These new Hyaluronic Acid Serums Are a Big Drink of Water for Your Skin
Whether your skin is dry and needs of moisture of your skin is oily and needs lightweight hydration, a hyaluronic acid serum will work for you.
When it comes to hydration, hyaluronic acid is a miracle molecule ~ largely because it can hold 1000 times its weight in water. And hyaluronic acid isn’t a weird chemical created in a lab. In fact, it naturally exists in skin, and synthetic hyaluronic acid is virtually identical to what your body already makes.
Beauty companies have been incorporating hyaluronic acid into skin care products for years, but lately the trend has been picking up steam. And there’s a new generation of serums with hyaluronic as the star ingredient – not just playing a supporting role.
The rise of fillers like Restylane and Juvederm, which are made of hyaluronic acid, is clearly contributing to the prevalence of these new serums. After all, if you don’t want to have your face injected, you can still get some of the benefits of hyaluronic acid by applying it topically. It plumps skin, making it look younger and smoother, it provides long lasting moisture, and it’s great for all skin types.
Here, we’re featuring some of our favorite new hyaluronic acid serums and explaining what makes each one special.
https://www.totalbeauty.com//content/slideshows/hyaluronic-acid-serums-170317
The Acid Test: Why Your Skin Needs Hyaluronic Acid
How hyaluronic acid helps maintain skin hydration
By Danné Montague-King
Back in the 1980s, I produced a semi-serum named Hyalura Serum.
The raw material was hyaluronic acid made from rooster combs, and when applied topically, it would food the skin with moisture.
Aside from its many medical uses, such as fillers and joint conditioning, hyaluronic acid has fantastic water-binding powers depending on its percentage in a product and the quality of the raw material. My rooster comb extract (now mostly used for medical applications) became very costly for a then struggling chemist (more alchemist really), and then suddenly the bird flu epidemic hit Asia. I had more than one client scream “SARS” after reading my label, drop the bottle, and run! One older client showed up wearing a mask and demanded his money back from purchasing my Hyalura Serum. So, I switched to less effective raw materials—all of which work as moisture-binding mucopolysaccharides, but never with the water-attracting power of the original cock-a-doodle-do!
The current veggie sources of hyaluronic acid are produced from the bacteria streptococcus fermentation(no SARS). This form of hyaluronic acid is a natural, linear polymer comprised of 3-N-acetylglucosamineand 4-glucuronic acid (hence the original name hyaluronan) with a molecular weight of 6 million Daltons. Sodium hyaluronate is the most usable material in my opinion, because the salt attracts water to the site. I would not use more than 2 percent for home use applications, as higher percentages will attract all the available moisture out of the epidermis (beware of companies touting claims of 10-75 percent in their products).
Special methods of fractionating the molecular size of hyaluronic acid can increase epidermal penetration, but we are working on a non-industry specific method of hydrolyzation that can change the regulation of more than 4o genes (the blueprints of cells),including those involved with cell-to-cell adhesion–thus improving skin tautness.
This will be very beneficial for our research on moving fresh, new stem cells from one site of the skin to another area of the skin that may be in deficit (kind of like taking babies from the nursery along a genomic pathway to another building where they can be cared for and flourish into strong adult cell structures).
Estheticians can think of hyaluronic acid, glycosaminoglycans (GAGs), and chondroitin sulfate—-which basically keeps the first two together like a sugar bonding glue—as the matrix under the epidermis that keeps it turgid and bouncy.
As time goes by, this matrix becomes thinner and thinner and the skin appears loose, thin, and crepey, with wrinkles and scales. The scaling and wrinkling can be addressed topically, but the bounce cannot be reinstated via surface treatments. One must take specifically blended essential fatty acids internally to regain the bounce.
Fish oil capsules are great for a full complement of omegas, but evening primrose oil, hexane, or CO2 extracted and sea buckthorn oil, wild from inner Mongolia where indigenous plants have grown for centuries, are my preference and have prevented me from looking like a chenille bedspread.
Certainly, hyaluronic acid is a big part of successful skin revision, although it’s not the only transepidermal water loss (TEWL) prevention contender. But the “inside out” approach will give your clients back those years they thought were gone.
Incorporating Hyaluronic Acid
Hyaluronic acid offers lots of skin-boosting benefits, including tons of moisture.
Here are a few things you should know about using it:
- Hyaluronic acid benefits all skin types
- One hyaluronic acid molecule can hold up to 1,000 times its weight in water
- Its anti-inflammatory properties support skin’s healing and repairing ability
- Since hyaluronic acid naturally occurs in the body, it poses a low risk for allergic reaction or irritation
- It’s a great countermeasure for clients who use drying products to combat acne
Source: ASCP
