Jeanne breaks down how antioxidants work in our skincare, why we need them and what they are.
Jeanne takes us on a journey to understand the labels on your skincare products. She breaks down what antioxidants are and why we need them. She talks about the key sentences and words often associated with antioxidants and that usually appear on your skincare packaging.
This entails an explanation of free radicals (what they are and why they are harmful to our skin), environmental stressors, and what on earth it means when skincare products are dubbed free radical scavengers.
She also explains why the FIGGI Nurture the Goddess Antioxidant Enriched Day Cream contains unique antioxidants and how this can help increase or boost the efficacy of your SPF.
Jeanne shares her favourite antioxidant ingredients.
Links to use:
Dr. Mariska Lilly Podcast Episode: Rooibos Skin & Health Superstar
FIGGI Nurture the Goddess Antioxidant Enriched Day Cream
Jeanne Retief: Blog | Podcast | Skincare Shop | Instagram
[00:00:00.170] - Jeanne
Good morning, FIGGI Goddess, and welcome to the My FIGGI Life podcast. Today we're going to talk about antioxidants in skin care and also basically what the FIGGI Nurture the Goddess Antioxidant Enriched day cream is all about and how it helps you. What do antioxidants do in our skin? How do they work? And why is it important for us to actually have them in our skincare routine? So if you're one of those that absolutely know that you have to have an antioxidant in your cream, and you probably own an antioxidant skincare product, whether it be cream or serum, but you're still wondering, like, okay, I have it, and I know it's good for me, but I'm not really sure what it does. Or perhaps you already know that it's a free radical scavenger and it sounds super cool, but you're still wondering, I know I need the antioxidant cream. I know it's a free radical scavenger, but what are free radicals and why should they be scavenged? Then this episode is for you. Stay tuned.
[00:01:04.070] - Intro
Welcome, Goddess, to your sacred space. This is the My FIGGI Life podcast, where we openly discuss life's wins and losses on our journeys to self-discovery. This is your best life. This is your FIGGI life. And now here is your host, Jeanne.
[00:01:23.180] - Jeanne
Okay, so good morning. Welcome back. And today I'm so excited because we're talking about antioxidants. It's really one of my favorites, favorite, favorite things in skincare. I absolutely love using antioxidants, especially in my morning routine. Why do we need antioxidants and why is it so amazing? I'm going to talk about this specifically from the perspective of, yes, what is an antioxidant and what does it do? And two, the FIGGI Nurture the Goddess Antioxidant Enriched Day Cream and how its antioxidants work. Now, if you know the FIGGI beauty line, the Sensi-Soul regimen, you know that all our products are fragrance free, essential oil free, and lovingly made with green rooibos extract. Rooibos is a very powerful antioxidant. Its antioxidant properties are really housed in its unique structure of polyphenols. These really are the unique babies that make rooibos such a unique baby. And this specific polyphenol structure cannot be found in any other plant or space in the world. If you want to know more about this antioxidant structure, why it's so unique and how is it so unique, then go back and listen to our episode with rooibos specialist, Dr. Mariska Lilly.
[00:02:50.650] - Jeanne
She's done so much research on rooibos, and they've released so many beautiful medical scientific reports. And be sure to go back to that episode. I'll link it for you below. It really talks about it in detail, but if you think about your bathroom right now okay, let's just go back to your bathroom. How many skincare products on your shelf do you think would contain some type of antioxidant? If you don't actively look for a cream with an antioxidant benefit, chances are you at least use a vitamin C serum or some kind of targeted treatment containing vitamin C. This skincare conversation around antioxidants has been all the rage for quite some time with, I would say, good merit. The problem is just that we sometimes buy into new skincare trains without completely understanding how they work or what their benefits really are. Since I believe antioxidants are way too important to save under the they say it's good, so I should probably buy it category, I decided to dedicate this episode to you to help you understand the benefits of antioxidants in your skincare and why we included it in the FIGGI day cream. So antioxidants really are a universal name for ingredients that can fight skin deterioration.
[00:04:10.150] - Jeanne
In addition to removing the first signs of aging in the form of wrinkles, age spots, and some types of inflammation, antioxidants also significantly boost and support the skin's natural ability to renew itself. And this is true because antioxidants help increase the skin's ability to produce collagen and elastin. Collagens are all the wonderful, beautiful protein blocks built in our skin. Elastin is what makes our skin be able to stretch and bend and laugh and cry and frown and then to go back to its original state of being. So if you get a bit older and you start to lose elastin in your skin, this will be when your laugh lines may stay a little bit more permanent after you stop smiling. And it may not go back to the beautiful, ironed out skin you had before, but that's life. That's our journey. And it shows that we've lived, laughed, and loved. So, collagen and elastin are important in this conversation. If you remember anything else, remember collagen and elastin. These are the two essential building substances in your skin that affect its flexibility and its mobility, as I've just explained. And these are the two things that antioxidants help us with.
[00:05:31.850] - Jeanne
So, if antioxidants are then so amazing and so great, what exactly do they do? How does it work? Free radicals are the main things that you would probably see on your antioxidant skin care jar or tub or bottle. It will probably say something like free radical scavenger or fight free radicals or fights environmental pollutants. There's a good chance you will see the words free radical and scavenge in there somewhere. But what are free radicals and why should we care about them? And why are they bad? Free radicals are the main baddies that cause our skin's overall deterioration. So, if we're thinking about overall deterioration, I mean, think about accelerated aging pigmentation and inflammatory conditions like acne or eczema. These free radicals, these meanies, can also cause cancer. You may have seen these words in a slew of skincare marketing. So, this is a little technical. But free radicals are highly reactive, unstable molecules that do not have electrons in their outer shell. So free radicals then seek out atoms and molecules that have these missing electrons and try to bond with them to make themselves stable in whole. But unfortunately, your skin provides them with what they need to make them whole.
[00:07:01.340] - Jeanne
So, this latching process is a lot for your skin to handle. And if your skin becomes overpowered by these alien invaders, it can cause what we call oxidative stress. So well, let's take a step back there because that was like a real big mouthful. What I'm actually trying to say here is our skin is full of beautiful, beautiful, whole molecules. Think of these molecules in your skin as the beautiful Disney princesses with the glowing hair and the crowns and the gowns and just absolutely ready to live there happily ever after. They are also the ones that help your skin maintain its beauty, which helps it regenerate and protects you from the bodies out there. Now, again, let me just preface this by I'm super generalizing this so that I can properly explain it. Okay? So good molecules, Disney princesses, very, very gorgeous. And then you have the free radicals. The free radicals are the meanies. Those are the ones that are half princess, half villain. They want to be princesses, but they need to have that extra food or that extra source or that extra magic that will transform them from the villainous evil stepmother into the beautiful princess.
[00:08:25.450] - Jeanne
So, what do they do? They go into your skin. And these meanies free radicals can be pollution, UV radiation from the sun, dust, grime, all these things that you pick up all throughout the day. They see these beautiful Disney princesses in your skin, they approach them, and they essentially attack them to take away all of their good magic so that the meanies themselves can be whole. This process of stealing the Disney princess magic is what deteriorates our skin. This is what makes pigmentation, premature aging. The lines we see on our faces, that tired, dull, stressed look your skin gets. It's this process of the fight between the good and the bad and the bad, stealing all the magic from the good. So, what do antioxidants do? Antioxidants are like the special fairies or fairy godmothers that come to help your Disney princess and keep her safe. They come into play by the products or the serums that you use, and they present themselves with their beautiful magic to be whole Disney princesses. The evil stepmother. Baddies free radicals then come into your skin thinking that these fairies are your skin's beautiful Disney princesses.
[00:09:54.310] - Jeanne
They latch onto these fairies who use their powerful magic to encapsulate this bad, evil stepmother. And okay, this is super gross, now that I'm thinking of this analogy, break her up into millions and millions and millions of pieces. But that's what the antioxidant does. It traps the free radical, breaks it up into millions and millions and millions and millions and trillions of tiny, tiny, tiny molecules that are better distributed through your skin and then better able to be broken down by your skin so it doesn't cause so much damage. That is what antioxidants do. Think of them as the fairy godmother with all the good magic to your Disney princess fighting against the evil stepmother. Okay, I hope that analogy worked for you. What we're saying is this latching process, this whole thing of the evil stepmother seeing the Disney princess wanting to steal her magic, that's a lot for your skin, as we said. And that's why it causes what we know to be oxidative stress. Oxidative stress, you may ask, is in short, not a good thing at all. It's when there is an imbalance between the bad girls, the free radicals and the good girls, the antioxidants in your skin.
[00:11:18.180] - Jeanne
And it's important to note that the skin naturally protects this balance between baddies and goodies. So still this balance can be disrupted if the skin becomes overwhelmed by baddies, like through our environment, our natural aging process, and the damage that manifests as like premature aging, dullness pigmentation, etc. And again, going back to our analogy, that's when our beautiful fairy godmothers’ step in the antioxidants. They work, like I said, by binding to the meanies and preventing them from binding to our healthy cells, the Disney princesses. So they trick the free radicals, the meanies, the evil stepmothers, into binding to them instead of the goodies, the princesses in our skin. And that is why they are so called free radical scavengers. Through this kind of clever trickery and beautiful magic, they help slow down oxidation. Oxidation is that premature aging when there is an imbalance between the goodies and the baddies. And they prevent this oxidative stress, which in turn protects your beautiful Disney princess cells from premature aging and damaging. So that is what antioxidants do. And that is why it was important for me to put that in the FIGGI antioxidant enriched day cream, because research has also shown us that when we include antioxidants in our skincare routine, it can help to boost the efficacy of your sunscreen.
[00:12:57.910] - Jeanne
Now, super big disclaimer. I am in no way suggesting you do not wear sunscreen. You must wear sunscreen. Sunscreen is super important. 50 50 plus sunscreen every single day. Reapply apply it the correct way, okay? There are so many videos online that show you how to apply your sunscreen correctly, how to apply enough. So, what happens is that even though we try, we don't apply sunscreen the right way. We don't apply enough. So, although it helps to prevent those bad UV rays from coming through, some of them still do come through. What then happens is these UV rays that come through, they are those free radicals, those evil stepmothers and our fairy godmother. The antioxidant then kind of stands guard and goes like, oh no, I see you've surpassed the beautiful sunscreen. I will use my good magic to trick you into thinking I'm a Disney princess and then I shall absorb you and break you down into trillions of tiny molecules, which is then not so harmful for your skin. So I wanted the FIGGI day cream to do exactly that, to give you that extra, extra, extra protection, first of all, from free radicals or bad, evil stepmothers that the sunscreen may not protect you from.
[00:14:17.060] - Jeanne
Which are environmental pollutants. Your natural aging processes. Dust grime everything that you pick up throughout the day even stress. Stress that you feel throughout your skin. And then additionally, these UV rays that kind of come through your SPF. So the FIGGI day cream is a super antioxidant. We have wonderful green algae in there, the very potent green ribbons extract antioxidant that we've included, and then obviously also vitamin E. And I'm so happy to share with you, our results. Just came back from the claims testing lab, which showed that our figure, the Goddess Antioxidant Enriched Day Cream, is a powerful antioxidant that provides significant benefits against free radicals, evil stepmothers, and is good at being a fairy godmother, has awesome magic in catching these evil stepmothers and essentially eradicating them into trillions of pieces. Let's go a little bit deeper because we're talking about the free radicals, we're talking about the evil stepmother, but where did they come from? And if these are so bad for you, why not just avoid them in the first place? Why use an antioxidant to try and scavenge them if you can just avoid them completely? Unfortunately, they are baddies or evil stepmom's.
[00:15:41.730] - Jeanne
And sorry that I'm using that analogy. I'm just going back to the whole Cinderella Sleeping Beauty kind of thing. So, I'm not saying stepmom are evil in any way at all. So much love for stepmoms out there. Love, love, love you. There are so many wonderful, amazing, loving, beautiful stepmoms out there. So I do not at all mean this in a bad way towards that. But unfortunately, these baddies, these free radicals that occur, occur in many, many places and ways. So trying to avoid interaction with them is futile. They can be anywhere. Our body even produces them as a by-product of metabolism and as part of the natural aging process. However, free radicals often stem from air pollution, hello, city life, sunlight, UV radiation, smoking, alcohol, pesticides in our foods, and poor nutrition. So, what am I saying? If you're willing to move to a rural space with no pollution, never go outside in the sun, never indulge in a cocktail hour ever again in your life, eat only clean, good food and avoid any and all pesticides in food or other sources, you're golden. And you don't need an antioxidant. However, this list describes our daily lives and interactions with the world.
[00:17:00.700] - Jeanne
So, to help us out, our antioxidant friends, fairy godmothers are there to lead the way. The next thing you'll probably see on your antioxidant cream or serum or jar is something to the tune of environmental stressors or protects against environmental stressors or eliminates environmental stressors or something to this effect. If you've seen the referral also to free radicals or free radical scavengers in your skincare, you probably have also seen that they scavenge the free radical damage caused by environmental stressors. So this little caption seems to often be part and parcel of the antioxidant skincare package. It basically refers to ordinary things in our everyday lives that we cannot avoid and that lead to oxidative stress, which we have now established is not a good look for your skin. So environmental stressors refer specifically to free radical damage caused by our environments like air pollution, UV radiation, dust, dry air. These stressors also contribute to the presence of antioxidants in the skin's surface layers as they naturally work to protect us. Your skin naturally has and deploys these Disney princesses with their beautiful magical powers. But as we say, when you have oxidative stress, there is an imbalance of the goodies the good magic and the baddies the bad magic in your skin.
[00:18:35.010] - Jeanne
Some magic only lasts until midnight and over time, antioxidants become depleted and lose their protective effect on the skin. So therefore, replenishing the skin with a topical kind of antioxidant can help you compensate for this loss and combat this oxidative stress. So, all of that being said, how do you choose an antioxidant? What are the best antioxidants for your skin and how do you use them? If you're familiar with FIGGI, you know about my love for rooibos and all FIGGI skincare products are lovingly made with Green rooibos extract, a powerful antioxidant. And I consume many cups of this beautiful red tea a day because rooibos is by far my most trusted and favorite antioxidant. It is a very rare baby with an entirely unique composition unlike any other plant or herb extract. Like I said, go back to the episode with Dr. Mariska, a robot expert, to really understand, scientifically speaking, how unique and beautiful this baby is. Please make sure to listen to that and I will link it down below. However, there are also many other good antioxidant ingredients in skincare that you can look out for. The one that I use probably the most, I use it every morning before my FIGGI day cream is vitamin C Serum.
[00:19:52.410] - Jeanne
This is probably the most famous antioxidant recognized by most consumers. And many of us probably use skincare that already contains some form of vitamin C. And it really works by granting added protection from this harmful effects of UV radiation and it can prevent photo aging. It also has antiaging effect by increasing your collagen production, stabilizing your collagen fibres, and reducing the oval degradation of collagen in your skin. It also reduces the formation of melanin, which can cause pigmentation. You have to make sure you use a product formulated correctly to ensure the continued efficacy of vitamin C and that you're using the correct form of vitamin C that will actually be and can actually be absorbed by your skin. Vitamin C is upset by everything and interacts and hates everything. It interacts with light, with air, with water, with the containers that you use. And as soon as it oxidizes, as soon as it turns that brown color, it's useless. It does absolutely nothing for your skin. That's why you will see the SkinCeuticals. I think it's the ce ferulic acid. They have the patent on ascorbic acid and how to mix that together in a way that works, that's absorbed by your skin that makes a big difference.
[00:21:18.110] - Jeanne
They are crazy expensive. It's so expensive. But again, it's so difficult to formulate with vitamin C and to make a serum that does do what it says it will do. And most importantly, by the time it reaches the hands of the consumer and you open it to use it, you are able to still have the benefits of this vitamin C because it didn't oxidize, it didn't interact with anything and it's still as stable and as beautiful to be used on your skin as anything else. The next antioxidant that you will also see in the FIGGI skincare is vitamin E and it has some solid antioxidant properties. It's used in many skincare products for a variety of skincare concerns. And if you check the ingredients on your skincare product, I'm sure you will find at least one of your products containing vitamin E. You will also probably see it a lot in antiaging skincare treatments. The next one on my list is the beautiful Ubiquinone. Or Coenzyme q Ten or Q Ten. It's a crucial antioxidant for producing cellular energy which powers your cells. The cell power naturally decreases with age and exposure to everyday stress factors.
[00:22:34.410] - Jeanne
And Q Ten can penetrate the skin, be metabolically transformed by your skin, and then exert those antioxidant effects. So this process supports the maintenance of your cellular energy levels and overall it's a real goody people of all ages can benefit from. Then you've probably also heard of vitamin A and its various derivatives and how effective they are as antioxidants and slowing aging. Retinoids regulate your cells the differentiation and liberation of cells. The anti-wrinkle properties of retinoids strengthen the protective function of the epidermis, preventing trans epidermal loss and protecting the collagen from degradation. So it's really that protective layer of your skin that keeps all the goodness inside and all the badness outside and prevents your skin from losing water into the atmosphere, the trans epidermal water loss. Then you have reserved Troll, which is also an antioxidant and an anti-inflammatory. It's antibacterial antifungal. It soothes the skin, reduces aging, protects from infections. I will say though that if you have sensitive dry skin like me, vitamin A and resveratrol will probably be somewhat of a learning curve for your skin because they can be super harsh and irritating. So be careful with those. The last one is what you would then also see in the famous SkinCeutical serum, which is the ferulic acid.
[00:24:07.530] - Jeanne
It's a compound that has proven antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activities, and it really tends to associate with vitamins and active substances. So, the takeaway here is, no matter how we live, we will inevitably be exposed to free radicals. A skincare routine that offers protection and sound defence systems can definitely be a game changer. And this defensive line we discussed in this episode, you know, your good Disney princesses with their good magic and your fairy godmother with the extra magic is related to the benefits of antioxidants. I really hope this episode explained a little bit more about what antioxidants are, what free radicals are, why they're bad, why we need a free radical scavenger, what the FIGGI Day cream does. And again, so much love for step moms. It was just like the Disney princess analogy, and I hope it worked for you. So thank you for tuning in to this my FIGGI Life podcast, and I will see you again next time.
[00:25:11.330] - Outro
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