There are 3 main components that provide the foundation for smooth, radiant skin:
- Collagen – makes up 75-80% of your skin and helps to provide skin firmness and smoothness
- Elastin – gives your skin its elasticity and resilience
- Hyaluronic acid – maintains skin hydration and keeps your skin plump
A decline in these 3 components of skin is known as “skin ageing”.
Intrinsic ageing is a natural ageing process. It slows down the efficiency of skin cell functions over the years, regardless of external factors. Our dermis layers start to thin as less skin cells are created and renewed.
From as early as the age of 20, there is a 1 – 1.5% decline in collagen production with each passing year. Similarly, elastin and hyaluronic acid production decreases too.
This natural ageing process is inevitable, but the main culprits of accelerated skin ageing are actually due to one process – oxidative damage, which is triggered by various external factors.
The external factors affecting the speed with which the skin ages are all due to one process: oxidative damage.
Oxidative damage releases free radicals that cause premature aging by damaging skin cell structures and breaking down collagen, elastin and hyaluronic acid. Under normal circumstances, free radicals are caught and neutralized by antioxidants in the skin: molecules with the ability to absorb and stop them. However, over time, the skin’s ability to de-activate free radicals decreases, resulting in skin ageing.
Oxidative damage is triggered various external lifestyle factors.
What is really affecting
your skin health?
UV Radiation
The ultraviolet A (UVA) component of UV rays penetrate deep into the dermis layers and over time, destroys elastin and collagen, causing premature ageing, wrinkles and pigmentation
Unhealthy Diet
A diet that is rich in sugar and carbohydrates supplies the building blocks to free radical production, speeding up collagen degradation. Similarly, a diet lacking in antioxidants will do nothing to help slow down general skin ageing
Air Pollution
Exposure to pollutants results in inflammation and free radicals release. It also worsen the effects of sun exposure and over time leads to dry, wrinkled skin
Stress & Poor Sleep
These lead to the release of cortisol, a hormone that accelerates the decline of collagen
Cigarette Smoking
The chemicals and nicotine in cigarettes attack the skin from both the inside and outside, leading to inflammation and collagen degradation
Alcohol
Not only does it dry out the skin, alcohol also shrinks the tiny capillaries that feed our skin the vital nutrients needed to promote collagen synthesis
The best way to promote and maintain skin health is by providing what our skin needs in a holistic approach. This means that preserving and protecting the collagen that we already have is just as important as producing new collagen.
Hence, what we need is a three-step, synergistic supplementation process that addresses all these needs to give us a supple skin from within.
1. Supply the right collagen for your skin
2. Support natural collagen synthesis
3. Suppress oxidative damage of skin cells
