4 Antioxidants Your Skin Desperately Needs

We know that antioxidants are good for our overall health, but do we know actually
know how important and necessary they are for our skin?

What is An Antioxidant?

An antioxidant is a substance that helps prevent against oxidation which forms free
radicals that damage cells in our body including our skin.

Think of it this way; do you know how an avocado turns brown if you let it sit out for too
long? The reason why it turns brown is because it becomes oxidized. Same when an
apple turns brown. We do not want our cells to become oxidized as that may trigger
early signs of aging, inflammation, and other skin issues.

Below are some of the best natural antioxidants for skin which can be found in many
clear skin supplements.

Vitamin E

Vitamin E is a fat-soluble vitamin meaning it is not necessary to obtain high amounts of
it as it remains stored in the body for a long period. We need small
amounts of Vitamin E for optimal health, but at high doses, it can become toxic.

Vitamin E can be used in oil form which is great for reducing the appearance of scars,
acne, and early signs of aging. This oil also has a moisturizing effect which keeps the
skin from becoming too dry. Many moisturizers on the market contain Vitamin E for this
reason.

Vitamin C

Vitamin C works extremely well for smoothing out fine lines, boosting our immune
system, and evening out skin tone. Vitamin C is also one of the best antioxidants for
skin whitening as it is very common that people use lemon juice for dark spots.

It is a water-soluble vitamin which means that any excess that is in your body will be
excreted out from bodily functions. Because it dissolves in water, it is imperative that we
receive enough of this vitamin for optimal results on our overall health.

Resveratrol

Resveratrol is a fairly new antioxidant that people have been talking about lately
especially because it is found in red wine (and who doesn’t want to drink wine and
receive health benefits at the same time?). This antioxidant is also found in cranberries,
blueberries, and nuts. There have been studies recently showing its powerful effects on
the skin including having an effect on anti-aging. It has also been shown to help
stimulate cell growth and protect against UV ray damage to the skin.

Although you can receive some health benefits through ingesting resveratrol whether
through red wine or berries, the most beneficial way to enhance your health is by
applying it directly to our skin which is why it is found in many anti-aging and
moisturizing products.

Green Tea

Green Tea is a powerful antioxidant in that it contains a compound called
epigallocatechin-3 gallate or better known as “EGCG”. Studies have linked green tea to
the creation of new skin cells which may help protect against free radicals, early signs of
aging, and overall inflammation. Acne is an inflammatory condition which is why you
hear all the time to drink green tea to help get rid of pimples and cystic acne.

Another way that green tea helps acne is that it slows the production of sebum from our
skin. Sebum is our body’s natural oil that it produces to lubricate our skin and prevent
dryness, however over-production of sebum is a factor in the development of pimples.
Green tea also contains antibacterial properties which help kill bacteria that cause acne.

Which is the Most Powerful Antioxidant for Skin?

All of the antioxidants for skin care mentioned above contribute to overall skin health so
one isn’t necessarily better than the other. If you can include all of these antioxidants
into your diet and supplement regimen then it is extremely possible you will see a
positive effect on your skin and overall health. When all of these antioxidants are taken
together they form a synergy which makes them even more powerful.

References:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27847126

http://www.naturalnews.com/046391_blueberries_antioxidants_health_benefits.html

http://www.naturalnews.com/033710_vitamin_C_cancer_prevention.html

4 Antioxidants Your Skin Desperately Needs

Zika: Let"s give women the contraception they so desperately want

As Zika continues to spread through the western hemisphere, the women’s health aspect of the virus has not entered the public conversation. Perhaps more than the failure to control mosquito populations, lack of access to widespread, effective contraception is the root cause of microcephaly in most of Latin America and the Caribbean, and yet remains the least talked about aspect of the epidemic.

Ebola, like HIV before it, offered an impetus to improve general healthcare infrastructure in west Africa, as international money and political will joined the fight against the epidemic. For all its negatives, the Zika outbreak similarly provides an opportunity to press strongly for universal access to contraception and reproductive services for women in all Zika-affected countries, but this opportunity is being largely overlooked.

To prevent babies being born with microcephaly, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the World Health Organisation are choosing to encourage “delaying pregnancy”, as well as to recommend mosquito nets and protective spray to those who are already pregnant. Without putting any resources behind widespread contraception, this is merely lip service and fails to deal effectively with the problem. Only 62.5% of Latin American women use some form of contraception [pdf], and in Haiti, only 34% of women have access to contraception. In the US, 45% of pregnancies are unintended, and 65% in Puerto Rico are as well [pdf]. Health authorities in El Salvador estimate that as many as 90% of pregnancies may be unintended, and Haiti, without an effective public health system or quotable statistics, is likely not far off from this figure.

Doctors Vince DeGennaro, Jean Renald Cornely and Valery Caleb Suprien with nurse Ursilia Saintil in a gynaecology exam room at Hospital Bernatd Mevs in Port au Prince, Haiti. Photograph: Grace Tillyard/IHI

The choice to focus on expectant mothers rather than considering women as a whole will be costly, most of all for vulnerable women who are most likely to have an unintended pregnancy. In Haiti, where we work in women’s health, the cost – both social and economic – could be catastrophically high as the scale of the epidemic is probably drastically under-reported to date. In most low- and middle-income countries in Latin America, marginalised women’s chances of resuming their schooling and work will be decimated when they have to look after a severely disabled child.

The CDC’s efforts in Puerto Rico have been limited to handing out Zika-prevention kits, including insect repellent, mosquito nets, brochures and a condom as a reminder of the possibility of sexual transmission of Zika, and not as a form of contraception where no pregnancy is desired. Local authorities have also collected 1.2 million discarded tyres, dropped larvicide into abandoned pools, educated residents and trained local brigades in fumigation.

Efforts in Puerto Rico have been confounded because the US Congress has been unable to pass a Zika funding bill. None of the $ 250m (£200m) planned for Zika in Puerto Rico or the $ 376m for the Caribbean was earmarked for reproductive health services, sending signals to other governments and non-profits where to steer their efforts.

Widespread contraception would be one of the cheaper options for dealing with the Zika crisis, at only $ 31 per woman per year, including all the personnel costs of healthcare workers. Some have estimated that the cost of one child with Zika birth defects in the US is $ 4m, including extra ultrasounds, hospitalisations, surgeries and critical care. The CDC estimates that 138,000 women of reproductive age in Puerto Rico (19%) do not currently desire pregnancy and are not using contraception. At $ 31 per woman per year, the $ 4.3m additional cost for achieving universal access to contraception is dwarfed by the $ 250m in the US Senate bill allocated for the prevention of Zika infections in pregnant women and associated medical costs.

Widespread contraception would be one of the cheaper options for dealing with the Zika crisis

Dr Vincent DeGennaro

Our work in Haiti strives towards empowering women through delivering healthcare services. The failure to provide services that help women is in part due to the age-old problem of reducing women’s health to simply maternal health, and propelling programmes that tell women what to do rather then empowering them to make decisions for themselves. Zika, it seems, is no different.

Declaring contraception as the cheapest and most effective way to deal with the crisis would be a bold step towards lobbying all governments in the region to expand these much-needed services. In addition, contraception in low- and middle-income countries results in better birth-spacing, reduced maternal mortality and infant mortality, and advances in the socio-economic status of women.

The Zika crisis, like abstinence-based teachings for HIV prevention, is a missed opportunity to invest in women’s health infrastructure, where ideology trumps public health and financial logic in Latin America and the Caribbean. Transnational public health authorities, like the CDC and WHO, are allowing politics with antipathy to women’s reproductive health to pollute public health logic, forcing countries to commit ineffective funds and set a standard that leaves women behind. Will we let yet another crisis go by without addressing reproductive health services for half our population?

Grace Tillyard is Director of Communications and Outreach for Innovating Health International in Haiti.

Dr Vincent DeGennaro Jr is President of Innovating Health International in Haiti and Assistant Professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases and Global Medicine at University of Florida College of Medicine.

Zika: Let"s give women the contraception they so desperately want

Youthful males in crisis may not be crying out for support. But it"s desperately essential

Suicide is now the principal cause of death for males aged 20-34, and even though the male suicide fee was 1.9 instances increased than girls in 1981, it is now 3.three instances greater. Photograph: Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert /Alamy

Boys will not cry, or at least they’re not supposed to. Yes, the previous, unreconstructed machismo that was once all as well synonymous with being a man has been partly driven back guys are much more very likely to open up and speak about their feelings. But discussing anxiousness, depression and psychological distress is nonetheless observed as weak or unmanly the pressure to “guy up” and “stop becoming such a girl” remains pervasive. And let us be frank: these expectations are killing all as well many males.

In today’s Guardian, John Ashton – the president of United kingdom Faculty of Public Health – rightly raises the plight of younger guys. A swift appear at Britain’s suicide costs will swiftly dispel any doubts about his concerns: in 2012, there were five,981 suicides in folks aged 15 and over, and four,590 of them were males. Suicide is now the major lead to of death for men aged twenty-34, and even though the male suicide charge was 1.9 times larger than women in 1981, it is now 3.three times greater. And as Ashton says, “We’re not stopping difficulties in younger men and women and we’re not responding to them when they get them.”

Ashton raises a amount of factors fuelling the mental overall health crisis of youthful men. That’s essential: psychological well being charities are often keen to emphasise that it is wrong to attribute any a single trigger to a suicide, for instance. 1 of his tips is that guys have skilled “dislocation” as they have more and more misplaced their position as breadwinners. The reality that Britain’s de-industrialisation was far more rapid and full than several other western countries have to absolutely be a aspect: experienced apprenticeships are not awaiting several of the younger males now leaving school, and being unemployed at a youthful age prospects to larger hazards of anxiousness and depression.

But whilst increasing social and financial insecurities more and more disrupt the lives of youthful folks irrespective of gender, our youthful men and women reply quite differently. Even even though women are much more probably to endure from depression, they are also a lot more very likely to do anything about it. Eighty % of females who end their personal lives have turned to a medical doctor and obtained therapy but just half of men do, and for individuals under 25, the price is just twenty%. Even although the women’s and LGBT movements have transformed what it is to be a man for the far better, males are even now keeping quiet as their psychological health is battered by an ever much more insecure planet.

Our psychological well being companies are failing them, also. One of the primary troubles with Britain’s public well being policy is that it is geared to treating illnesses and ailments as they come about, rather than stopping them from happening them in the very first location – which is excellent news for the big medicines businesses.

But individuals who suffer are not receiving the support they require. Just a quarter of youngsters with psychological distress are receiving the treatment they want, and earlier this year, six psychological wellness organisations warned that cuts to NHS mental well being providers are endangering lives. Psychological wellness trusts are expected to make cuts of a fifth to their budgets next year and services this kind of as early intervention programmes aimed at young individuals are increasingly currently being slashed back. Psychological wellness solutions have minimize beds by 9% in the final three many years, and mental overall health trusts are investing large sums of public income putting patients in bed and breakfasts. It could be unsaid, but the stigma of mental distress plainly helps make this kind of solutions far simpler to attack.

Male stereotypes, increasing socio-financial insecurity, cutbacks: place these elements collectively, and the risk is thousands of lives endangered in the coming years. Every single suicide is a tragedy – but an avoidable, not an inevitable, tragedy.

Youthful males in crisis may not be crying out for support. But it"s desperately essential