Do oral nutraceuticals truly help skin beauty?

Published: 15-Feb-2018

Nutrition scientists at the British Nutrition Foundation recently published research, which investigated whether oral nutraceuticals help skin beauty

The desire for youthful skin is more pronounced than ever. With the increasing social media pressures and judgements made on appearance, many people go to great lengths to ‘beautify’ themselves.

As a result, there is an increasing demand for oral supplements — nutrients taken as pills, powders or drinks — claiming to improve skin appearance. The global beauty supplements market is expected to reach $7100 million by 2023.

The nutrition scientists at the British Nutrition Foundation (BNF) investigated whether oral beauty nutraceuticals can provide a defence against skin damage from external factors, helping to reduce wrinkles and maintain skin elasticity.

Ayela Spiro, Nutrition Science Manager, British Nutrition Foundation, said: “As consumers can spend hundreds of pounds a year on oral beauty supplements, we felt it was important to investigate the association between the ingredients in these products and the signs that we associate with skin ageing, such as wrinkles, loss of elasticity and moisture."

The review examined published evidence behind some of the common ingredients used in the most popular products, to explore if these ingredients have been found to benefit skin appearance in clinical studies.

The study revealed a very limited evidence base to support some of the ingredients used in popular and often costly, orally consumed beauty supplements that promise youthful, firm and glowing skin.

Spiro said: "While there is a body of research on the science of skin ageing, evidence for the benefit of nutraceuticals to skin appearance is currently not strong enough to draw firm conclusions.”

Concluding that while a healthy, balanced diet containing essential vitamins and minerals is required for healthy skin, nutraceuticals for skin may not add further benefit to the effects already obtained from a healthy diet.

Scientific evidence shows that skin ageing is a natural process that can be exacerbated by external factors, such as sun exposure, causing damage to skin cells and structures.

Some ingredients, such as vitamins A, C, B2, B3, B7 and the minerals iodine and zinc, are proven to contribute to the maintenance of normal skin and a deficiency of these essential micronutrients can result in skin abnormalities.

However, there is a wide variety of other ingredients used in oral beauty nutraceuticals including; green tea extract, pomegranate extract, carotenoids, evening primrose oil, borage oil, fish oil, collagen and co-enzyme Q10.

According to the BNF, although many of these are perceived as natural ingredients, with some having health benefits when consumed as part of our diet, there is only a small amount of evidence to suggest that as nutraceutical ingredients, they could provide any real ‘anti-ageing’ benefit to skin.

BNF highlights that results from some laboratory experiments suggest that these ingredients can have antioxidant, anti-inflammatory or collagen enhancing effects.

However, these results cannot automatically be assumed to be relevant beyond the laboratory. In its review, the BNF was only able to identify a limited number of well-conducted human trials and the findings of these were inconsistent.

According to the BNF, making healthy lifestyle choices like eating a nutritious diet, not smoking and not drinking alcohol in excess, as well as using topical sunscreen, is likely to be a much better route to helping delay the inevitable skin ageing process than taking oral beauty supplements and will also have wider health benefits.

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