NaturaLift MD Review Blog

Take a good look in the mirror.  Have you ever wondered why a child’s skin is so soft and smooth? What causes our skin, one of the body’s most vital organs to show its age? More importantly, what can we do to stop, or even reverse, that aging process?

Do you notice signs of aging? Sunlight, air pollution, soaps, harsh chemicals and cosmetics working their toxic effects from the outside, plus the internal toxins from sugar, pesticides and chemicals in food, cigarette smoke, unhealthy foods and chlorinated water injure your skin from within. Over the years, the loss of the ability to manufacture enough glucosamine sulfate to produce hyaluronic acid has turned the baby face of your childhood into what you see and feel today.

At birth, the skin is full and un-wrinkled: plump and thick to sight and touch. Aging affects all skin components, as we will discuss in much greater detail in this book. But researchers have demonstrated that the hyaluronic acid molecule is also affected chronological and external aging forces.

Although an intact large molecule of hyaluronic acid per se is not an antioxidant, it actually has similar protective qualities inside the skin. As you will read in great detail, ultraviolet sunlight penetrates the skin and causes potentially dangerous molecular changes — reactive oxygen species (ROSs), forms of free radicals.

Hyaluronic acid produced by the skin acts to help control ROSs before they can destroy the water-soluble and fatty components of the skin’s ground substance and cells.  The concentration of hyaluronic acid in the epidermis of healthy skin is 15 micrograms per gram of skin. In the dermis, the concentration is 740 micrograms per gram of skin. Sufficient hyaluronic acid should be concentrated where it can best perform its functions: to moisturize, fill, and cushion the skin. The fact, obvious to any who gaze occasionally into a mirror, is that the most visible sign of aging occurs in our skin. When skin is exposed to sunlight over time, fat skin cells disappear and are replaced by scarring. Collagen is degraded by the cross-linking of molecules, making it stiffer and contracted. This, along with an increasing degradation in the ability to produce enough hyaluronic acid from a decreasing level of glucosamine sulfate, causes wrinkling.

Skin aging is caused by both chronological years, and photoaging — damage from chronic exposure to sunlight and other environmental toxins. Extrinsic aging causes the collagen to degrade by forming increasing amounts of cross-linkages of these molecules. That results in wrinkles and thinner, and stiffer skin. This is similar to tanning leather.

Photoaging (Wrinkles)

Wrinkles form in the dermis; removing the dead layers of the epidermis not only returns no benefit, it creates more harm from the loss of natural protection, including the absorption of naturally-produced skin oils that form in the dermis and bind to the epidermis. These oils keep moisture inside the skin. After all, we’re 98% water .  Dynamic wrinkles occur with facial muscle contraction. They appear as hills-and-valleys at a right angle to those muscles which tense the attached skin. Although they appear when facial muscles tense from expression, over time they may become static.
Ultraviolet sunlight

Sunlight is the most damaging toxin to the skin. Even with SPF 45, damage will result, although less damage than without it. The only total protection is to avoid sunlight. Windows offer no protection, either: they do not block UV-A.

Inflammation

Inflammation is also a major cause of the aging the skin and blood vessels, contributing to preventable atherosclerosis (Atherosclerosis comes from the Greek words athero (meaning gruel or paste) and sclerosis (hardness). It’s the name of the process in which deposits of fatty substances, cholesterol, cellular waste products, calcium and other substances build up in the inner lining of an artery. This buildup is called plaque. It usually affects large and medium-sized arteries. Some hardening of arteries often occurs when people grow older. (courtesy The American Heart Association Web site.) Inflammation damages all layers and components of the skin, as well as the lining of the arteries, including those that supply oxygen-rich blood under pressure to the heart and brain. These progressive injuries cause wrinkles, cancer, heart attacks, and strokes, which are preventable.

Nutrient deficiencies

As we age, the skin is depleted of essential nutrients such as: glucosamine sulfate (for hyaluronic acid production), coenzyme Q-10, squalane, and gamma linolenic acid (GLA). Based on the average US adult’s diet, chronic exposure to the sun and other environmental factors, many people also develop the following skin nutrient deficiencies: essential fatty acids, vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin E, vitamin D3, beta-sitosterol, superoxide dismutase, and phosphatidylcholine.  Studies have found that a deficiency of coenzyme Q-10 in many organs has caused “… severe encephalophathy7 and renal failure.” These deficiencies included damage to all fibroblast cells.

Eczema

Eczema is: “… a pruritic papulovesicular dermatitis occurring as a reaction to many endogenous and exogenous agents. It is characterised in the acute stage by erythema, oedema associated with a serous exudate between the cells of the epidermis (spongiosis) and an inflammatory infiltrate in the dermis, oosing and vesiculation and crusting and scaling and in the more chronic stages by lichenification or thickening or both, signs of excoriations and hyperpigmentation or hypopigmentation or both. Atopic dermatitis is the most common type of dermatitis.”  Which means, according to Merriam-Webster, is that eczema is “… an inflammatory condition of the skin characterized by redness, itching, and oozing vesicular lesions which become scaly, crusted, or hardened.”

Allergic Reactions

Beta-sitosterol reduces allergic reactions from the release of histamine in the skin. The body releases histamine during an allergic reaction, causing “… dilatation of  capillaries, contraction of smooth muscle, and stimulation of gastric acid secretion.” Beta-sitosterol significantly decreases the penetrability of capillary vessels …caused by histamine.” The greatest effect is seen in the skin of the face, neck and hands. Even a face lift does not address the obvious aging skin of the neck and hands.

Psoriasis

Psoriasis is a chronic skin disease characterized by circumscribed red patches covered with white scales.” A more detailed explanation of this malady is that it is: “… a common chronic, squamous dermatosis, marked by exacerbations and remissions and having a polygenic inheritance pattern. The most distinctive histological findings in well developed psoriasis are Munro microabscesses and spongiform pustules. It is characterised clinically by the presence of rounded, circumscribed, erythematous, dry scaling patches of various sizes, covered by greyish white or silvery white, umbilicated and lamellar scales, which have a predilection for the extensor surfaces, nails, scalp, genitalia and lumbosacral region. Central clearing and coalescence of the lesions produce a wide variety of clinical configurations, including annular or circinate, discoid or nummular, figurate and gyrate arrangements.”

Tobacco

Cigarette smoke releases about one million free radicals per use; these markedly increase the risk of developing wrinkles. There are, of course, additional concerns over links between tobacco and heart disease, lung cancer, and emphysema. Read the warning label carried on each cigarette pack. In addition to its well known risks for causing emphysema, lung cancer, heart disease and stroke, tobacco causes a degeneration of the skin matrix.

Diet

The wrong diet increases wrinkles; the right diet helps prevent them. A consortium of nutritionists and scientists published their comprehensive findings in 2001.Using detailed questionnaires, 2000 elderly subjects revealed their food choices.  Butter was among the worst individual contributors. Sugar and sugar products caused harm through the glycation of proteins. “For nutrients, higher intakes of total fat, especially monounsaturated fat, vitamin C, calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, zinc, and retinol were correlated with less actinic skin damage.”

Sugar Damage

High blood glucose interferes with the ability of fibroblast cells to produce the skin’s ground matrix substances, collagen and hyaluronic acid. A child’s skin has these in abundance; adults can rebuild this abundant supply, using NexDerma® Naturalift MD: Advanced Face Lift Therapy.  High glucose has been shown to limit the healing ability of skin by hurting fibroblast cell function. Fibroblasts are cells that produce the ground matrix substances collagen and hyaluronic acid. These ground matrix substances also hold everything in the body together, make the skin soft and plump, and allows for flexibility at the same time.

Glucose also attaches to proteins, a process known as glycation. As time passes, metabolism alters glycation, resulting in advanced glycation end-products that directly damage cell membrane lysosomes. Lysomes have potent enzymes that defend the body by attacking and destroying foreign matter, such as bacteria.  Advanced glycation end-products hasten photoaging of skin by increasing the negative effects of free radical oxidants, including the oxygen molecule with a missing electron (O2-), hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), and the hydroxyl ion (OH-) generated from UV-A sunlight. These advanced glycation end-products directly reduce the skin’s ability to synthesize hyaluronic acid.

Sugar binds to body protein components, including col agen in the skin and the walls of arteries, and causes severe damage. These sugar-bound compounds are called advanced glycation end-products (AGE). AGE is an appropriate and ironic way of describing what this does to the skin: cause more and deeper wrinkles.  Sugar interferes with fibroblast cells. High and medium glycemic index and glycemic load carbohydrates raise blood sugar too high after consumption. Whether you consume sugar in soda, candy, cereals, bread, potatoes, carrots, or anything sweet, or in complex carbohydrates that are broken down into simple sugars, it interferes with the skin’s ability to maintain its youthful texture and appearance. In addition, sugar causes fibroblast cells to be “… resistant to growth factors such as IGF-1 and EGF.”

Essential Fatty Acid Oils

Fatty acids are essential to human health but cannot be produced by the body. Therefore, omega-3 fatty acids must be obtained from food. Omega-3 fatty acids can be found in fish and certain plant oils. It is important to maintain an appropriate balance of omega-3 to omega-6 (another essential fatty acid) in the diet as these two substances work together to promote health. Also known as polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs), omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids play a crucial role in brain function as well as normal growth and development.