One of the most successful areas of health and beauty is Anti-ageing skin care products. it is only natural that as people get older they want to continue looking young so will use products that help them achieve this. This is achieved in beauty products by promoting the growth of connective tissue using the protein collagen which is the most abundant in the skin of all animals; twenty-five per cent of the skin's protein is collagen. This category of skin products is in fact related to another group of everyday products that help reduce the signs of aging; this group is called antioxidants which are natural chemicals found in many foods and our body.
One of the best known anti-oxidants is vitamin C and despite continual research, no-one body involved can decide just exactly how much our body should consume on a daily basis. Skin care treatments that are based on vitamin C, pose the problem of becoming oxidized themselves as they come into contact with air during their usage.
To overcome this problem, manufacturers use alternative skin care treatments that still provide the same benefits but not the high manufacturing costs. These new anti-oxidant products are not quite as good as vitamin C although other naturally occurring compounds, vitamin E and lipoic acid can achieve the same effect.
Vitamin E is a fat-soluble antioxidant and is found in human blood, it helps build resistance against infection like cancer. On the other hand, lipoic acid or alpha-lipoic acid is necessary for energy production which keeps us alive; it is in every human cell and another function is to repair skin damage caused by the normal ageing process.
The use of plants has not been overlooked either with many types able to provide essences called phytochemicals which have proved successful in anti-ageing skin care products. Another benefit, like that of alpha-lipoic acid, is their ability to reduce the prevalence of certain cancers like prostate, colon and breast cancer.
Surprisingly, the group of vitamins; B5, B6, and B12 have also shown that they can be used to help reduce the effects of ageing. This is a vast area that has the potential for many new anti-ageing skin care products and services in the future but research needs to continue.
In time new discoveries will be made advancing our understanding of the ageing process and products that can reduce or reverse the effects more successfully. Hopefully, these challenges will get resolved in due course and better and cheaper anti-ageing skin care products will be produced.
Fortunately there is a number of natural anti-ageing regimes that can be carried out that do not rely on science. Regular sleep patterns, exercise, a good healthy diet and less stress will all contribute to reducing the signs of ageing, for instance!
