In part 4 of the series of blogs on Skin Care chemicals, you'll learn about L-Ascorbic acid, what it does and who should use it. This was part of a series from the Huff post, just broken down into small parts to make it easy to read.
L-Ascorbic Acid
What is it? L-ascorbic acid is a derivative of vitamin C that’s most often used as an antioxidant on the skin, Greenfield said. Antioxidants are essentially compounds that protect our cells from damage caused by free radicals, unstable molecules generated by things like stress and pollution. When not stabilized, free radicals can break down the skin’s collagen, causing discoloration and creating wrinkles.
Who should use it? “I recommend that product a lot in the morning for people to use before their moisturizer and sunscreen as an antioxidant,” Greenfield said. “It can be used for a lot of skin types, but like all acids, I would use caution on darker skin tones.”
Dr. Angela Lamb, a board-certified dermatologist and director of the Westside Mount Sinai Dermatology Faculty Practice in New York, said vitamin C can also help even out skin tone and is good for cell turnover.
L-ascorbic acid is among the most active types of vitamin C, which is notoriously unstable and loses efficacy over time. Dermatologist Erum Ilyas of Montgomery Dermatology previously told HuffPost that the concentration of vitamin C in products should be between 10 and 20 percent.
“If this is not the case, vitamin C can be very unstable on exposure to light and essentially be useless,” she said. “That’s money wasted.”