Your Antioxidant Valentine
LOVE YOUR ANTIOXIDANTS
This Valentines Day, I want to share a healthy treat with you instead of the traditional chocolates.
It's the gift of antioxidants!
Apple Fruit Extract - In Harken Derm Sunscreen
Under normal circumstances our skin cells constantly generate reactive oxygen species (ROS) that are kept in balance by our well-developed antioxidant system. This balance can be easily tipped by either an increase of ROS production due to environmental stressors such as pollution, UVB and UVA light or the decrease of antioxidant defense mainly due to aging.
The skin’s natural antioxidant army is assembled mainly by
tiny (by molecular weight) but mighty soldiers such as glutathione, vitamins A, E and C, as well as larger guns like superoxide dismuthase, catalase and others.
Frequent exposure of our skin to UVA and UVB radiation from sunlight stimulates oxidative stress and also impairs the army of antioxidants, which results in oxidative stress.
Oxidative stress in the skin is one of the main reasons of skin aging (wrinkles), inflammation (redness and visible vessels) and also promotes skin cancer.
UVA light is a particularly strong oxidative stressor and the chemical filters in the US do not protect properly against the far UVA rays.
Zinc oxide has the broadest coverage and reaches the furthest in the long wave UVA spectrum.
Most people however don’t use high SPF zinc containing sunscreens during average days and forget that the UVA rays penetrate through the side windows in the car and shine through even the clouds.
Even when using very high SPF zinc containing sunscreens, about 1% of UV rays still may pierce trough the sunscreen protection and that can be much more if the sunscreen is not applied correctly or washed off by sweat and water (not Harken Derm ;).
ANTIOXIDANTS should be one of the most important parts of your skincare regimen, optimally used both
1. in the morning as prevention, before the environmental oxidative attack starts,
2. and also in the evening to mitigate inflammation and repair damage.
It is very difficult to bottle these tiny antioxidant soldiers, mainly because they want to fight already in the bottle or on the surface of the skin, even before they penetrate and reach the true battlefield inside of the skin. So, it is very important to harness their power and make sure that they don’t release it too soon or in other words they maintain their stability and antioxidant power. This is a particularly difficult formulation challenge and most of the time only achieved by professional skincare products such as Harken Derm.
Harken Derm 2-Step Solution was created understanding the crucial importance of antioxidants in aging, inflammation and cancer prevention. Both the sunscreen and the after-sun moisturizer are full of potent botanical derived antioxidants which release their power only when they reach inside of the skin. Although we named the moisturizer “after-sun”, this potent formulation is even better used twice a day; before and after sun exposure or any normal day which is still full of hidden skin stressors.
My Valentine day advice is to LOVE YOUR ANTIOXIDANTS!
Happy Valentines Day, love your skin,
Dr. Edit Olasz Harken