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Oxidised vitamin C serum - dangerous or just useless?
  • Bex26
    Hi there! I've just joined the site and I love that it's so scientifically accurate :x

    I have a question about vitamin C serums. It's generally known that if you're mixing your own serum with ascorbic acid, it isn't going to stay potent for long because it gets oxidised. So I was reading on various beauty blogs that this oxidised vitamin C will not only do no good, it can actually HARM your skin. Apparently the dehydroascorbic acid "creates free radicals". I've been searching and searching and I can't find any scientific back up for this, it's just repeated by lots of serum reviewers!

    Another thing I was wondering was, how long does it take vitamin C to fully oxidise and become     dehydroascorbic acid? Because in all my googling I came across people asking how they could make their own DHA, and the answers were a lot more complicated than just "leave vitamin C lying around getting air to it"!

    Also, am I right in thinking that it's best to use distilled water for the mix because that has less oxygen in it than plain old tap water, or is there a other reason? I've also been told that mixing it with a metal spoon oxidises it...

    Sorry for sooooo many questions! I just want to make sure I won't be harming my skin!
     
  • neroli77
    It does lose potency easily, is very unstable, and I've also heard it can cause the additional problems with more free radicals - interesting, I wonder if oxidation is kind of contagious that way?

    So there are a lot of alternative forms available to try to fix that - I haven't tried any myself, and it's hard to decide, there are so many.  But the suppliers are definitely busy trying to make vitamin C stay more stable in emulsifications and such. 

    Here's an esterized form from Lotioncrafter: http://www.lotioncrafter.com/tetrahexyldecyl-ascorbate-BV-OSC.html

    The Herbarie has another, as a phosphate: http://www.theherbarie.com/VitaC-Stable-AAP.html

    And MakingCosmetics has three forms besides the straight kind; their classifications can be confusing, but I've bought from them and like their stuff: a palmitate; another phosphate; and in silicone. 

    That was a fast search, you can probably find tons more. 



  • rozy
    YES YOU WILL DROP DEAD!
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