We all know the fountain of youth does not exist. Yet we watch the news for the latest miracle development and race to the store for every new product hoping to find a younger, brighter face in a bottle. We hope, we try- its better than doing nothing while you watch your face sag and crinkle under the weight of time’s steady march, isn’t it? Americans spend nearly 1 billion dollars on anti-aging products each year with no sign of slowing down, and often no sign of recaptured youthfulness either.
While vitamin C may not be the quick-fix to all our aging woes, it does have some proven beauty benefits. Vitamin C is essential for the production of collagen, the very collagen that is essential for healthy, firm skin. Vitamin C is also a powerful antioxidant. Antioxidants are substances that repair and prevent harm from the tissue damaging free radicals generated by pollutants, toxic chemicals and UV rays. So it makes perfect sense that volumes of products boasting of their vitamin C benefits have boomed in recent years.
Taking internally vitamin C has been shown to have known health and beauty benefits. Vitamin C improves skin elasticity, appearance, evenness and skin tone. An American Journal of Clinical Nutrition study even demonstrated that woman with higher vitamin C intake had younger looking skin with fewer wrinkles and less dryness than those with lower vitamin C intakes. Not only was this no small scale study, it include over 4000 women, and the results were independent of the women’s race, physical activity level, and body mass index. Sort of makes you want to go eat an orange and maybe rub it on your face a little, doesn’t it?
Well hold up a minute there, pulp face. Vitamin C in beauty products may not give the same miraculous effects that it does in our diet. Vitamin C is a delicate substance- easily destroyed by heat, UV light and exposure to air. Couple this with the fact that the optimal level of topical vitamin C is unknown and you may have yourself a very expensive bottle of plain old lotion. Even worse, when vitamin C is exposed to air it oxidizes, which may mean you are actually slathering those free radicals right onto your face. To deal with this issue many products hype their “stabilized” form of vitamin C. However there is no way to know if whatever method of super-secret stabilization they are using actually works, since there is no regulation of such claims.
There is some good news in all of this. Save your hard-earned cash and go eat a nice salad. If you simply must put something on that mug consider making a vitamin C rich serum at home. You’ll save some money, you can toss the stuff before it degrades and if all else fails you can drink that home-made concoction and rest assured that at least consuming it will help you fend off wrinkles in the long run.
References:
American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, October 2007; vol 86; pp 1125-31.
