When Oxygen Is Good for Your Skin, When It Isn’t, and How You Can Maximize the Benefits
Let Your Skin Breathe and Detox! We’ve all heard of antioxidants and how they can benefit your health, particularly your skin’s health. But how exactly do they work? And isn’t oxygen good for your skin? Why do we want to remove it with an antioxidant? In this post, I’ll break down a bit more about when oxygen is good for your skin, when oxygen is bad for your skin, and why both oxygen and antioxidants should be part of your skincare regimen.
Oxygen and Your Skin: The Basics
Essentially, oxygen interacts with your skin in two ways: oxidation and oxygenation.
Oxidation is the natural process of decay that happens in all our cells and involves the metabolization of oxygen. While oxidation is necessary for new cells to grow and flourish, it also produces a certain amount of what are known as free radicals. These unstable molecules contain an extra electron and spend their time searching for other electrons to pull from healthy cells. This damages the healthy cell, leading to faster decay.
What does this mean for your skin? Sun damage, age spots, deepening wrinkles, and changes in pigmentation. Picture an apple whose flesh turns brown once you cut into it – oxidation and exposure to free radicals do the same thing to your skin, and the damage builds up over time.
Oxygenation, on the other hand, brings healing, not damage, to your skin. It is essentially letting your skin breathe, pulling in the oxygen needed to maintain your cells’ normal functions, including the production of collagen and elastin. As we age, though, our skin loses the ability to draw in and use oxygen efficiently.
So how can we defend against oxidation and free radicals while increasing our skin’s supply of revitalization oxygen? The answer is a one-two punch of drenching antioxidants and oxygen treatments.
What Do Antioxidants Do?
Antioxidants are tiny molecules that bind to free radicals on your skin before they can wreak havoc on your cells. Because the antioxidants are bound to the free radicals they are no longer in search of extra electrons, as a result, they don’t cause damage like loss of elasticity or excess pigmentation. Our skin produces antioxidants naturally but as we age, our body’s ability to produce enough of these molecules declines. In other words, our skin needs back-up.
Oxygen skin treatments also improve the overall health of your skin and reduce blemishes since rosacea, acne, and bacteria, CAN NOT live where there is too much oxygen.
We can get more antioxidants through supplements or foods (such as berries and dark leafy greens), or we can apply them directly to our skin in serums, moisturizers. A number of Sara Elizabeth Skincare products contain powerful antioxidant combinations of ferulic acid, Vitamin E and Vitamin C among other highly packed polyphenols to help fight against free radical damage, including our 4-in-1 Powerful Antioxidant & Brightening Treatment, and Bearberry & Apple Stem Cell Brightening Cream that is the game-changers!
What Do Oxygen Skin Treatments Do?
Once you’ve helped your skin win the battle against free radicals, it’s time to take your regimen one step further with a Signature Facial with Sara Elizabeth. Her oxygen jet peel and o2 Dome therapy oxygen treatments bathe your skin with a highly concentrated stream of up to 90% oxygen infused with hyaluronic acid and firming peptides. Stimulating oxygenation, increasing the amount of oxygen available to your skin, boosting circulation and collagen production, and giving you a plump hydrated glow! Oxygen skin treatments also improve the overall health of your skin and reduce blemishes since rosacea, acne, and bacteria, CAN NOT live where there is too much oxygen.
Interested in seeing first hand how both antioxidants and oxygen treatments can bring your skin to a whole new level of health and vitality? Let Your Skin Breathe and Detox!
Check out all of Sara Elizabeth’s skincare products or BOOK YOUR APPOINTMENT!
