Vitamin C: The leading active ingredient to boost your skin

Your tan gets paler every day and your pigment spots seem more visible than ever. It is the return of tiny imperfections, and your summer glow is now a little dull. Let’s just say that September is here…

Written by LES EXPERTS IOMA

What do we need? A vitamin C treatment – Vitamin C is one of the best vitamins for the skin as it prevents spots, imperfections, and is anti-aging.

Dull skin and skin alterations are mostly caused by the following factors: lack of sleep, smoking, pollution, stress, and an unbalanced diet. These daily aggressions are responsible for free radicals, which oxidize the skin cells and accelerate their aging process. Wrinkles, fine lines, and pigment spots appear. The skin loses its tone and glow. This is commonly referred to as oxidative stress.

And this is when vitamin C comes in – to limit this oxidative stress:

• It protects the skin against external aggressions such as sun rays, stress, tobacco, or pollution, preventing free radicals from oxidizing the cells.
• It promotes collagen synthesis to maintain the firmness of the skin.
• It manages to reduce superficial pigment spots.
• It also has anti-inflammatory properties by playing a role in the balance of the bacterial defenses of the skin.

In short, it is an active ingredient that must be part of your essentials. Let’s focus on the 4 proven IOMA vitamin treatments.

What are the characteristics of vitamin C in IOMA skincare products?

As a delicate active ingredient, vitamin C sometimes makes the formulation process challenging! The two major drawbacks of this molecule are its instability and its low skin penetration properties. Vitamin C can be altered by contact with air, heat, light, and water. Because the skin is hydrophobic, it hardly penetrates the skin barrier.

To obtain an effective formulation, IOMA uses more stable forms of vitamin C, such as magnesium ascorbyl phosphate or ascorbyl tetraisopalmitate. These vitamin C derivatives penetrate the skin more easily. When combined with other strong antioxidants such as vitamin E or niacinamide (vitamin B3), vitamin C derivatives effectively achieve skin photoprotection, collagen synthesis, and dimming of pigment spots.

How to integrate vitamin C into your skincare routine?

You can choose to apply it whenever necessary to boost your skin, or you can use it daily, as a part of your skincare routine. Vitamin C products can be applied during the day as well as in the evening, as it is not photosensitizing.

Vitamin C serum

More concentrated and lighter than a cream, it can be used as a “booster” to address a specific issue: anti-pollution, glow, anti-aging… Vitamin C acts together with vitamin E, an antioxidant naturally present in the skin that plays a key role in protecting the skin against oxidative stress. Therefore, vitamin E has a role in keeping collagen fibers in the skin. The synergistic effect of vitamins C and E also helps protect the skin against UV rays.

This treatment can be applied after cleansing your skin. Use one to three drops alone before applying your cream, or you can mix it with your cream or foundation.

Vitamin C night mask

Vitamin C is the ingredient of choice for a “glow effect” mask. From morning to evening, the burden of the day starts to show on your face: loss of firmness, dark circles, drawn features, deepened wrinkles, dull skin… That is the time to choose the Vitality Sleeping Mask: it strengthens your skin and prepares it to face the oxidative stress of the day.

Use it one to three times a week or every evening for ten days as a treatment. Apply it in the evening to perfectly cleansed skin. It replaces the night cream. Rinse it the next morning.

Vitamin C day cream

Often less dosed than a serum, a cream moisturizes and treats the skin. Vitamin C is combined with other active ingredients, most often moisturizers but also antioxidants, which slow the production of free radicals and protect the skin from the effects of UV rays, pollution, and blue light.

Apply these products daily, in the morning and/or evening, to perfectly cleansed skin.

At the end of the first week of your vitamin C treatment, even if your skin glow is encouraging you to continue the vitamin skincare routine, let’s not forget that one or two months are needed in order to see the actual effects of these products – that’s the time it takes for the skin cells to be renewed and for the active ingredients’ action to be visible.