Vitamin C Skin Care - Good or Bad?

Vitamin C skin care as an approach to combating wrinkles certainly has its proponents. Others are not so sure. Is Vitamin C skin care a good anti-aging method for keeping your skin looking young and healthy? Or is it something you should stay away from? Let’s take a look at both sides of the issue.

Those who argue in favor of this approach point to two primary factors: collagen (a structural protein critical to the integrity of the skin and body) and free radicals (unstable atoms or molecules that can lead to the destruction of cells, and ultimately, cancer).

Vitamin C skin care, when effective, can help to increase the synthesis of collagen.

Collagen makes up about one quarter of all of the protein in your body and is a vital component for keeping skin supple and looking young. Vitamin C is, in fact, essential for the synthesis of collagen. In addition, Vitamin C’s antioxidant power combats free radicals and helps minimize skin damage caused by free radicals.

What then, is the concern?

Science tells us that Vitamin C can provide a means to reducing wrinkles and fine lines and to improving skin tone and texture. This is easier said than done, however. For Vitamin C skin care to be an effective anti-aging method, Vitamin C must be delivered to the skin cells the right way.

Vitamin C deficiency will prevent the construction of new collagen. This condition can lead to a host of problems, among them scurvy (easy bruising and loss of teeth are symptoms of this disease). Because our bodies cannot make vitamin C, we need to get it in our diet or through supplementation. .

The challenge for Vitamin C skin care becomes one of proper delivery to the skin cells.

Unfortunately, when the Vitamin C in the Vitamin C skin care products, becomes oxidized by coming in contact with the air, the product becomes useless, and worse, counter-effective.

The way to tell if your Vitamin C skin care product has become oxidized is to check for a yellowish-brown color. In fact, before you buy, check your Vitamin C skin care product to ensure it is not imparting this yellowish-brown color.  Once you purchase the product, store it properly and check periodically to ensure it is still viable.

Vitamin C skin care productmanufacturers have addressed this problem of oxidation in a number of ways.

Keeping a higher concentration of Vitamin C, around 10%, is one way to retain the effectiveness of Vitamin C skin care products. The problem with this approach is that it has increased the cost of these already relatively expensive products, pricing them out of the reach of many potential customers.

Another approach to this oxidation issue is the use of Vitamin C derivatives such as ascorbyl palmitate and magnesium ascorbyl phosphate. Not only are the products made using these derivatives more stable than Vitamin C skin care products, they are also less expensive and less prone to irritating the  skin.

Research on Vitamin C skin care is ongoing.

So is research aimed at improving the effectiveness of Vitamin C derivatives in Vitamin C skin care products.

That said, it should be noted that everyone is different, and not all persons respond the same way to the same products. What can help one person can hurt another, or be totally ineffective. If you are going to try any skin care product, you should always try to get a small free sample from the manufacturer so that you can test it on your skin. This is a good way to see if Vitamin C skin care is good for you and your skin condition.