These Villains are damaging your skin: Part 1

If we want to look at our anti-aging practices from an informed and discerning perspective, it’s good to know what’s going on in there that causes wrinkles (and other not-so-fun manifestations of skin aging). So far, we know about three main things that happen in the skin when damage is caused…here’s one:

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The Production of Evil Villain #1: ROS, aka Reactive Oxygen Species

Free radicals: A bull in the china shop (of your skin)

ROS: These little oxidative destructors are also known as free radicals. When they’re produced by damage, they are missing an electron – so they’ll tazmanian-devil through otherwise stable molecules wreaking all kinds of havoc.

Throughout this mission of destruction, they are looking to steal an electron for themselves, causing those other normal cells to become free-radicals, too. This chain reaction of destruction and theft leads to inflammation, damage, and the cross-linking of collagen and elastin (wrinkles!!)

Eeek!
What should I do, you ask? The best product-related helpers are antioxidants and sunscreens, which both help prevent the formation in the first place, and help neutralize the offenders. (Picture a knight in shining armor, swinging a sword at an evil free radical… and read more about those here!)

Antioxidants are your night in shining armor: Let’s Go Fight the Good Fight! (click for more on anti-oxidants)

More on those villains later, and until next time, Stay Fabulous My Friends!

Neocutis to the Skin: ‘I’m gonna need you to start the healing process, ok?’

I wanted to share a bit about my recent look into Neocutis Skin Care products, their technology,  and how their growth factor ‘PSP’ works. Here’s the scoop.

Neocutis offers a number of products that feature technology that was developed by leading Swiss researchers out of the University Hospital of Lausanne, a leading international research facility. Their claim-to-fame/ proprietary ingredient is called PSP, which they have termed the “Cadillac of Peptides”.

Here are some interesting facts about PSP and how it works:

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The Healing Power of Peptides

Inspired by the phenomenon of the scarless healing of fetal skin, medical researchers in Switzerland created a biotechnology process to obtain the super power proteins involved in wound healing from cultured fibroblasts.  A dedicated cell bank was established for developing new wound healing and burn treatments with these amazing proteins.  That same cell bank is the source of the fibroblasts that produce PSP, which is Neocutis’ secret weapon. By the way, fibroblasts are the collagen producing cell found in skin.

PSP

PSP stands for Processed Skin Proteins. PSP is a mixture of Human Growth Factors, interleukins, and the other cytokines that were discovered by those Swiss scientist smarty-pants.

Ok, so it heals wounds (that’s pretty cool). But what does it do for the skin’s appearance?

Let’s face it: aging skin is damaged.  No matter what you want to primarily blame for the inflammation, damaged/aged skin is basically wounded skin.  The free-radical damage (reactive oxidative species) that causes the wound (aging/ skin damage) is caused by stuff like

• glycation
• injuries to the skin
• pollution
• chronic skin conditions
• sun damage: the tanning bed you hit in high school, the baby oil/iodine days of the past, or even just daily daylight-exposure

The scientists found that even though the skin does not actually absorb the growth factors, they are proven to play what I like to think of as a game of ‘telephone’ with the skin when applied topically.  They are able to stimulate the healing process, actually acting to ‘heal‘ the ‘wound’ of the aging/damaged skin.

Hey Skin, it’s me, PSP. I’m gonna need you to start the healing process, STAT.

The result is smoothed, brightened and firmed skin, all with no color or fragrance additives. Give it a try and see what you think! Check it out here: www.neocutis.com 

Until next time, stay fabulous, my friends!