Much of SkinCeuticals’ success is due to the use of antioxidants, what is an antioxidant?
Antioxidants are molecules that are capable of stabilizing reactive oxygen species, or free radicals, which in turn are one of the causes of skin aging. These highly reactive molecules are able to mate with many structures of the epidermis and dermis, especially with DNA, producing mutations and subsequently skin damage that causes aging, tumors, activation of dermal enzymes such as metalloproteases that digest collagen and then if we are able to stabilize all these highly reactive structures, and we achieve this with antioxidants, we limit the epidermal and dermal damage caused by reactive oxygen species.
What are the benefits of antioxidants for our skin?
Our skin is provided with natural antioxidants, we all have these antioxidants, which have to block reactive oxygen species from metabolism or from ultraviolet radiation damage and protect the skin from their deleterious effects. However, the problem with natural antioxidants is that they are quickly depleted, especially when the skin is subjected to significant oxidative stress such as that produced by ultraviolet radiation. When we apply topical antioxidants what we are doing is reinforcing a natural balance that is quickly broken by ultraviolet radiation and allowing us to be exposed to significant oxidative stresses without reactive oxygen species damaging our skin.
What is different about SkinCeuticals antioxidants?
The application of topical antioxidants is extremely controversial because it is very difficult to achieve a stable formula. There are very few formulas on the market that on the one hand have demonstrated their stability, on the other hand their ability to penetrate the skin and on the other hand their ability to exert their antioxidant action once on the skin, demonstrated as a photoprotective effect, i.e. prevention of UV-induced mutations, prevention of UV-induced activation of metalloproteinases and reduction of the number of sunburn cells after UV radiation.
In the case of SkinCeuticals antioxidants, this is achieved thanks to the Duke patents, which are formulation patents consisting of a formula with high concentrations of antioxidants, i.e. a high concentration, with very low Ph levels that achieve a balance, a cocktail, and the combination of several antioxidants, for example vitamin C, vitamin E and ferulic acid, or vitamin C and floretin, which are cocktails of antioxidants that give the formula enormous power on the one hand and great stability on the other. In both cases these formulas, apart from being stable and potent, have demonstrated a photoprotective effect in vivo.
One of your flagship products is Floretin CF serum, what is the key to its success?
Floretin CF is an antioxidant with enormous potency. The key to its success is due to several reasons, on the one hand to its great antioxidant power that can multiply the skin’s natural defenses against ultraviolet radiation by up to 8 times. On the other hand, its excellent cosmeticity and its short-term effects on the skin’s radiance and texture.
But another effect that I, as a dermatologist, benefit most from is that in situations that are difficult to treat in the office, such as melasma, which is a condition that recurs and recurs despite treatments and relentlessly reappears every summer on the face of many women, when one keeps the skin anti-oxidized for a reasonable time, perhaps 5-6 months on a permanent basis, these patients have much less recurrence of melasma in the summer months, or at least if their melasma recurs it does so in a much less intense form.