What is PhytoVie™ and what does it do for your skin?
PhytoVie™ is an amazing new skincare ingredient that can protect your skin from dirt and pollution. The whole Qyral team is in love! Let’s learn all about how PhytoVie™ works.
What is PhytoVie™?
PhytoVie™ is a plant-based polymer that shields skin from environmental microparticles. That’s a lot of big words! To break it down, PhytoVie™ is a combination of canola oil and tung wood. Tung is a small Asian tree that produces amazing oil. Traditional Chinese fishermen used to use tung oil to protect their boats from saltwater. When the oil meets air, it forms a defensive barrier.
When you use PhytoVie™, it does the same thing. It creates a protective shield that makes it harder for dirt and pollution to reach your skin. This protects your skin from all the dirt and pollution that are in the air all around us.
What are the benefits of using PhytoVie™?
Airborne microparticles and pollutants are bad for your skin for many reasons. First, dirt in the air can make your skin look dull and tired by the end of the day. PhytoVie™ can prevent that grime from reaching your skin, keeping your complexion fresher and brighter.
It isn’t all about your appearance either. Airborne particles come from all kinds of sources. Some are gasses like sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, or ozone. Heavy metals such as lead and mercury are also found in air pollution. And all kinds of small particles from dust, smoke, and plants.
These particles can cause irritation, trigger allergies, and damage your cells. The World Health Authority says air pollution kills seven million people a year. Lots of those deaths are a result of breathing in dirty air, but recent studies have also looked at the effects of air pollution on your skin.
There’s a strong link between airborne pollutants and chronic immunological skin diseases. That’s conditions like dermatitis, psoriasis, and vitiligo. The tiny pollutants in air can disrupt the protective skin barrier, and that starts a chain reaction of cellular damage. PhytoVie™ can help stop that damage by preventing those particles from reaching the skin barrier.
How PhytoVie™ can help prevent signs of premature aging
Your skin’s protective barrier is called the acid mantle. When it gets damaged, it leaves your cells vulnerable. We all have natural bacteria living on us in our skin flora. In small amounts, it doesn’t do any harm, and could even be beneficial. But in large amounts, it can trigger acne breakouts and cause irritation. Our skin is slightly acidic because this bacteria can’t grow well in acid. But if the acid mantle gets damaged, that gives the bacteria more chance to grow.
Over time, high levels of skin bacteria and a weakened acid mantle can cause more damage than just a few pimples. Airborne microparticles are often highly reactive, and can trigger oxidative stress. They can also act as carriers for more dangerous organic compounds and heavy metals.
One of the biggest culprits is a group of chemicals called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). These chemicals are byproducts that come from burning coal, oil, and gas. One PAH, naphthalene, is used to make mothballs. Its vapor is toxic enough to kill insects, and it is also harmful to humans. PAHs are found in high numbers in airborne particles. When our skin absorbs the particles, it absorbs the PAHs as well, and delivers those chemicals right into our cells.
Inside our cells, PAHs trigger oxidative stress at a massive rate. Oxidative stress happens when unstable molecules steal electrons from other parts of our bodies. Our DNA is one of the top targets of this process. When a cell’s DNA is damaged, it can cause the cell to become senescent, mutate, or even die.
Cellular senescence is when a cell stops replicating. It isn’t dead, but it isn’t functioning anymore either. Once a cell becomes senescent, there’s no cure. You can’t make a senescent cell start replicating again. And even worse, senescent cells send out signals to surrounding cells to also enter senescence. This can cause a tidal wave of cellular damage.
Because senescent cells stop replicating, they don’t get replaced by healthy new cells when they wear out. That leads to a dull complexion and breakdowns in the cell structure. These signs appear as thinning skin, wrinkles, and other indications of premature aging.
One study of the effect of airborne pollutants on skin found that just a small increase in exposure to soot and traffic fumes could have a dramatic effect on skin. Researchers documented a 20% increase in facial hyperpigmentation spots caused by air pollution.
PhytoVie™ can help combat this damage by preventing airborne particles from reaching your skin. Without that first step, there’s less harm to your acid mantle, less oxidative stress, and fewer signs of premature aging!
How Qyral uses PhytoVie™ to protect your skin
You’ll find PhytoVie™ in our Protect: PhytoVie™ Cell Defense Mineral Primer Broad Spectrum SPF 30 Sunscreen. We’ve teamed the amazing PhytoVie™ with a broad spectrum SPF to provide even more support for your skin. As well as creating a barrier against airborne pollutants, Protect Primer also defends against harmful UV rays. Together, PhytoVie™ and SPF create a complete defensive barrier for your skin.