In the summertime most New Yorkers dread the high humidity, always moving in and out of air-conditioning, feeling that their skincare or make up has left their face before they have left the building. Well designed treatment creams address changes in climate, and focus on the skins need to fight free radicals with Vitamin A, C, and antioxidants.
For over 20 years Environ, a professional skin care line has been working in exactly that space, created by Dr. Des Fernandes, a world renowned plastic and reconstructive surgeon from Cape Town, South Africa, pioneered the use of Vitamin A in high doses to protect the skin from UV irradiation and stress.
Dr. Fernandes developed the Environ skincare line, after he had the misfortune of attempting to treat two young patients with melanoma, who both subsequently died before they were 23 years old. The impact drove him to study the mechanism of skin cancer, at a time when most people where sun worshipers, a young market not fully understanding the long term effects of free radicals or UV irradiation.
Free radicals are formed when oxygen interacts with certain molecules, this starts a chain reaction, the most serious of these actions occurs within the cell’s DNA or cell membrane, if the cell function dies the skin will age quickly, the cell will never come back to life again.
Exposing our skin to the sun is one way this interaction happens very quickly, our skin needs antioxidants to fight off the free radicals from entering the cell membrane. Using antioxidants such as Vitamin A, C, E and Superoxide dismutase an enzyme which resides in the mitochondria of the skin cell, all work to block the free radicals from entering the cell and changing its structure.
To stop this process was exactly Dr. Fernandes goal in developing Environ; the product has been available here in New York through a physician as well as medical spas for the past 15 years. We are reminded that when using such high doses of Vitamin A, starting slowly allows for the epidermal layer to build up a tolerance, so that the skin can gain a benefit from an initial low concentration of Vitamin A & C. There are five levels of strength in the Environ AVST line, each with a stronger response mechanism, so your epidermal layer can build up its strength over time.
There is so much science in the world of beauty, a great deal of it is there to educate and improve our knowledge bank to save our skin.
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