Get Younger, Healthier Skin with Vitamin E

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Sun protection is the most important tool for keeping skin soft, supple and youthful. To see the importance of protecting your skin from sun just take off your clothes and compare the relatively unexposed areas with your face and hands! Recent advances in anti-aging science have shown that antioxidants like vitamin E can play a role in preventing damage to skin from occuring.

Our skin ages due to intrinsic and extrinsic factors. Intrinsic aging is programmed by our genes. Extrinsic factors that age the skin are sun exposure as well as exposure to pollutants and harsh treatments. Scientists estimate that photoaging causes 90% of age related skin damage. Once the damage is done, it can be very hard to reverse. That’s why it’s never too early to start thinking about protecting your skin if you want to avoid wrinkles, age spots and skin cancer by:

• Wearing sunscreen, even in winter and during low exposure times

• Covering up with a hat and sunglasses

• Wearing protective clothing

• Avoiding exposure between 10 am and 2 pm, when the sun is strongest

The Protective Effects of Topical Vitamin E

Sun (UV rays) and pollutants damage the skin through the production of free radicals. Scientists know that sun exposure can:

• Damage DNA

• Produce harmful free radicals through lipid oxidation and inflammation

• Disrupt cell communication, which activates stress response genes

• Weaken the immune responses of the skin

(Note: Tanning beds and sun lamps can be just as damaging as natural sun exposure, due to UV radiation.)

This damage not only produces the signs of aging but it can also lead to skin cancers: basal cell carcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma and malignant melanoma. Skin cancer effects one in seven Americans every year, making it not only the most common form of cancer, but also the most rapidly increasing cancer.

In addition to the body’s antioxidant defenses, vitamin E can protect against damaging free radicals if there are optimal concentrations in the top layer of skin, known as the epidermis. In addition to protecting your skin from exposure, vitamin E can be a powerful aid to skin protection efforts. Here’s why:

• Most sunscreens only protect against UVB. Few protect against UVA, which suppresses the immune system.

• Even the best sunscreens and protective clothing will not protect from environmental pollutants.

• Most of us do not stay out of intense sunshine or wear protective clothing and sunscreens at all times, so oral and topical vitamin E can provide some protection when we haven’t.

• Sunscreens reduce exposure, but vitamin E can actually reduce photo aging when exposure does occur.

What Topical Vitamin E Does

• Acts as a sunscreen: It absorbs UVB rays before they damage the skin. Vitamin E applied to skin of mice prevented reddish inflammation and edema after UVB ray exposure.

• Protects the skin’s immune defenses: Australian and U.S. researchers have shown that vitamin E completely prevented the suppression of immune responses of the skin of mice exposed to UVB and partially protected the immune responses of cultured human cells exposed to UVA.

• Helps protect against skin cancer: Applied to the skin of mice, vitamin E prevented skin tumors from occurring due to UVB exposure, reduced damage to DNA and inhibited enzymes, which cause inflammation or promote tumor growth.

• Delays aging of the skin and may help reverse damage: Scientists know that free radicals are responsible for many of the aspects of aging. Free radicals attack lipids, proteins and sugars, DNA and genetic material. A large number of studies have shown that taking oral vitamin E reduces the production of free radicals and can help reduce damage to the skin, allowing for natural repair to occur.

• Protects against ozone damage: Researchers have found that vitamin E applied to the skin of animals prior to exposure to ozone prevented the increase in free radicals that are found without the vitamin application.

Both oral and topical applications are effective against free radical damage. Creams add a different protective effect by providing an extra protection on the surface of the skin, like a sunscreen, and by neutralizing free radicals before they damage the skin. Oral vitamin E cannot do this.

Get the Right Form of Vitamin E

Vitamin E is important to health and wellness both as an oral supplement and a topical agent. It’s incorporated into many of today’s skin creams. Vitamin E fights damaging free radicals, boosts the immune system, reduces inflammation, promotes membrane integrity, inhibits the proliferation of harmful cells, helps reduce the risk of skin cancer and helps slow the aging process.

Because it is difficult to get enough vitamin E from even a well balanced diet, supplements and topical creams are recommended. But the right form of vitamin E makes the difference between the full benefit and practically no benefit.

Most supplements and skin products, however, contain only alpha-tocopherol, which is only one of natural vitamin E’s eight components and most often in the synthetic form. To make things worse most creams contain the alpha-tocopherol in its esterified form. This means that the active part of the molecule that fights the free radicals is muzzled and thus inactive. In order to become active, vitamin E must penetrate the skin and the muzzle must be removed by the body’s enzyme. This prevents the function of vitamin E at the critical site, the surface of the skin and the process is slow and ineffective.

Emerging research has shown that other tocopherols and tocotrienols have important and unique antioxidant and biological effects on nutrition and health. Of major interest is the role of gamma-tocopherol in fighting the harmful nitrogen radicals that are produced during inflammation and are abundant in the environmental pollutants. Even more important is the findings that tocotrienols accumulate in the skin with major protective effects even against the most harmful gamma-radiation. Finally, the natural alpha-tocopherol is twice as potent in it’s natural as opposed to it’s synthetic form.

If a skin product just says it contains vitamin E and doesn’t say what form, assume that it contains only alpha-tocopherol in the synthetic form. The natural forms, especially those containing tocotrienols cost more, so they will want to let you know if they do contain it!

The Anti-Aging Bottom Line: If you want to keep your skin looking youthful as you age, vitamin E is a must. In order to get the maximum protection from vitamin E, make sure you are getting the complete form of vitamin E which contains the entire family of tocopherols and tocotrienols in their natural unesterified form.

Tags: antioxidants, enzymes, holistic nutrition, natural health, skin health, tocotrienols, vitamin E