Antioxidants vs. Free-radical damage

Antioxidants

Antioxidants and free-radical damage are considered vital to our understanding of the origins of cancer, ageing, illness, and disease that they have become a profound area of research. An “antioxidant” is not an ingredient, but the function a specific ingredient can perform on the skin. Free-radical damage is what antioxidants stop from occurring, either by stopping new damage, or by reversing earlier damage caused by free radicals.

Free-radical damage is bad for the skin. Theoretically, free-radical damage can cause deterioration of the skin’s support structures, decreasing elasticity and resilience. The presence of antioxidants in the diet, and the topical application of antioxidants in skin-care products, plays a part in slowing down free-radical damage. Antioxidants are ingredients such as vitamins A (very potent), C, and E; superoxide dismutase; flavonoids; beta carotene; glutathione; selenium; and zinc as well as Alpha lipoic Acid (one of the most potent).

There are a lot of different opinions about the action of antioxidants in the use skincare formulations.

As Dr Des Fernandes stated in this exert in his article

‘THE MOTIVATION FOR THE BIRTH OF ENVIRON®

“Because of the positive effects that I had noticed on my patients whom I had treated for acne, I started using vitamin A acid (retinoic) on my own facial skin in 1982, just before my 40th birthday. By 1986, I had uncovered all the positive facts about vitamin A and the antioxidants and I started to promote the use of Tretinoin for the prevention of skin cancer. Eventually in 1987, I wrote a letter to the South African Medical Journal to urge doctors to protect their patients by using Tretinoin. That letter was not published for more than a year but, after a heated debate between myself and the Department of Dermatology at the University of Cape Town, it was eventually published in July 1989.

At that time, people laughed when I spoke about free radicals as they were then not the household word that they have now become. Meanwhile, I had approached two South African cosmetic companies and advised them to make creams using vitamin A and free radical scavengers. They were not interested so, initially, I used to prepare vitamin A creams myself in my kitchen! I hunted for a chemist and we then created the creams which I offered to my patients (from 1988 onwards). The creams became so popular that people made appointments to see me just to obtain them. And it was then that I decided to start a company to sell the creams. I truly believed that these creams would keep people’s skins healthy, in fact, I believed that these creams were essential to keep their skins healthy. My concern for people’s health has always been the guiding reason for the development of these Original creams. I also insisted that the cost of the creams had to be affordable to everyone in my country. My insistence has meant that the creams are now offered in South Africa at a specially low price so that young people can use them to minimise photo-damage.”

Even if antioxidants did work to prevent free-radical damage on the skin, the results would hardly be immediate. Free-radical damage in the human body can continue for years before any deterioration can be detected and you can’t slap on an antioxidant and expect to immediately notice your wrinkles disappearing.

Despite this lack of hard evidence, fashion magazines and cosmetics companies have heralded the elimination of free-radical damage as the fountain of youth. The excitement around antioxidants is understandable. According to many skin experts, all aspects of aging, including wrinkling, are caused by free-radical damage.

Free-Radical Damage

Free-radical damage occurs on an atomic level. Molecules are made of atoms, and a single atom is made up of protons, neutrons, and electrons. Electrons are always found in pairs. However, when oxygen molecules are involved in a chemical reaction, they can lose one of their electrons. This oxygen molecule that now only has one electron is called a free radical. With only one electron the oxygen molecule must quickly find another electron, and it does this by taking the electron from another molecule. When that molecule in turn loses one of its electrons, it too must seek out another, in a continuing reaction. Molecules attempting to repair themselves in this way trigger a cascading event called “free-radical damage.”

What causes a molecule to release one of its electrons, generating free-radical damage? The answer is oxygen or any compound that contains an oxygen molecule, such as carbon monoxide, hydrogen peroxide, and superoxide plus sunlight, and pollution.

Antioxidants prevent these unstable oxygen molecules (made unstable by loss of one electron) from interacting with other stable molecules (taking one of their electrons) and consequently causing them to become unstable, a process that starts the free-radical chain reaction. Fortunately, many antioxidants can be found in both the human body and in the plant world.

So what does that have to do with wrinkles? Wrinkles appear when the free-radical damage originates from natural environmental factors and fails to be cancelled out by some amount of antioxidant protection. If we don’t get enough antioxidant protection, either from our own body’s production, from dietary sources, or from antioxidants, including those we put on our skin, free-radical damage continues unrestrained, causing cells to break down and impairing or destroying their ability to function normally.

There’s just one problem, the fact that free-radical damage is constant and extensive.

Almost every company makes moisturizers that contain antioxidants, so they aren’t hard to find. You won’t see any difference in your skin, but if free-radical damage can be slowed, then antioxidants should help.