Ahoy matey! it is Ms. Beautyphile and today I'm gonna talk about vitamin C in
skincare because it turns out it's a not just for pirates it's for us. We need it
for nutrition and we need it in our skincare I'm going to go through a
little bit about what that is. Human beings don't make their own vitamin C we
don't produce it in our bodies we're actually one of the few species that
don't so we have to get vitamin C from food. We need vitamin C because it helps
us produce collagen and collagen is necessary for the structure of our skin
and when we don't have it awful things happen. We start to form abnormal
collagen fibers and that leads to things like weak blood vessels, skin lesions, and
just very fragile skin. If you remember back to your history class you've
probably learned about sailors during the Age of Exploration and how they went
on these long voyages and they didn't have any fruits or vegetables high in
vitamin C and they would develop this disease called scurvy. I like to call it
"THE SCURVES". One of the first symptoms of the scurves
was that they would have bloody gums and their teeth would fall out makes you
wonder how they were able to find a lady at every port with a mouth like that so
a true vitamin C people. Today we're seeing vitamin C in skincare not because
of scurvy but more because of anti-aging. I wanted to talk about some of the key
benefits of vitamin C so the first one is that it stops free radicals so it
acts as an antioxidant Free radicals are these atoms or molecules that are
missing an electron in its outer shell and to fulfill that need for an electron
it binds with lots of things some of those things could be your cells in your
skin or your DNA and that can be really destructive and it tends to cause the
body not to function properly. So as an antioxidant what it does is it
neutralizes those free radicals by offering up electrons. It's an electron
and donor and the one is that it increases collagen
vitamin C is like a helper molecule that helps produce more collagen and also
collagen of better quality so that's another reason why we're finding it in
our products. The last one is that it reduces pigmentation we know that there
is this thing called melanin in our skin that gives our skin color or pigment and
sometimes our body can produce an excess of pigmentation this is something that
we also notice as we age some people call them age spots so by using vitamin
C it suppresses an enzyme called tyrosinase it slows down melanin
production leading to less brown spots next let's talk about how to identify it
in your skincare and you're going to want to look for words like ascorbic
ascorbate and a scorable that's really weird to say but that's totally what
you're looking for we'll help you find it on the label. There are lots of
different forms of vitamin C and this is where today's research comes in handy
there is ascorbic acid which is the pure form of vitamin C it is known to be the
most bioavailable meaning that cells don't have to convert it to actually use
it so it's the purest form but it is also the most irritating and the most
unstable so it oxidizes fairly easily one of the most common derivatives is
magnesium ascorbyl phosphate and sodium ascorbyl phosphate. Those are water soluble
derivatives. They're known to be less irritating but also more stable and the
reason stability is important is because when you think about your cosmetic
product it has to sit on this shelf for a really long time so anything that
allows these ingredients to oxidize and break down is going to reduce its
effectiveness since one of the key challenges with vitamin C compounds is
its stability cosmetic formulators have come up with strategies to help with the
issue examples include airtight packaging,
lowering the pH, encapsulating the vitamin C, minimizing the water, and
adding other antioxidants. Despite all this work vitamin C still remains
challenged but that's a topic for an upcoming video this is sort of like a
vitamin C primer based off of some initial data that I've looked at so if
you have questions about vitamin C let me hear them and I am going to do some
of my own research as well because these episodes are all about learning and
learning together so I'm all ears into hearing what you want to know about. If
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