Should you OXYGENATE your skin????

I noticed products that "oxygenate" the skin have become very popular recently. The PR surrounding these is very good and makes us believe that adding oxygen or oxygenating ingredients to our skin care products will do wonders for our skins. Will it????

We all know the importance of oxygene to, well, stay alive. The HYPE surronding these products feeds on our fear of polution and dull looking skin. Your skin looks great when you go away from the city, hiking in the mountains or having long walks on beautifull beaches, so surely the diffrence is in the quality of air and amount of oxygen your body is inhaling? But the breathing is a very complex process, especially at cellular level, so is it really just as easy to slap on a cream to have the same effect?

Sadly NO! Even worse, oxygenating from topical cream application will make your skin suffer!

Let's think about one of the oldest truths about skincare: free radicals are our enemy, hence antioxidant ingredients to combat them.
Let me start with explaining what are free radicals. If you look at a structure of an atom it is a centre build of particles called protons and neutrons. They are surrounded by pairs of electrons. Free radical will an atom (or group of atoms) where there is one electron missing. Now for the damaging effect: the lonely electron will look for a friend that he could be paired with, and when he finds him he will steal him! And so a different electron becomes unpaired and the domino effect continues...There is an abundant amount of research concerning free radical damage on our bodies. The free radical theory is not only concerned with superoxide (O2-) but also with hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) and hydroxide (OH-). Yet there's NO reliable research showing that applying any of the above ingredients to your skin will do it any good. Infact, as you can see, it's quite the opposite.

There are two types of products they claim to oxygenate the skin.
1st - ones containing oxygen or hydrogen peroxide. You'll know now to stay well away from these.
2nd - ones that claim to "increase cellular respiration". there is small amount of research showing that some cosmetic ingredients, like poly phenols, can boost cells respiration. That research refers to in-vitro studies, rather than in-vivo testing on living skin. There's no harm in using these products, but you just can't know if there's any benefit from it either.

Bottom line is that you should make sure that your skincare products contain powerful antioxidants, rather than bother about oxygenation.