How Do Antioxidants Help Your Skin?
First of all, what exactly are antioxidants and how do they help your skin?
The short answer is that they are substances that prevent the oxidative process of free radicals. Free radicals cause cell injury. When the body produces the oxidants that will be responsible for cell damage it has another, protective, measure in mind. It wants to keep the body free of viral and bacterial invasion.
Free radicals are like soldiers that will attack and kill many of the invading microorganisms. However, by producing the free radicals, the body needs to deal with the left-over unpaired electrons that are floating in the body, ready to fight. In the absence of a viral or bacterial war, free radicals cause havoc on healthy cells.
What Are The Antioxidants?
The way antioxidants work is that they either block the free radicals from forming or they scavenge them up, thereby inactivating them.
The agents that are called antioxidants include the endogenous antioxidants such as transferrin, cysteine, albumin ceruloplasmin and glutathione. Exogenous antioxidants are vitamin E, vitamin C, carotenoids and flavonoids and can be found in green tea face cream. Carotenoids can be further defined as beta carotene, alpha carotene, lutein and lycopene and are found in carrots and green leafy vegetables and certain fruits. Flavonoids are found in fruits, wine, vegetables, tea and some other foods.
You Lose Antioxidant Capability As You Age
As cells age the skin becomes more susceptible to damage from the UVA and UVB rays. Wrinkling is more prominent as cells lose their defense against the free radical damage that is coming from many sources of the environment as well as from disease processes in the body itself. Cells lose a little more of its ability to neutralize free radicals each decade. Antioxidants are the suppliers of new power to keep the body healthy.
External Use Of Antioxidants Helps Skin To Look Great
Antioxidants can help fight aging skin cells if they are in adequate supply.
As the body becomes less and less capable of eliminating the free radicals, eating the type of foods that will provide the antioxidants and taking vitamins C and E becomes more important than ever. To help keep skin looking young and wrinkle-free, antioxidants in the form of skin cream may be very beneficial to your skin.
The best antioxidant moisturizer can penetrate the upper layers of the epidermis and dermis and scavenge the unpaired electrons or prevent free radicals from forming. Results will be obvious after using these creams continuously for a few weeks. If you start a regular ritual each morning and before you go to bed, then you won’t forget to apply the antioxidant cream onto your skin.
Applying an antioxidant, like an idebenone cream, only occasionally or not consistently will delay the results of better looking skin.
A Good Diet Provides Many Antioxidants
You can support your cream regimen with eating healthy foods and by not smoking.
Smoking will only add to the free radical formation on the skin and make your skin look gray and old. By taking daily vitamins and eating fresh vegetables, especially leafy green vegetables, you will give your skin an excellent chance of looking its best. Fruits, especially citrus fruits, tomatoes and watermelons are great antioxidants. Eating eggs, soybeans and drinking green tea will also provide great support for the antioxidant performance of skin cream.
For more information on antioxidant skin care, visit our antioxidant articles.
|
