Beauty from Within

Beauty from within stems rom the increasing interest shown in taking skincare by mouth. How effective are many of the supplements offered? The extract below is taken from a rather technical article looking at the efficiency of oral supplements.

Though some, perhaps many supplements have measurable benefits, there is still a need for more controlled research into the benefits of supplements. If you wish to research the subject further, please read the full article, details of which are given at the end of this article.

Over the past 20 years, the consciousness to realise “beauty from within” has been growing. Hence, for the purpose of maintaining a healthy lifestyle, people begin to ingest nutrients from foods. Therefore, approaches based on dietary supplements or functional food, known as “moisturizing from the inside”, have aroused more and more interest. Actually, a current innovation in the field of skin care is the intake of dietary supplementations and the incorporation of the use of topical formulations, which are proposed to improve both the inner and outer appearance of the skin, aiming to restore the deepest skin layers and ameliorate surface appearance radically. Therefore, here is the question: among substantial dietary supplements, which one can assist in maintaining skin water content and sustaining skin integrity?

Dietary supplements are defined as the dietary components as follows: vitamins, minerals, herbs, and other plant extracts, amino acids (AA), dietary substances utilised to elevate the overall daily intake of food nutrients, or a concentrate, metabolite, ingredient, extract or combination product of the aforesaid substances. Maintaining good nutritional status via intaking micronutrients, macronutrients and other bioactive constituents are pivotal for skin health and appearance.

Substantial food supplements have been reported to exert beneficial effects on whitening, anti-wrinkle performances, and the removal of wrinkles and freckles, contributing to a more youthful appearance. However, reviews on the investigation of individual dietary supplements for skin moisturising are insufficient, even if it's vital for skin care. Moreover, the results obtained from many randomised controlled trials or RCTs evaluating skin hydration by the same food supplement are confusing and even contradictory, causing trouble for consumers. The scientific evidence pertaining to skin moisturised by dietary supplements are often scarce and are usually derived from laboratory or uncontrolled live studies.

The analyses demonstrated that both collagen and ceramides exhibited statistically significant effects on improving skin hydration and causing lower values of water loss from the skin or trans-epidermal water loss (TEWL). Lactic acid bacteria or lactobacillus drink displayed a non-significant benefit for skin moisturizing as per the outcomes herein. Oral hyaluronan was also beneficial for improving skin dryness, whose effects on TEWL need further research because of insufficient RCTs.

The oral intake of collagen peptides has been found to increase the moisturising capacity of the skin by enhancing the moisture content of the stratum corneum. Collagen is well absorbed into the body in the form of amino acids (AA), dipeptides, and tripeptides after taking by mouth. Some research works have displayed the remarkable absorption of two main combination preparations (CPs), i.e., prolyl-hydroxyproline (Pro–Hyp) and hydroxyprolyl-glycine (Hyp–Gly) that exert chemotaxis on dermal fibroblasts and reinforce cellular proliferative ability. In addition, Pro-Hyp reinforces the generation of hyaluronic acid which has been discovered to be pivotal for keratinocyte proliferation and differentiation by up-regulating hyaluronic synthase 2 (HAS2) mRNA contents. Moreover, orally administered CPs were found to promote filaggrin expression which is involved in the maintenance of the internal structure of keratinocytes, the increase of the level of natural moisturising factor (NMF) constituents, and the repair of skin barrier functions to improve TEWL.

Holistically, many of the dietary supplements produced a statistically significant effect on skin moisturising compared to placebo, whereas there were still substantial skin-friendly supplements presenting no obvious beneficial effects on moisturising.

Some dietary supplements warrant more exploration via larger and more stringent research to identify the effect size, especially when it comes to polyphenols, carotenoids, aloe, and certain supplements merely reported by one research. Massive selected researches were small and lacked satisfactory quality in terms of designs and methods. Future studies have to ensure that trials are performed and reported using methods harboring as little bias as possible.

At present, merely oral dietary supplements including collagen, ceramides, hyaluronan, and procyanidin are proven to be effective in skin moisturising, whereas for skin moisturising, the evidence supporting the recommendation of other dietary supplements, such as lactic acid bacteria and astaxanthin, is still insufficient.

The above is not my own work and is taken from: (Italics above, though, are mine)

Sun Q, Wu J, Qian G, Cheng H. Effectiveness of Dietary Supplement for Skin Moisturizing in Healthy Adults: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials. Front Nutr. 2022 Jun 2;9:895192. doi: 10.3389/fnut.2022.895192. PMID: 35719159; PMCID: PMC9201759.

Frontiers in Nutrition: 2022 Jun 2;9:895192. doi:10.3389/fnut.2022.895192

The original article is Copyright © 2022 Sun, Wu, Qian and Cheng.

The extract above is taken from an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY).