Why we should use Topically Applied Vitamins

It is natural for our bodies to use oxygen to extract energy from our food, to regulate important enzymes and produce vital hormones.  Our bodies also use oxygen to destroy bacteria and viruses and to eliminate waste from our cells.  However, what we must realise is that, in today’s world, far too much oxidation is going on within our bodies at cellular level and this leads to an overabundance of free radicals.

We are very lucky that our own bodies, and the plant world, provide us with an enormous selection, and vast quantities, of antioxidants.  However, to put it in perspective, at the beginning of our evolutionary history our individual cells were only exposed to a much smaller number of free radical triggers a day, and these were effectively dealt with by our cells’ own antioxidants – enzymes Superoxide Dismutase and Catalyse - which are very efficient at neutralising that amount of free-radicals.  In modern times however, we are now more likely to have over 3 times that amount of free radicals being produced in any one day.  This is not a good situation and the resulting damage and mutations to cell structures cause havoc with our health.

All ingredients with antioxidant properties have electrons which they are able to give up without becoming unstable, thereby quenching the chain reaction.  It is the function of the ingredient, rather than the specific ingredient itself, that is an antioxidant.  In other words, Vitamins, Minerals and other ingredients have antioxidant properties, in greater and lesser degrees.  So, for example, a molecule of grape seed extract (an oligo proanthocyanidin) is considered to be 50% more powerful than Vitamin E and 30% more powerful than Vitamin C, although all three are excellent antioxidants. 

We might be tempted to think that we get enough antioxidants from our food, but that is far from the truth.  Sadly, the soil our food is grown in is often depleted of vital nutrients; produce is often picked long before it is ripe, which means we only get a fraction of the nutrients that we are expecting, and our supposedly ‘fresh’ foods are now exposed to such a high level of processing that, rather than being supplied with dietary nutrients, our bodies are actually being starved of them.

On top of this dietary insufficiency, we are also experiencing huge levels of free radical triggers actually created in the food we eat - by the liberal use of pesticides, herbicides, hormones and antibiotics; in the air we breathe - from exhaust pollutants by cars and factories, cigarette smoke, solvents, sprays and radioactive particles; and in the exposure to Ultra Violet light as we go about our daily lives.

In the late Nineties a trial was set up by the French Government to look at Supplementation of Vitamin and Mineral Antioxidants, with a satellite study on topically applied antioxidants.  What they found was that vitamins applied to the skin gave it such efficient protection that it was ”able to go about its natural repair process unchallenged by further assault.”  They also found that if sufficient vitamin A (in the form of Retinoic Acid) was present in the cell just before division, the daughter cell was able to form better than the mother cell.  In other words, the skin can actually improve as “damage already done is, to a degree, undone.”

If we wish to have a healthy body and a radiant skin in old age, it really helps to take antioxidant supplements as well as to apply topical antioxidants to our skins.

The brain is the control centre for the operation of the whole body and constantly makes thousands of decisions that govern the way everything works.  For example, when we take in nutrients the brain decides where it goes and in what quantities.   It makes these decisions based on our survival and, although I do not know exactly where the skin comes on the list, I am pretty sure it is somewhere near the bottom.  This is reflected in the fact that we now know that the skin, the largest organ, only receives 1% of all available vitamins. 

Free-Radical damage goes on for many years before we notice its effects, and in like manner we cannot expect to start taking and applying antioxidants and see a result immediately.  That is simply not possible.  Basically, the two things that contribute most to our ageing are TIME and LIGHT.  (The damaging actions of pollutants are powered by the energy of light.)

Facial treatments and topical applications of nutrients cannot slow down time, but they can slow down the effects of time and substantially repair the damage caused by excessive light.