Vitamin C is an antioxidant that skin care experts believe is an anti-aging superstar. It dramatically brightens your face and reduces scars, spots, and hyperpigmentation. Available in different forms and derivatives, it helps in balancing skin tone, improving skin texture, minimizing wrinkles and fine lines, and more. All these great reasons make vitamin C a crucial component of your skin care routine – in fact, along with Vitamins A and B3 (niacinamide) we consider it an essential skin care ingredient. Dermatologists from around the world recommend using vitamin C products for a number of skin care concerns. If you’re looking for something to help you fortify your skin and stabilize your skin health, read on to learn more about the characteristics of this supercharged skin ingredient.
What Is Vitamin C?
Vitamin C (ascorbic acid) is a natural antioxidant that neutralizes free radical damage, but it also has many other important roles in maintaining health. Most animals make vitamin C, but humans (and guinea pigs!) have lost the ability to do this, so we must get it in our diet to avoid getting symptoms of deficiency. Vitamin C-rich foods include oranges, lemons, strawberries, kale, broccoli, kiwis, guava, and chili peppers, (though modern farming practices are reported to have reduced the amount of vitamin C in such foods, which is why it’s often advised to take vitamin C supplements too). While an extreme lack of vitamin C leads to scurvy, there’s evidence that keeping levels much higher than those necessary to prevent scurvy have other benefits like reducing the risk of heart disease, lowering blood pressure, preventing iron deficiency anemia and boosting immunity – and improving skin health. When so many body systems rely on vitamin C, it’s understandable that the skin might be ‘last in line’ to get the vitamin C it needs. That’s why it’s important not just to get adequate vitamin C in the diet, but to also apply it directly on the skin.
How Does Vitamin C Benefit Your Skin?
The benefits to the skin are numerous and varied: vitamin C neutralizes free radical damage, protects the skin against UV light and other environmental provokers, blocks abnormal production of melanin, increases skin firmness, and is anti-inflammatory.
Antioxidant
The antioxidants in Vitamin C prevent damage to skin cells done by reactive molecules (aka free radicals). Free radicals generated by UVA light alter DNA in the skin cells and cause mutations, and so increase the risk of skin damage and cancer – but vitamin C helps protect against this by neutralizing the free radicals.
Reduces Pigmentation
Vitamin C blocks an enzyme that helps create melanin (the pigment in skin) and has been shown to prevent and reduce age spots – lightening skin tone and reducing uneven pigmentation.
Increases Collagen In Skin
Vitamin C directly stimulates the production of collagen and also reduces the breakdown of collagen. The resulting increase in collagen helps firm the skin, smoothe out fine lines, and minimize scars.
Anti-Inflammatory
The anti-inflammatory effects of Vitamin C help reduce irritation in the skin. Topical vitamin C has been reported to lessen the redness caused by sunburn, dermatitis and after IPL/laser treatments. It’s also helpful for accelerating skin rejuvenation following laser treatments.
How To Choose The Right Product For Your Skin
Vitamin C is added to skin care products in various forms. The most active form (and the one for which most of the evidence of benefits comes) is L-ascorbic acid. Unfortunately, this form is very unstable in water-based products and is itself rapidly oxidized (resulting in a short shelf life). This is why some best vitamin C serums quickly discolor to a yellow/brown. To overcome this problem, formulators have used other versions of vitamin C (such as magnesium ascorbyl phosphate, ascorbyl-6-palmitate, and dehydroascorbic acid), but these typically don’t allow sufficient levels of L-ascorbic acid to occur in the skin to cause the effects wanted.
There are a couple of ways to get the highest levels of L-ascorbic acid in the skin: using the pure dry powder form and then mixing it into a liquid and immediately applying it to the skin; or enveloping the L-ascorbic acid in an oil to protect it from oxidizing. Up until recently, Synergie’s formulators used the oil-enveloped form of L-ascorbic acid but were not happy with the heaviness of the resulting serum. Ten years of research helped them develop a new form of vitamin C (CMF Triacid™ Complex), a proprietary blend that combines vitamin C as ethyl ascorbic acid with mandelic and ferulic acids. CMF Triacid Complex is stable in water, allows (86%) conversion of almost all the vitamin C to the most active L-ascorbic acid form, and maintains the stability of the converted L-ascorbic acid (thanks to the ferulic acid).
If you do not have sensitive skin, you will get the maximum concentration of vitamin C from the pure powder form, such as Synergie’s Pure C- If you have dry or sensitive skin, Synergie’s SupremaC+ is the ideal serum for providing vitamin C. Formulated with 20% CMF Triacid Complex, it’s perfect for all skin types, it also contains other ingredients like mandelic acid and betaine to hydrate the skin, and lycopene to provide antioxidant protection and reduce inflammation. What’s more, it’s safe to use in pregnancy too. (Some may suggest using magnesium ascorbyl phosphate or water-soluble vitamin C because they’re less irritating than L-ascorbic acid – but they’re also not very effective.)
How To Add Vitamin C To Your Daily Skin Care Regimen
- We recommend using vitamin C in the mornings after cleansing. If you’re using the powder form, mix it in with a water-based serum in a 1:5 ratio and apply it immediately to the skin. Wait a couple of minutes before applying a moisturizer and be sure to use a good quality sunscreen too (for example, Synergie’s ÜberZinc daily moisturizing sunscreen or a mineral foundation).
- For SupremaC+, apply a pump to the face and décolleté in the morning after cleansing, and then layer on the moisturizer + sunscreen a few minutes later.
- Do not use other vitamin serums at the same time (e.g. vitamin A or vitamin B serums). The acidity of the vitamin C is damaging to the other vitamins, making them ineffective. We suggest using vitamin A and B serums at night instead.
Who Should Avoid Vitamin C?
People with sensitive skin may experience redness or allergies after the application of vitamin C or its derivatives. If you have acne, many forms of vitamin C may be too harsh for your skin. However, SupremaC+ is effective yet gently enough to use, plus the mandelic acid helps control excess oil production.
We suggest starting out by test-patching a small area of the skin with SupremaC+ first. If there’s no reaction to the SupremaC+, then use it over the whole face and neck, but consider staring out using it every second morning for a week or so, before beginning to use it every day.
Of course, you should consult your skin therapist or dermatologist if you have any worries about using vitamin C on your skin. Remember that not all vitamin C products are created equal, so be careful to choose a product that’s going to deliver effective levels of vitamin C to be effective yet not cause irritation. At Skin Elegance we have both Pure C and SupremaC+ available for online purchase; feel free to contact us if you have any questions about the right product for you.
