Nutrition Facts

The cosmetics market is full of skin care products of herbal as well as many other products. Most of the skin care products are of herbal based and aloe vera is one of the commonest ingredients.
Aloe vera is excellent in skin care; it moisturizes the skin, removes the wrinkles of skin and helps in restoring the natural glow of the skin. There are also many more herbal ingredients that are excellent in skin care.

The skin care products are of many types like acne scar cream, scar cream, acne treatment cream, anti stretch mark cream etc. to name a few. The skin care products takes about a month to be effective and another month to be fully effective and that is the reason many products are available as one month pack and another month’s pack is provided free of cost, so that the maximum effect of the skin care product can be seen and the user can be assured of the quality of the product.

Among the skin care herbal products anti wrinkle face creams are most widely used products. The anti wrinkle face creams use aloe as base instead of water (water and oil are the commonest bases used). Anti wrinkle face creams use vitamins (mainly retinol or vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin E etc.) and peptides as the main ingredients. The anti wrinkle face creams are devoid of minerals and propylene glycol. Aging starts at the deep of the skin and as we age the turn around time of the cells of the skin begins to shortens. The anti wrinkle face creams help to maintain the turnaround time and thus reduce the wrinkle of the skin.

Vitamin A is actually retinol. But for practical purpose it also include a pro vitamin, pre formed vitamin, beta carotene, retinoic acids, retinaldehyde oxidized metabolites etc. other than retinol. Some of the above are converted to retinol in the intestinal mucosa. The term retinoid include all the molecules that are chemically related to retinol. Retinaldehyde is the essential form of vitamin A that is required for normal vision and retinoic acid is necessary for normal morphogenesis, growth, and cell differentiation in our body.

The unit of vitamin A at present is “retinol activity equivalent” (RAE) and this is very convenient to use than the older form of IU (international unit). IU was in use before 1954 and after 1960 the unit “retinol” is used for vitamin-A alcohol that is available in crystalline form. 1 IU of vitamin A is equal to 0.03 microgram (mcg) of retinol. The following is the conversion:

1 microgram of retinol = to 1 mcg of RAE

1 mcg of carotinoid (beta carotene) = 0.084mcg of RAE

Vitamin A is commercially available in esterified forms (e.g., acetate, palmitate), because they are more stable forms of vitamin A.

There are more than 600 carotinoids available in the nature and out of that about 50 of them can be converted to or metabolized to vitamin A. Beta carotene is the commonest form of carotinoid that is available in our food with pro vitamin activity. In humans large percentage of carotinoids are absorbed and stored in liver and fat deposits.

Vitamins are the group of organic compounds that can not be synthesized by our body but are essential for our body and must be supplied in the diet (exceptions are vitamin D is synthesized in our skin when exposed to sunlight and small and insufficient quantity of vitamin K is synthesized in the intestine by intestinal flora). Vitamins can not be synthesized but are essential nutrients for us. Vitamins are required by us in very small quantity and fall in the category of micronutrients.

Vitamins do not give us any calorie or energy but helps the body for utilizing other nutrients. Since our body is unable to synthesize vitamins (even if synthesized they are not sufficient), they must be supplied in our diet. A well balanced diet can provide us all the vitamins and other nutrients both major (proteins, fats and carbohydrates) and minor (vitamins, minerals and trace elements or trace minerals).

Vitamins are broadly divided into two groups: (a) Fat soluble vitamins that include vitamin A, D, E and K and (b) Water soluble vitamins that include B complex group of vitamins and vitamin C. Vitamin B complex group include vitamin B1 or thiamin (thiamin is the first B complex vitamin to be discovered and named as B1), B2 or riboflavin, B3 or niacin, B6 or pyridoxine, B5 or pantothenic acid, folic acid and vitamin B12, the group also includes choline and flavoniods.

Each of the vitamins has one or more specific functions to perform and deficiency of any of the vitamins can lead to specific deficiency disease (except vitamin E, any deficiency disease is yet to be identified if it is there, but it helps in making the skin glow), e.g. deficiency of vitamin C leads to scurvy (very well known).

The minimum intake of vitamins per day has been determined but the daily optimum intake is still not clear and is still speculative. So the recommended daily allowance of vitamins is in speculative stage.