What if you could protect your skin from progressing your melasma? You can, by adding some important things to your skincare routine.
We know how detrimental the sun is to overall skin health and the progression of melasma. Too much sun causes free radicals to damage skin cells, accelerating aging by degrading collagen and elastin which causes pigmentation. As much as we love the sun exposure it can cause and exacerbate skin conditions.
The exciting news is we can prevent free radical damage with a couple of important supplements. Keep your skin protected by preventing and furthering damage to your skin and reducing internal inflammation. Who knows, it’s even possible that you may see improvement in your melasma and/or overall skin health.
Astaxanthin.
Astaxanthin is a dark red colored carotenoid found in algae but also found in animals like salmon, krill, and lobster. ASX is both water and fat-soluble, making it able to protect both the inner and outer parts of a cell membrane. ASX can never turn toxic in the body because it is a pure antioxidant. Due to an abundance of negative electrons it neutralizes free radicals for longer periods of time compared with other antioxidants. ASX protects from inflammation, UV rays and can penetrate through all the layers of the skin. ASX has been shown to improve wrinkles and skin elasticity by healing collagen. It may have the ability to repair DNA damage from UV exposure. Astaxanthin may also improve immune function, support gut function, and bolster liver health.
ASX is 550 times stronger than vitamin E, 6,000 times stronger than vitamin C, and 550 times richer as a source of antioxidants than green tea.
I like to think of astaxanthin as the Queen of antioxidants.
It also has great benefits for people with type 2 diabetes, heart disease, blood pressure issues, and high cholesterol. Among many other potential benefits. You can read more about the incredible benefits of ASX in this article: Astaxanthin: 19 Known Medical Benefits, Uses, Side Effects & Conditions
Not only is this powerhouse of an antioxidant important for summer sun protection, it has a multitude of reasons to be used year-round with its ability to repair and heal all layers of the skin and boost immunity in the winter months.
For best absorption astaxanthin should be consumed with a fat source. I take 6mg twice a day.
My picks for Astaxanthin:
(Please purchase through my affiliate links. There's no extra cost to you, and it helps keep this project going so I can support more women on their healing journey)
GREAT VALUE:
HIGHEST QUALITY:
Polypodium leucotomos.
Polypodium leucotomos is a fern found in Central and South America. A couple of active compounds found in polypodium are ferulic acid, vanillic acid, p-coumaric acid, caffeic acid, and chlorogenic acid, all of which are powerful antioxidants. This fern also has photoprotective qualities. Not only does it protect your skin, but studies have shown polypodium to be beneficial for conditions like melasma, vitiligo, PIH (post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation), atopic dermatitis, and eczema. In fact, a 12-week randomized placebo-controlled study showed that Polypodium leucotomos improved melasma severity.
Polypodium has been shown to be effective and photoprotective against UVA damage from the sun if taken prior to sun exposure. It has been shown to lessen the severity of inflammatory reactions from sun exposure by 73%. PL also helps boost skin cells to protect against aging and cancer.
Which product should you use? You can take PL alone in extract form. People often talk about Heliocare, and Heliocare Advanced being recommended by their dermatologist. Heliocare Advanced has an additional 500mg of niacinamide in each capsule along with 240mg of PL. Nicotinamide has been shown to be effective at preventing new non-melanoma skin cancer by 23%. However, there is a bit of a downside to taking high doses of nicotinamide. 500mg is in excess of the daily recommended dosage and can deplete your methyl donors.
Nicotinamide or any form of niacin in excess consumes methyl groups for proper elimination. Methyl groups are very important for so many other processes in the body. Some people may have a reaction from losing too many methyl donors when consuming these dosages of niacinamide. Methyl groups like B vitamins, choline, and glutathione assist with DNA production, neurotransmitter production, detoxification, histamine metabolism, estrogen metabolism, and liver detoxification specifically. All of these things play a role in melasma. So if you have melasma, you need your methyl donors, and taking high doses of niacinamide could be a problem for your overall balance.
I personally think you are good with just PL and ASX for sun care. There is no reason to possibly create more stress for your detox pathways with Heliocare Advanced. Most dermatologists won’t tell you this but a functional medicine doctor would. been
Studies suggest 240mg twice a day.
My picks for Polypodium Leucotomos:
(Please purchase through my affiliate links. There's no extra cost to you, and it helps keep this project going so I can support more women on their healing journey)
Sunscreen.
We all know that sunscreen is incredibly important for the summer months. For those with melasma, we tend to wear sunscreen everywhere, even in the winter or in front of computers. One thing we don’t realize is that our skin absorbs everything we put on it, and sometimes those ingredients cause more harm than good. Knowing how to find a good sunscreen is key to a good mind body beauty routine.
So why do some sunscreens work better than others? And what kind of sunscreen is best? There is a lot of ingredients used in the SPF industry that are important to know about when picking a product. There are so many SPF products that look good and I want to love their product, but it usually turns out that their ingredient list is not what I’m looking for in a skincare product.
Some drawbacks of these ingredients are hormonal disruption, carcinogenic ingredients, or can they easily absorbed into the skin. You don’t want to drink your sunscreen, do you? You can read more about these ingredients on the EWG website.
Knowing what ingredients may cause long-term health concerns vs. safer ones may just be your golden ticket to finding the right product. I will only talk about good ingredients that are completely safe to use.
When we think about sunscreen we mostly think of UVA and UVB as important contributing factors to the spread or worsening of melasma. UVA are longer wavelengths that can penetrate deeper into the layers of the skin causing wrinkles, premature aging, damage to collagen, and DNA damage. UVB are shorter wavelengths that cause damage to the superficial layers of the skin. These rays contribute to the development of skin cancer, DNA damage, and sunburns. UVB is said to be more dangerous than UVA. UVA and UVB both cause inflammation and free radicals and both impact or cause hyperpigmentation or melasma.
There is also visible light that is rarely discussed when it comes to SPF or skin health. Visible light contributes to 45% of solar radiation and plays a key role in the darkening and worsening of pigmentation. Visible light penetrates much deeper than either UVA or UVB. VL is also a contributing factor to free radicals and DNA damage. In fact, visible light is the main reason why your melasma gets worse, it stimulates melanogenesis and increases tyrosinase activity. Most sunscreens don't protect against visible light, that's why some products work better than others.
So how do we choose a good product that will protect us from UVA, UVB and visible light?
Zinc oxides and titanium dioxide are the only two main ingredients that are safe and effective in your sun protective factors (SPF). It is important to realize that zinc oxide is superior to titanium oxide in that it protects from a full spectrum of UV rays. Titanium dioxide is better for UVB but less protective for UVA. However, neither zinc nor titanium protects from visible light. You have to choose a product that also has iron oxides.
At this point, you may be overwhelmed by this information. Let me simplify this for you. My preferred ingredient list is zinc oxides with iron oxides. This combination is superior for the ultimate skin protection and you can find it in many clean beauty brands. I can’t express how important this is for people who either want to prevent their melasma from getting worse or prevent themselves from getting pigmentation to begin with. Iron oxide is a must in your SPF, it is the key ingredient that protects from visible-light-induced pigmentation and DNA damage.
Three of my top clean beauty SPF pick's that contain zinc & iron oxides:
(Please purchase through my affiliate links. There's no extra cost to you, and it helps keep this project going so I can support more women on their healing journey)
These 3 crucial products will save your skin this summer.
You can finally relax and enjoy summer without the fear of your skin being a disaster at the end of the season and these ingredients may even help to heal your skin while protecting it.
Stay tuned by subscribing, I have more clean beauty tips coming up. Check out my post Defining Melasma if you haven’t already.
Does this post make you more excited for summer? I hope so.
Resources
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5946307/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5525019/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14699363/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21505393/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3970827/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32726103/
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0130949
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa1506197
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