The golden ticket to younger-looking skin this winter
Winter can be harsh on the skin, with cold, wind and rain playing havoc with your complexion, and it’s important to have a good moisturiser to hand.
As well as moisturising from the ‘outside-in’ your skin can get help from the ‘inside out’ and an unusual natural remedy, popular in the Far East, could prove the golden ticket to younger-looking skin this winter…
It is well known that collagen is a key ingredient to many moisturisers and supplements. It is a protein found in the body which helps hold cells together. It is said that by adding collagen to these products the skin absorbs it and is thus able to keep its shape better as we age, keeping the skin looking younger for longer.
There’s another protein found in our skin which maybe even more important in the ageing process than collagen; elastin, as its name suggests, gives our skin its elasticity and an ability to rebound when pinched or pulled. Less elastin means less elasticity, which inevitably leads to skin sagging and wrinkles. As we age elastin is broken down more readily and replaced at a slower rate than when we’re younger, meaning our skin gradually ages.
There aren’t many ways we know of to help prevent the loss of elastin as we get older, but scientists have discovered that the secret could lie in an unusual natural remedy popular in Japan. Chlorella is a kind of green algae, which grows in freshwater, that can be dried and turned into a nutritional supplement. It has been found that there could be more to chlorella than just a list of nutrients, however. They tested chlorella extracts and found they had an ability to inhibit an enzyme called elastase. Elastase can be found in our bodies and breaks down elastin. By inhibiting it, chlorella may offer one of the only natural products capable of reducing the age-related breakdown of the protein, and could well be a more powerful anti-ageing remedy than many of the products currently on the market that target collagen.
World’s most powerful chlorella
One of the world’s most powerful chlorella supplements comes in the form of SUN WAKASA GOLD PLUS (wakasa being the Japanese word for ‘youth’), a powerful chlorella supplement from Japan which uses chlorella whose cell walls have been broken down to ensure it is more easily digested and highly concentrated.
SUN WAKASA GOLD PLUS combines chlorella with other ingredients including lemon essence and capsicum extract to produce an exceptional liquid supplement, which can be drunk as a 15ml shot, or added to water, as part of a regular beauty regime.
Poppy Watt