How Antioxidants Work for Skincare & Overall Health
As I’m getting into my twenties and aging has begun to affect my skin, I’ve been looking into what keeps my skin healthy. Living in New York, I see people who are visibly affected by stress in different ways, and I know from here I could head in one of two directions. I’ve met a girl at twenty whose face has aged to at least fifty because of a number of bad habits. I also have a friend whose skin at forty looks younger than mine.
I’ve had dark circles under my eyes since I was a teenager, I’ve struggled with acne, and I’ve battled with eczema my entire life, but getting older I’m noticing that my skin now also swings between its young days and its old days. Days when I get compliments, and days when I lose color, my skin seems to sag and my pores are too visible. In the past few months, I’ve been able to increase the days my skin is complimented on and better maintain my skin’s elasticity and smoothness, and I’m going to share with you the one thing I’ve been doing differently.
It actually has nothing to do with topicals. While cleansing, toning and moisturizing are essential, there’s a more important step. In order to combat the process of internal biological rust, or free radical damage, which ages the skin, I had to start from the inside, with antioxidants.
I had to first understand what makes skin age. Beauty gurus will warn about aging from sun exposure, and they themselves use SPF religiously, but what these people are really scared of is not just sun damage but free radical damage. Because what happens when UV rays interact with your skin is they add energy to your cells, making atoms move and vibrate enough to cause molecular bonds to break. This will result in molecules with unpaired electrons, or free radicals, which are very unstable and capable of wreaking havoc in your body.
These free radicals can be generated by anything inhaled or ingested that is toxic, but also by your body’s natural process of producing energy. As electrons are transferred from a higher energy orbital to a lower energy orbital, energy is released. Working out also creates free radicals.
Yet these molecules can cause damage because they are highly reactive. They will attempt to break other molecular bonds within our cells’ machinery, creating more free radicals and inducing a chain reaction until everything in the vicinity has reacted. For this reason, our cells are constantly under attack and our bodies age.
Oxidation means losing electrons, and oxidation of the skin due to free radicals is what ages your skin prematurely. The same thing happens when you cut open an apple and see it turning brown. Oxidation affects the levels of collagen and elastin in the skin, causing your skin to look dull and making wrinkles appear.
Having reactive species in the body is dangerous, and it is linked not only to skin aging but a number of chronic health complaints, from cardiovascular health to immunity to mental health. I started taking an antioxidant in the middle of my day after learning that standing for more than four to five hours at a time leads to major oxidative stress (I stand for eight hours at my job), and that people in standing jobs are twice as likely to develop cardiovascular disease.
Antioxidants block the propagation or the chain reaction of free radicals by quenching or neutralizing them. Some antioxidants include vitamins A, C, and E; essential fatty acids like omega-3 and omega-6; co-enzyme Q10; curcumin; acai; and resveratrol. Each antioxidant works differently, so it’s best to take them in combination. I started with omega-3 and a subclass of bioflavonoids called oligomeric proanthocyanidins (OPCs).
OPCs come from the seeds and skins of grapes and other fruits, and are anti-carcinogenic, anti-atherogenic, and anti-inflammatory. They contain polyphenols, which are cyclic compounds with electrons available to donate to free radicals, ending the chain of reactivity and avoiding oxidative stress in the body. How do these organic compounds affect your skin?
- If you have any skin conditions affected by inflammation, OPCs will reduce that. I had been searching my whole life for something to get rid of my eczema when it flares up and finally found that OPC pretty much cures it.
- It helps collagen production, which supports firmness and smoothness of the skin. Seventy percent of the dermis, the second layer of your skin, is made of collagen.
- It contributes to healthy blood microcirculation, which detoxifies the skin and supplies it with nutrients. This shows in your complexion: after taking my OPCs at night I notice I am especially fresh-faced in the morning. Likewise when I take it in the morning I can see a reduction in redness or dullness during the day. The effectiveness depends on the delivery system of your supplement and how bioavailable it is.
- Because of its free radical -scavenging properties, it defies photo-aging and oxidation. Taking it consistently will keep your cells at their peak vitality. The natural result of this shows up in your other organ systems as well, not just your skin.
Mathilde Thomas, CEO of Caudalie, built her global skincare company on the power of polyphenols. Her inspiration in her company was grape polyphenols, “the most potent natural antioxidants produced by nature.” She swears by the anti-aging compounds’ usefulness in a beauty regimen. In her book, The French Beauty Solution, she also discusses the French paradox: despite a high-fat diet, the French have the lowest level of cardiovascular disease in the Western world. The only explanation is that they also drink the most wine, on a regular basis.
The genesis of her company coincided with her meeting of a researcher who was researching polyphenols key contributions in living longer, healthier lives. There are so many other benefits, I learned, that come with antioxidants, so I’m going to write for my next post a bonus article going over these benefits.
