Articles

You shouldn't have to be an ace in chemistry to understand why your skin looks older and has more fine lines. Peptides? Electrons? Free radicals? You just want to rejuvenate and smooth your skin! Lots of companies throw around fancy words to try to get you to buy their products, which are usually conglomerations of harsh chemicals. You don't really understand what's going on with your face, so you just blindly trust them and try their skin creams. Actually, you've probably tried everything from orange juice to cereal, that supposedly has antioxidants, to try to reverse the signs of aging.

Here's what's going on with your face, in plain English. When your skin starts to look 'aged', it's usually due to a combination of factors. A large part of the problem is environmental pollution, cigarette smoke, and damage from UV rays. Besides this, the other reason your skin ages is because when oxygen is used by the body, some of the atoms in your skin start to have uneven numbers of electrons. These damaged cells are called 'free radicals. Free radicals alter our DNA and cause destruction in the body, resulting in more diseased and dead cells. Worst of all, in order to correct themselves, they try to take electrons from the natural proteins in our skin. This, as you can imagine, starts a snowball effect of premature aging problems in our skin, because as free radicals take electrons from other cells, they leave those cells with fewer electrons also!

As you can imagine, our bodies do have some natural defenses against these destruction-causing cells. There are enzymes in the body which try to get rid of these free radicals. But, according to scientific studies, the quickest and easiest way to get rid of these cells is by special chemicals called 'antioxidants', which are principally found in our diet and through external supplements. Until recently, nobody really knew much about antioxidants. However, the scientific community has started to make known some of the mysteries surrounding this topic, and the media has begun to get in on the action and alert the general population. Athletes have been especially interested in this information, due to the prospects of better performance.

Ingredient Found in Nature Turns the Tide of Premature Aging

Antioxidants are effective because they are stable atoms with an extra electron, which they give to the free radicals. Since the antioxidants help the free radicals in this way, instead of just destroying them, they maintain balance in the system and avoid the unnecessary death of the diseased atoms. The antioxidants then protect the cells by neutralizing external forces (such as damage from the sun, pollution, etc) and internal factors (such as stress, emotions, metabolism, and the presence of excess oxygen). What better way to keep your skin looking younger-than-ever than to give it these antioxidants that it so desperately needs? There are a variety of ways to get antioxidants. Green tea and foods rich in vitamin C are good places to start. Fruits and vegetables that have beta carotene (like carrots, peaches, spinach, etc), are also great sources. Dietary supplements like these are widely recommended to stop the effects of premature aging on your skin. However, we still have the other problem we talked about, which is the effect of UV damage on the premature aging of your skin. Unfortunately, we live in a world with an ever-depleting ozone layer, and therefore ever greater danger of all kinds of skin-related problems.

Conscious of the benefits of these antioxidants, scientists have recently started to create natural products full of antioxidants that you can apply as a face cream, which will neutralize your free radicals and shield you from the sun. They even contain a special ingredient that 're-trains' your damaged and abused skin cells how to behave like normal healthy skin again! This has been such an exciting breakthrough for the medical and scientific communities. So, to summarize, if your skin is aging prematurely, all is not lost. Remember the keys to keep your skin soft, young and rejuvenated: eat lots of vitamins, drink green tea, and try using skin care products full of antioxidants to insure your body is getting all the help it needs to revive damaged cells. If you really make the effort to do this, you should start to notice a difference in your skin quicker than you might think!