Phytonutrients – The Green Chalice of Anti-Aging Health
Plant nutrients play a key role in anti-aging. Extracts from fruits, vegetables and plants have a variety of chemical components, called phytochemicals or phytonutrients, which are highly beneficial for the health and beauty of the skin.
In plants, phytochemicals confer characteristics such as color, which can help the plant by providing an attractive beacon for passing bees to aid in pollination. Either they offer a protective effect to the plant to prevent insects from damaging it, or they repel grazing animals. But they have often been found to have benefits for human health when tested in laboratories. It’s these chemicals in plants that make fruits and vegetables so much more valuable than just macronutrients like vitamin C.
Antioxidants are a class of phytonutrients, although there are many. Antioxidants work by supplying an extra oxygen molecule to those molecules that are missing one, called free radicals. If antioxidants do not supply the free radicals with the missing oxygen molecule, the free radicals will take an oxygen molecule from another compound in the body, turning a previously healthy and intact one into a free radical. Free radicals are not ‘bad’, just unstable chemical molecules, but the effect they have on the body is negative as they can damage cells. Free radicals are produced as a normal byproduct of our cells’ metabolic processes, as well as by our immune system as it counteracts the effects of pathogens and the environment.
The trick is to maintain the balance in the body where there is a sufficient supply of antioxidants to deal with the body’s production of free radicals.
Free radicals affect the skin in three main ways. They can alter the fatty layers in your cell membranes. These fatty layers provide structure to the cell and control what nutrients and other agents can enter and leave. They can alter DNA within cells, which, in addition to the potential to develop into serious diseases, can make your skin prone to wrinkles and sagging before its natural biological time. The altered DNA creates a pattern for collagen and elastin fibers that do not function as normal, healthy ones would. And to complicate matters, your skin’s pores need healthy collagen and elastin fibers to stay tight and small. So another unwanted result is open and enlarged pores.
Free radicals also lead to a process called cross-linking of collagen fibers. This occurs in the dermis of the skin, as a result of the collagen and elastin fibers becoming hard, thick and then sticking together. The crosslinked fibers create wrinkles, sagging skin and make regular expression lines etched on the face as a permanent accessory. With healthy collagen and elastin fibers, these expression lines would simply disappear once you moved your facial muscles in a different way. And the enzymes that metabolize collagen are stimulated by free radicals, which, given the importance of collagen in youthful-looking skin, is best minimized.
Other plant phytonutrients that are important for skin beauty are carotenoids and flavonoids. Flavonoids are excellent for blood vessel health. They strengthen the capillaries that supply important nutrients to the skin cells, as well as the supporting cell membranes. Healthy cell membranes regenerate quickly and slow down the aging process. Carotenoids also strengthen cell membranes. Looks like carrots aren’t just good for your eyes! And flavonoids help reduce inflammation, as well as increase glutathione levels, which is an antioxidant.
References: Erica Angyal, Gorgeous Skin In 30 Days (Lothian Books, 2005)