What Is all the fuss about Vitamin C? And Why Is It Good For Your Skin?

If you know a good deal about skincare already, then I’m sure you already know at least a little bit of information about Vitamin C, but if you’re new to your skincare journey (welcome!) you may not know all of the benefits Vitamin C has to offer. There are literally hundreds of Vitamin C products glutting the beauty landscape – both in conventional skincare and clean skincare. So why did we feel compelled to launch a Vitamin C product? Because we wanted to make it different. That's always the driver for our brand. And we wanted to make it special and perform in such a way that friends would tell friends, daughters would tell their moms and so on. 

Today on the blog we’re going to be talking about what Vitamin C actually is, why it’s so good for your skin - and then we'll outline some of the key differences between the Super Lift Vitamin C-More Treatment and other Vitamin C products on the market.

Vitamin C, which is also commonly referred to as ascorbic acid, is an incredibly powerful antioxidant and is vital to our overall health. Extreme deficiencies in Vitamin C can lead a person to get scurvy. Scurvy used to be a common disease in sailors and some symptoms include bleeding sores, tooth loss, anemia, and a reduced rate of healing for injuries.

Vitamin C has a number of benefits for your body, specifically your skin, including increasing collagen production, lightening hyperpigmentation, and protecting the skin from UV exposure.

Vitamin C’s antioxidant power, especially when paired with Vitamin E, is excellent at helping to protect your skin from UV radiation. The Vitamin C stored in your skin reduces over time as your skin is exposed to sunlight and radiation, so a daily application of Vitamin C to your skin can greatly help your skin. Prolonged exposure to UV radiation also leads to photoaging, causing “wrinkles, hyperpigmentation and marked changes in skin elasticity that cause skin sagging, with the skin also becoming sallow and rougher with age.” 

Vitamin C helps increase collagen production, which in turn helps prevent the signs of aging, like wrinkles. Some studies have also suggested that Vitamin C can help prevent skin dehydration by “enhanc[ing] the production of barrier lipids and induc[ing] differentiation of keratinocytes.”

A major problem with Vitamin C products that may not be known by many is that Vitamin C is usually a wildly unstable ingredient. It oxidizes when exposed to air so it rapidly degrades in a formulation. This leads to a short shelf-life and a less efficacious product.

It's a common misconception that the higher the percentage of Vitamin C the better. The fact is higher percentages of (lesser grade) Vitamin C can actually be irritating to your skin - and ultimately may do more harm than good. Additionally, since unstable Vitamin C products have a shorter shelf life, it renders those higher percentages useless. 

Lower percentages of higher quality Vitamin C's (like we use in the Super Lift) as part of a thoughtful, comprehensive formulation can powerfully transform the skin without any added irritation (we’ll get into that more later)

There are hundreds of Vitamin C products in the marketplace, so when we set out to create our own, we wanted it to expect more from their Vitamin C. 3 years and 209 iterations later we ended up with the Super Lift Vitamin C-More Treatment.

The most commonly used Vitamin C in the beauty market is L’ascorbic acid, and like we mentioned previously, can be wildly unstable. There have been many significant advancements in the development of stable Vitamin Cs (most of which are incredibly expensive) and the Super Lift uses not just one, but three of these innovations - Magnesium Ascorbyl Phosphate, Sodium Ascorbyl Phosphate and Tetrahexyldecyl Ascorbate. All of these Vitamin Cs are shelf-stable, bio-available and use a liposomal delivery method to penetrate the skin to elicit greater change.

Interestingly enough, one of the Vitamin C’s we use, Sodium Ascorbyl Phosphate, was studied for its ability to rival Retinol in its efficacy on reducing the appearance of acne. In a study comparing the effects of 5% Vitamin C SAP and 0.2% Retinol, Vitamin C Sap showed a 48.82% reduction in the appearance of acne after 8 weeks, versus Retinol which showed a 49.50% reduction in the appearance of acne.

Vitamin C is an incredibly powerful ingredient that has skin benefits ranging from protection of the skin to prevention of aging. While the 3 Vitamin Cs we use are the star ingredients of the Super Lift, the formulation is so much more. If you want to learn a little more about what the Super Lift has to offer – head here, and if you want to shop the Super Lift Vitamin C-More Treatment - head here.