Antioxidants & Skin Health: Part 1 of 3

In this three-part blog series, I will share some helpful information about antioxidants and skin care. If you’ve mainly learned all your information from skin care commercials, you may be in for some surprises!

In these blogs, I’ll cover 3 ways antioxidants interact with your skin:

1. As an external barrier/ protectant

2. As a deep treatment through microneedling

3. As nutrition your skin receives through your bloodstream

This blog will focus on skin nutrition from the inside out.

How Antioxidant Consumption Benefits Your Skin 

If you’ve been following me, you know I’m really into antioxidants. I mainly talk about them in relation to detoxification, when antioxidants quench the oxidative effects of toxins. 

As you could imagine, a healthy detox response can also lead to glowing skin. Let’s look at other ways the skin benefits from antioxidants:

1. Protection Against UV Damage: Antioxidants can protect the skin from the harmful effects of UV radiation. They neutralize free radicals produced by UV exposure, which can cause skin damage and accelerate aging.

“Tocopherol (a form of vitamin E) can prevent UV lipid peroxidation and exhibits a very positive impact on dermal protection.” source

2. Reduction of Inflammation: Antioxidants have anti-inflammatory properties, which can help reduce skin inflammation and redness, leading to a clearer and more even complexion.

3. Promotion of Collagen Production: Some antioxidants, like Vitamin C, play a crucial role in collagen synthesis. Increased collagen production helps maintain skin elasticity and reduces the appearance of wrinkles and fine lines.

“Vitamin C acts as a cofactor for the proline and lysine hydroxylases that stabilize the collagen molecule tertiary structure, and it also promotes collagen gene expression.” source

4. Neutralization of Free Radicals: Antioxidants neutralize free radicals, which are highly reactive molecules that can damage DNA, proteins, and cell membranes. This damage can lead to mutations and cancerous changes in skin cells.

5. Enhancement of DNA Repair Mechanisms: Certain antioxidants, such as Vitamin C and E, can enhance the skin's ability to repair DNA damage caused by UV radiation. Improved DNA repair mechanisms can reduce the risk of mutations that lead to skin cancer.

Why You May Be Low in Antioxidants

You can become quite imbalanced in your antioxidant ratio when you are chronically exposed to something like toxic mold, and your antioxidant levels can’t keep up with oxidative stress.

Other factors that can affect your antioxidant status:

• Aging

• Poor gut health

• Radiation exposure

• Smoking

• Sun exposure

• Exercise 

• Dietary deficiencies

What Are Antioxidants Exactly?

“The skin is equipped with a network of protective antioxidants. They include enzymatic antioxidants such as glutathione peroxidase, superoxide dismutase and catalase, and nonenzymatic low-molecular-weight antioxidants such as vitamin E isoforms, vitamin C, glutathione (GSH), uric acid, and ubiquinol (CoQ10).” source

It’s important to get a wide variety of the key antioxidants and their bioflavonoid helpers. Antioxidants all work together to recycle and support each other. 

If you’ve never downloaded my free Antioxidant eBook, you can do that here. But I'll quickly summarize the “antioxidant network” below and some of its flavonoid helpers. Then I’ll share both food and supplement sources of these amazing compounds. 

A trigger of dysregulation, decline and inflammation in the body is oxidation. Oxidation happens when a compound loses one or more electrons and becomes a free radical.

While a free radical remains ‘free,’ it will bump into healthy tissue, cells or cellular components and cause oxidative damage to these cells and tissues.

The free radical floats around looking to make itself whole again. Hopefully it encounters an antioxidant, which donates an electron to neutralize the free radical. The five main antioxidants that work together to support one another are:

• Alpha Lipoic Acid

• CoEnzyme Q10

• Vitamins E

• Vitamin C 

• Glutathione

These each have their special qualities, both for your skin and your internal organs. You may see some of them listed on skin care products.

How to Get More Skin-Protective Antioxidants Into You

As you’ll learn in my eBook, they all can be recycled in the body, and they all can be produced in the body, except for vitamin C. But we can also get them from foods and supplements. Examples:

• Alpha Lipoic Acid- Mainly made by the body, but found in small amounts in potato, red meat and spinach, and in supplement form.

• CoEnzyme Q10- found in organ meats, meat, fatty fish, organ supplements and ubiquinol supplement.

• Vitamins E- Found in peanuts, almonds, pumpkin, barley and leafy greens and as a supplement called tocotrienols.

• Vitamin C- Found in lemons, peppers, acerola, strawberries and broccoli and as an affordable supplement.

• Glutathione- Consume in okra, spinach, avocado, milk thistle, turmeric and as a supplement.

Beyond the network antioxidants, know that an abundance of ‘antioxidant-like’ substances are available to you in the flavonoids that come in plants.

I encourage you to consume a wide variety of colorful herbs, foods and teas such as:

• Grapes

• Plums

• Squash

• Peppermint tea

• Cinnamon

• Cocoa

• Cherries

• Sunflower seeds

• Dates

• Yams

• Parsley

• Ginger 

• Basil

…and the list goes on. Don’t get stuck in an eating rut! Mix up your shopping, cooking and gardening options.

Special Mention: Broccoli Sprouts

“Over 650 scientific publications suggest broccoli sprouts to have the highest antioxidant effect in human cells based on a number of protective compounds. They contain 10 to 100 times more enzymes than fruits and vegetables when eaten within the first seven days of being sprouted.” source

Broccoli sprouts are great to buy or grow yourself, but odds are you aren’t doing that on the regular. That’s why I love them in a supplement form. Broccoli sprouts have an affinity for detoxing mycotoxins as well as many man-made chemicals like gasoline additives.

Clearance Sale Ends Soon!

As we transition our current shop into a new model, we are doing a deep inventory clearance! We now items at up to 50% off, including 40% off the antioxidants below.

Snatch up some of the amazing antioxidants we sell before they are gone!

Includes:

Broccoli Sprout and Seed - detoxes mycotoxins, estrogens and many chemicals

Ultimate Antioxidant Synergy - contains quercitin, curcumin, resveratrol and more! For exercise recovery too.

Mi CoQ10- detox your mitochondria for increased energy

Glutathione Synergy- an absorbable form of the ‘master antioxidant.

Learn More

Don’t forget to download my antioxidant eBook!

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Bridgit Danner, LAc, FDNP, is an acupuncturist turned functional health coach and has worked with thousands of clients since 2004.

She is the founder of FunctionalDetoxProducts.com and the author of The Ultimate Guide to Toxic Mold Recovery: Take Back Your Home Health & Life, available in audiobook, Kindle and paperback on Amazon.

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