Free Radicals - Invisible Destructors
- By:louise forrest
What the heck are free radicals and just what do they have to do with your skin? You may have heard about free radicals from a cosmetics sales clerk or on a television commercial and written them off as complete rubbish. After all, hearing all this free radical talk about little molecules doing damage to your skin? How silly!
Actually, it is very likely. Granted, some cosmetics companies may over-hype the damage free radicals do, but the truth is that free radicals exist and they are aiding in the damage done to your skin. As if UV rays from sunlight, harsh weather conditions, and too many cosmetics were not enough! Now you have to worry about damage at an atomic level too? It almost seems like there is no relief from skin damaging elements.
Before you can begin to help your skin, you probably want to know just what this free radical hullabaloo actually is. Free radicals are highly reactive molecules that have unsatisfied electron valence pairs. If you remember from your high school science class, an atom has protons, neutrons, and electrons.
Normally, electrons in an atom will be paired up, but in some cases, such as with oxygen, the atoms will go through chemical reactions and through the reaction, one or more electrons can be lost, leaving the atom without its usual number of electrons. The oxygen molecule now begins searching out another molecule in order to swipe the electron it needs to be even again. This molecule is the free radical, doing damage as it bounces around, trying to steal back electrons.
The chain of free radicals is virtually unending, as one molecule snatches up an electron from another, that molecule must now go on a search for an electron, and so forth. These unstable molecules are what cause damage to our skin. The theory is that free radicals searching for stability through taking other electrons cause skin cells to break down. Skin cells that have broken down lose their ability, or have their ability hampered, to function as they normally would. This damage can cause winkling and other skin issues.
Fabulous, but how do you stop all these crazy free radicals? The answer is already out there; antioxidants. Antioxidants occur everywhere naturally, not just in your skincare products. The purpose of antioxidants is to take up free radical oxygen molecules and prevent them from stealing electrons from other molecules, thus helping to stop the chain of free radical destruction.
There are many antioxidants out there, either in natural elements, or as man-made creations. Green tea and other teas have been found to have great antioxidant properties and have been used for some time for that very reason.
Remember, antioxidant is not an ingredient you will find in your skin care products. Instead, that is the function that certain ingredients will perform for you. So if you begin looking for a moisturizer or other product and are searching the ingredient list for the word antioxidant, you are not going to find it. Instead, you should find out what ingredients offer antioxidant capabilities and look for those in the products.
Antioxidants are in just about every moisturizer on the market these days, so you should not have much trouble finding one. Even if you buy or have been using a product with antioxidants, do not expect to see some kind of miraculous improvement in your skin. Antioxidants are only meant to help stop free radical damage, not repair it.
They are not going to suddenly make winkles disappear or to make your skin suddenly moisturized. There are other ingredients in the product you choose that can do such things, as they are meant to. Antioxidants are simply there to neutralize free radicals, but that should be no less important when looking to give your skin some extra protection.
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