Anti Aging

Peoples' preoccupation with anti-ageing skin care products that claim to make you look younger is not surprising; it is only natural that as people get older they want to continue looking young so will use products that help them achieve this. The skin care industry uses beauty products that increase the synthesis of the protein collagen, the main protein in skin which becomes less elastic as we age; collagen makes up approximately 25 percent of the total protein in the skin. Collagen is related to other natural substances which help to slow down the ageing process; known as antioxidants, they are the body's method of slowing down the ageing process.

You probably know many anti-oxidants by name, including vitamin C, the use of which is still, even now, hotly debated in the science and nutrition community. Unfortunately all skin care treatments that use vitamin C have the problem of atmospheric oxidization to contend with once the product is exposed to the air.

To overcome this problem, manufacturers use alternative skin care treatments that still provide the same benefits but not the high manufacturing costs. Unfortunately the anti-oxidant products used to replace vitamin C are not as effective but as vitamin E and lipoic acid can both have the same effect; this is not too much of a problem.

Vitamin E is a fat-soluble antioxidant and is found in human blood, it helps build resistance against infection like cancer. Another, lipoic acid is in every cell of our body and is used to generate energy for us to live but also helps reduce and reverse the skin's ageing process.

Phytochemicals aren't produced by the body but are extracted from a number of plants and used in many anti-ageing skin care products to combat the signs of ageing. Like lipoic acid, phytochemicals help reduce the occurrence of cancers such as prostate, breast and colon cancers.

For some time now it has also been known that the vitamins B5, B6 and B12 also have anti-ageing skin care properties. 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.

Although current regimes are effective, there are still many challenges to finding better and more efficient ways to combat the effects of time. Hopefully, these challenges will get resolved in due course and better and cheaper anti-ageing skin care products will be produced.

At the moment though, science is still behind the field of natural anti-ageing methods and it might take some time to replace them. Regular sleep patterns, exercise, a good healthy diet and less stress will all contribute to reducing the signs of ageing, for instance!