Why Vitamin C Is Crucial For Youthful Skin

Anyone interested in skincare has been exposed to numerous claims about the importance of adding Vitamin C to your daily skincare regimen. But why is it so celebrated in regard to youthful skin?

As time goes by, the skin is exposed to numerous challenges that accelerate the rate of ageing. Exposure to the environment, chemical toxins found in beauty products, wounding and general ageing can lead to the loss of skin elasticity, dryness and wrinkle formation.

Like many bodily organs, healthy skin contains high concentrations of vitamin C. It is a powerful antioxidant and plays an important role in protecting the skin from the external environment, as well as maintaining normal bodily functions, such as collagen synthesis.

Being an antioxidant, it scavenges for free radicals and defends the skin against oxidative damage, typically from environmental pollutants and exposure to ultraviolet radiation from the sun.

UV radiation can damage the structure and function of cells, resulting in wrinkles, sagging, hyperpigmentation, dryness and uneven texture. Vitamin C limits the damage induced by UV exposure by increasing the survival of keratinocytes (the most abundant type of skin cell) and increasing the skin's resistance to sunburn (that’s not to say you shouldn’t always wear sunscreen). Dry skin is relieved through the nutrient's ability to protect the skin from water loss via enhancing barrier lipids (natural fats that hold in moisture) and differentiating keratinocytes.

Both oral and topical administration of vitamin C have been found effective in enhancing the appearance of youthful skin. A 90-day double-blind intervention studying its effects on visible signs of skin ageing found dietary supplementation (the study used a fermented papaya extract) significantly improved texture, brown spots, moisture and elasticity.

The richest sources of this nutrient are found in fresh fruits and vegetables, including citrus, capsicum, parsley and strawberries. An abundance of fresh plant foods daily is the best way to ensure you’re consuming enough vitamin C to support your skin.

There are many skin care products containing vitamin C available on the market, however, its effectiveness heavily depends on the form of vitamin C and its stability. Make sure to opt for a shelf-stable form of vitamin C that can be converted to its active ingredient, L-ascorbic acid.

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References

Bertuccelli, G., Zerbinati, N., Marcellino, M., Nanda Kumar, N. S., He, F., Tsepakolenko, V., Cervi, J., Lorenzetti, A., & Marotta, F. (2016). Effect of a quality-controlled fermented nutraceutical on skin aging markers: An antioxidant-control, double-blind study. Experimental and therapeutic medicine, 11(3), 909–916. https://doi.org/10.3892/etm.2016.3011

Pullar, J. M., Carr, A. C., & Vissers, M. C. M. (2017). The Roles of Vitamin C in Skin Health. Nutrients, 9(8), 866. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu9080866

Schagen, S. K., Zampeli, V. A., Makrantonaki, E., & Zouboulis, C. C. (2012). Discovering the link between nutrition and skin aging. Dermato-endocrinology, 4(3), 298–307. https://doi.org/10.4161/derm.22876

Zhang, S., & Duan, E. (2018). Fighting against Skin Aging: The Way from Bench to Bedside. Cell transplantation, 27(5), 729–738. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963689717725755