Vitamin C... Topically?!

Vitamin C

Vitamin C: a vitamin that is well known for its ability to help fight off cold and flu season, but much less known for it's ability to maintain healthy and youthful skin. Vitamin C has been used  topically for ages by women (like you and I) searching for that something to maintain our healthy and vibrant glow.  As early as the Tang Dynasty of Tibet (618-907 AD) women would crush and use Seabuck Thorn berries (a very note worthy source of vitamin C) and apply this to their skin.  It is also known that Native Americans would take wild rose petals and rose hips and use topically on their face and hands as a way to care for the skin that was so exposed to outward elements. So why would women, world over, use these fruits and plants as sources of maintaining youthful, taught, healthy and glowing skin? What is it that makes vitamin C so notable for maintenance of healthy skin cells?

As we all know, vitamin C is an important nutrient for over all health. However very little of what is ingested actually reaches our skin, and humans are one of the only mammals on earth that do not produce vitamin C on our own.  This vitamin is crucial for the synthesis of collagen, and collagen is what keeps our skin vibrant and plump with hydration, healthy and smooth looking.  Collagen production naturally begins to decrease as we age.  Along with oxidative stresses such as exposure to out door elements, sun shine, UV rays, harsh chemicals, and smoking, as we enter our early to mid 30s we begin to notice the smile lines that do not go away.  We see the little wrinkles at the edges of our eyes that become a permanent fixture to our facial features.  This is due to the slow decline of collagen production. 

How Our Skin Ages Naturally

As above pictured, over time with the reduction of collagen production and it's partner elastin (enter vitamin E) our skin looses it's ability to maintain it's structure, firmness, and tensile strength. Vitamin C applied topically is known to help with many sensitive aging "issues".  It helps with things like: improving the appearance of elemental damaged skin, supports skins structure from UV/external stressors and damage, reduces inflammation, lessens hyper pigmentation (dark spots), increases collagen production, and mitigates effects of free radicals.  Reading all of this, PLEASE remember aging is beautiful, but there are things we can do to help this process and change take hold gracefully.

 Vitamin C is unstable at best, if packaged poorly it is one of the first essentials to go, if under heat it vanishes into thin air (sort of). The most stable forms of vitamin C are: ascorbic acid, L-ascorbic acid, ascorbic palmitate, sodium ascorbic phosphate, retinal ascorbate, tetrahexyldecyl ascorbate, and magnesium ascorbic phosphate.  Looking at packaging (if you are buying a product that contains vitamin C for topical use) it is important that it is in opaque and or dark package/container, lest the degradation of the vitamin that your are trying to purchase.

Do you have experience with product that contains topical vitamin C? Has it been a success story in your quest for healthy and beautiful skin? We would love to hear from you!! All questions and stories are welcome.

To Your Health and Ours,

Sincerely,
Recherch'e Organics