Even though many holiday activities have been keeping everyone very busy, it’s important to remember how vital skin health really is. It’s getting colder, and we’re all bundling up to keep warm. As the saying goes, out of sight out of mind. When you don’t look at skin as often, it’s easy to forget that skin requires special care. Skin needs proper nourishment, hydration, and protection. As the outermost barrier defense for the body, skin is constantly exposed to irritants including harsh chemicals and pollution, as well as damaging detergents and dehydrating sanitizers. Nourishment including antioxidants, amino acids, and vitamins can help hydrate and strengthen skin to aid in the repair processes.
Choosing the Best Ingredients
Keeping skin healthy is a matter of choosing the best ingredients for skin and ensuring that the products applied to skin exclude toxins or irritants. Viniferamine® products including Renewal Moisturizer and Silicone Barrier are all non-irritating, non-sensitizing, and non-allergenic. All of the Viniferamine® skin and wound care products include the highest quality pharmaceutical grade or organic plant-based ingredients to ensure that no impurities, pesticides or toxins ever reach the skin. The certified organic plant-based ingredients were hand-grown in small organic fields located in Europe, Asia, Africa and North America.
Many of the phytonutrient ingredients included in the Viniferamine® products have been used for ages due to the acquired knowledge that these amazing ingredients hold the secrets to skin healing and restoration. One of these ingredients, shea butter, comes from the nuts of the Butryospermum parkii tree. Shea butter has been used in Africa for thousands of years to restore skin health, as well as hydrate, soothe and protect skin.
The Benefits of Shea Butter
Shea butter is unique in that it has a high content of esterified triterpenes including the triterpene lupeol, which has been shown to have protease inhibiting and anti-inflammatory properties. The bioactive lipids are concentrated in the Viniferamine® skin products so that they are delivering only the tiny fraction of the shea butter that will provide maximum results. Our shea butter has been scientifically studied to assure that there are beneficial effects on skin barrier properties. When compared to a placebo cream, the inclusion of our bioactive shea butter increased skin barrier function two-fold. Another important marker for skin renewal is increased content of dermal collagen. Once again the bioactive form of shea butter showed a significant increase over the placebo. The combination of these two studies demonstrates that our bioactive form of shea butter more than helps reduce “visible changes” in skin, it improves the structural integrity of the skin for lasting protection against the effects of environmental aggression, skin aging and resulting loss of skin elasticity and firmness.
About the author: Nancy Ray, PhD is the Science Officer at McCord Research. Dr. Ray received her PhD in Biochemistry and Biophysics and was a postdoctoral fellow at NIH, Harvard University and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and the University of Iowa. She also earned bachelor of science degrees in Chemistry and Microbiology.
References
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- J Oleo Sci 2010; 59 (6): 273-280.
- Agricultura Tropica Et Subtropica 2011; 44 (4): 223-228.
