conducted by independent researchers have shown that most creams provide a 10% improvement at best. Why settle for 10% when you can get three or four times that much?
The real question to ask is why cosmetic manufacturers would choose to use compounds that would provide no more than a 10% improvement. Why wouldn’t all companies include the ingredients that provide a 30-40% improvement?
The answer to that question comes down to costs and profits. In order to make more profits, but continue to keep the price low enough to ensure that billions of people will buy it, companies use cheap ingredients.
They often include an effective ingredient in order to cash in on the advertising. When people know about something like coenzyme Q10, all companies will include it. But, they will rarely include the right form or the right concentration.
Coenzyme Q10 is the ingredient that has been shown to reverse wrinkles by 30% after three months of use. Finding a natural wrinkle cream containing coenzyme Q10 should not be a problem. Finding one that contains nano-particles of it can be a problem.
Nano-particles are small enough to penetrate through all of the skin’s outer layers. Normally, coenzyme Q10 particles are too large to penetrate. So, they must be reduced in size. Recent advancements in nanotechnology have allowed that to happen.
If you find a company that includes the nano-particles, you need to find out if they have also included the right concentration. The concentration used in clinical studies was 5% COQ10 combined with a 10% concentration of vitamin E.
There is at least one natural wrinkle cream on the market containing the right form and the right concentration of coenzyme Q10 along with the ingredient that provides the 40% improvement in elasticity. That ingredient is called Functional Keratin.
Functional Keratin is an active form of the protein keratin, which is one of the major components of the skin’s outer layers. Not many companies have access to Functional Keratin, primarily because it is a naturally occurring ingredient. The available quantities are limited. Only the first companies to sign up are able to get the quantities they need.
Will a natural wrinkle cream containing coenzyme Q10 and Functional Keratin provide a 70% improvement in the skin’s appearance? It might. The hope is that the ingredients will work together in a synergistic fashion; providing more faster benefits together than they would when used separately.
Of course a lot depends on how your complexion looks today. Volunteers with the greatest degree of damage were the ones to see the most astonishing results. If you have just a small amount of damage, you might not see a huge difference.
But, if you continue to use the right natural wrinkle cream, you should find that your skin has a more youthful look as the years go by. Ingredients that reverse damage can also prevent it.
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