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Don’t Hold Your Breath

As you get older, your skin will get duller. But you don’t have to sit back and accept it as a forgone conclusion. The aging of the skin is accelerated by pollution, which also creates lots of other skin problems.

Ivy Ong-Wood -Tuesday, January 20, 2009 – The Standard

As you get older, your skin will get duller. But you don’t have to sit back and accept it as a forgone conclusion. The aging of the skin is accelerated by pollution, which also creates lots of other skin problems.

Said dermatologist John Yu Ho-tak: “Pollution causes infection, in the form of acne and folliculities, which affects hair follicles. It also sparks off inflammation, which presents itself in skin allergies like eczema.”

Other long-term effects of pollution are wrinkles and irregular pigmentation.

Hong Kong is one of the worst places to be in if you want to escape that. Official figures released early this month showed that air pollution in many parts of the city last year reached its highest level since records began.

According to the Environmental Protection Department, the number of hours for which street-level pollution exceeded the danger level in some districts rose by 14 percent last year.

Pollution levels in Central, Causeway Bay and Mong Kok reached dangerous levels for more than 2,000 hours last year – the highest figure since the department began taking roadside recordings in 2000.

A quick check in the department’s website shows that biggest culprits are respirable suspended particulates (dust to us laymen), nitrogen dioxide and sulfur dioxide.

Dust is the most visible of the three but, believe it or not, the ones that pose the most danger to our skin are the two gases that we cannot see.

Said Yu: “Suspended particles like dirt and tar are irritants which can be removed by simple washing. But airborne gas pollution are oxidizers, which can cause long-term damage as they cause free radical activity to occur on your skin.”

He added: “Our skin has a natural antioxidant defence, which is a cell membrane containing vitamin E. When the vitamin E in the membrane meets a free radical, it will neutralize it by binding the free radical. However, if there are too many free radicals attacking it, the vitamin E will lose its binding power, like a bee losing its sting.

“One way to reactivate this vitamin is to give it a dose of antioxidants. This is important because if a cell has been attacked too many times, it will die. Cell death causes skin pigmentation. Free radicals can also damage the skin’s collagen fiber cells, resulting in wrinkles.”

As the most exposed areas on our bodies, the face and forearms are the first places to show the effects of pollution.

Simple ways to counteract this effect, said Yu, are to stay indoors when the pollution index is high, wash your face after being outdoors and keeping skin moisturized to create an additional barrier.

“Some people think eating more fruits and vegetables will help,” he added.

“Eating more of that stuff is good for the body in general but it is unrelated to pollution. Once in the gut, the antioxidants are digested and broken down. The body takes in only as much as it needs and doesn’t store up a reserve.”

The best way is to apply antioxidant directly on the skin. But Yu cautioned: “You can’t just put tomato slices on your face or buy just any product to slap on your skin. To be effective, the antioxidants need to be absorbed by the skin.”

The strongest antioxidants are evident in L-ascorbic acid (vitamin C), alpha-tocopherol (vitamin E) and plant essence – ferulic acid from most plants and phlorectin from apples.

“But you have to pay attention to the delivery system,” said Yu. “Does it get into the cellular level? It’s no use if it just sits on the skin.”

He advises buying a product that has a low pH or is more acidic. “L-ascorbic acid, for example, is stable at a pH of about two to three. Any higher or lower and it won’t work. But you have to balance that against the fact that the higher the acidity, the higher the likelihood of skin irritations.”

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