Vitamin C serum is really good for your skin. It helps your skin make collagen and shields it from the sun. But, for a few folks, it might cause some not-so-good effects.
What’s a vitamin C serum?
Well, if you’re into taking care of your skin, you might have come across vitamin C serums.
People say vitamin C is really good for making your skin look young and healthy. It helps your skin stay smooth, even, and shiny.
Even if you’re eating foods with vitamin C, there’s no guarantee it’s all going to your skin. But if you use serums and stuff that you put on your skin, you’re giving your skin a direct dose of this good stuff.
Keep reading to find out why you should use vitamin C serum, how to add it to your skin routine, and more helpful stuff.
Whether it’s your usual skin care routine, how often you wash your hair, or the makeup you’re curious about.
So, we bring together lots of different people who know a lot about this stuff, like writers and teachers, to share their advice. They talk about things like how to use products and what’s the best mask for you.
What does vitamin c serum do with your skin?
Vitamin C is really good for your whole body, but when you eat it (like in food and pills), your skin doesn’t get much of it. The best way for your skin to get the good stuff from vitamin C is by using skin products that have it.
These days, they put vitamin C, also known as ascorbic acid or L-ascorbic acid, in serums a lot. But you can also find it in creams and lotions. All of these things help your skin take in the vitamin C.
Dr. Piliang says vitamin C is a great thing to use on your skin. She talks about all the good things that vitamin C serum can do for your skin.
Benefits of Vitamin C Serum:
1. Keeps Your Skin Safe from Harm
Our skin has to deal with lots of things from outside like pollution and sun rays, and as we get older, it can also lose its shine. These things can cause trouble by making unstable molecules called free radicals. These free radicals can steal important things from our skin cells and damage them.
Common sources of free radicals are things like:
- Dirty air.
- Unhealthy food and drinks.
- Smoking cigarettes.
- Sun’s rays, like from sunlight and tanning beds.
- Chemicals used in farming.
But there’s a hero called antioxidant, and it can protect your skin from these free radicals. Antioxidants give away some of their stuff to the free radicals, so they stop causing damage. Vitamin C is an antioxidant that can really help. It can make your skin healthier and less damaged.
2. Fights Aging
Free radicals can make your skin age faster, but vitamin C fights back against that. It also helps your skin make more collagen, which is like the glue that holds your body’s parts together.
As you get older, your skin makes less collagen. This can make wrinkles and saggy skin. But if you use vitamin C, you can keep more collagen and have skin that looks younger.
3. Makes Dark Spots Disappear
Vitamin C is known for making your skin look more even by fading away spots caused by the sun.
In a study, most of the people using vitamin C saw their dark spots getting better. But if you stop using vitamin C, the effects might not last forever.
4. No More Tired-Looking Eyes
Those comments like “You look tired” can go away! A small study with 14 people showed that vitamin C helped lighten the dark circles under their eyes. It also made the skin under their eyes thicker, which hides the dark circles better.
5. It might help when you get a sunburn:
When you use vitamin C on your skin, it can make sunburns feel better. It also helps your skin replace the hurt cells with fresh and healthy ones.
When you put vitamin C on your skin along with vitamin E and other stuff, it can even help prevent damage from the sun. It also calms down the redness caused by too much sun.
But keep in mind that just using vitamin C by itself isn’t super great at making sunburns go away.
6. It’s good for helping wounds heal:
Since it’s helpful for sunburns, it’s not surprising that vitamin C also makes your skin heal faster. When your skin heals well, you’re less likely to have problems like redness, infections, and scars.
In a review from 2017, they found that taking vitamin C pills can help your skin heal and grow better. This is because vitamin C is good at making antioxidants, which are like little helpers for your body and skin.
This works well because when your body fixes wounds, it needs something called collagen, and vitamin C helps make more of that. Collagen is like the glue that makes your skin stick together.
7. It helps make more collagen:
Collagen is a protein that your body makes naturally, but as you get older, you have less of it. Having less collagen can make your skin have lines and wrinkles.
Vitamin C is famous for making more collagen. It helps your body create collagen in a process called collagen synthesis. In fact, your body can’t do collagen synthesis without vitamin C.
Vitamin C is like a helper for two special enzymes that your body needs to make collagen:
- One enzyme, called prolyl hydroxylase, helps the collagen stay strong.
- The other enzyme, called lysyl hydroxylase, gives the collagen structure.
You can also make more collagen by eating certain foods.
8. It’s gentle for most skin types:
Vitamin C is really safe to use. Many people can use it on their skin for a long time without any problems.
A review done in 2017 looked at lots of studies and found that vitamin C is usually fine for your skin. But if the vitamin C is too strong (more than 20%), it might make your skin a little irritated. That’s why in skin products, they usually use between 10% and 20% vitamin C.
How to put on vitamin C serum?
Even though most people are fine with using vitamin C serum, all skin products can sometimes cause issues.
Before using it on your face, it’s a good idea to test it first:
- Choose a small, easy-to-hide spot on your skin, like your forearm.
- Put a little bit of the serum there and wait for 24 hours.
- If nothing bad happens, you can use it on your face. But if you get a rash, redness, or hives, stop using it.
When you’re ready to use it on your whole face, follow the instructions on the label of the product.
Sometimes, your skin might react after you use a product more than once. So, it’s smart to introduce new things one by one, with a few weeks in between.
You usually use vitamin C serum once or twice a day. A simple routine is to clean your skin, use toner, put on vitamin C serum, and then use moisturizer. Make sure your hands are clean when you put on these products.
You can also use other skin products along with vitamin C, but if you use something with niacin amide, the vitamin C might not work as well.
In a review from 2020, they found that a mix of tyrosine, zinc, and vitamin C helped vitamin C work even better. This mix made the vitamin C about 20 times more effective than using just vitamin C by itself.
How to pick the right vitamin C serum?
There are many choices when it comes to vitamin C products. Here’s what to consider:
Look at the ingredients: Vitamin C serum might not always have those words on the label. Instead, search for “ascorbic acid” or “L-ascorbic acid.” These are types of vitamin C that are good for your skin.
Side Effects When Using Vitamin C Serum:
For most people, vitamin C serum is totally fine and doesn’t cause problems. But in rare cases, you might experience:
- Dry skin.
- Itchy skin.
- Red skin.
If you have skin that’s sensitive, start with a vitamin C serum that has a lower amount of something called L-ascorbic acid, just to be careful.
Bottom Line:
Vitamin C is great for making your skin better. It can help with spots, uneven skin tone, and make your skin shine like a star.
To really see good results, you need to use it regularly. You can add it to your skin care routine in a way that suits you. Some folks use it in the morning to guard against the sun, while some prefer it as a night treatment. There are also people who use it two times a day.
If your skin starts feeling irritated or uncomfortable, stop using it.
