Vitamin C is often regarded as a wrinkle fighter or an anti-aging agent. The main objective of this Vitamin, in scientific terms, is to increase the synthesis of collagen (a structural protein that is found in skin). The additional benefit of ‘Vitamin C’ for skin care is related to its capability of countering free radicals which cause for damaged skin.

Lack of Vitamin C is however, faces a major challenge today. This is related to the oxidation tendency of such vitamin in skin care products. On coming in contact with any oxidising agent (e.g. air), the Vitamin C in skin care products, gets oxidised; as a result skin care product become useless (in fact counter-effective). The oxidised for this Vitamin imparts a yellowish-brown colour in the skin care product. This is something that you need to check before buying such types of skin care product. Even after you buy a these skin care products, you need to store it properly and keep checking that it’s still good to use (i.e. it hasn’t attained a yellowish-brown texture).

The manufacturers of such skin care products containing ascorbic acid have tried to deal with this (oxidation) problem in multiple ways (and research on ascorbic acid skin care products is on the top of their list). One such method of retaining effectiveness of ascorbic acid skin care products for a long term is to keep a high concentration (say 10%) of C vitamin. However, this makes such skin care products even more expensive.

The ascorbic acid skin care products are already pretty inexpensive and making them even more expensive will throw the product manufacturers out of business. The other way is to use this Vitamin is derivatively (like ascorbyl palmitate and magnesium ascorbyl phosphate). These are not only more stable but also inexpensive. Even though the derivative based products are not as effective as the C vitamin containing skin care products, but they are stability against oxidation is a very desirable feature that makes them very attractive. Moreover, these are known to be less irritating too.

Talking of effectiveness of ascorbic acid skin care products, it’s important to mention that not everyone responds to this treatments. So it’s not a magic potion in any way. If you don’t see a noticeable difference in your skin, it might be because of your skin not responding to this treatment (and skin care product containing such vitamin not might be at fault, at all).

As more research goes on, one can only keep our fingers crossed and wait for a complete solution to the challenges faced by ‘Vitamin C skin care’ today.