Hyaluronic Acid Serum Recipe: Your Own Anti-Aging Potion

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If you ask an average person how they keep their skin looking vibrant and young (or at least how they think they keep it), they’ll name you a bunch of products with harmful ingredients.

Fact is, 99% of cosmetics are like that, and people know no better way. Until now.

Of course, there’s a better way; you just have to dig past conventional beauty products. And there you have it, one better way to protect your skin from aging – your very own anti-aging hyaluronic acid potion.

If you’re tiptoeing already and can’t wait to see the recipe, hold your horses. Before you put anything on your body, whether is a topical product, food or anything else, you have to know more information on it and why you need that particular substance.

Let’s go over the benefits of hyaluronic acid (HA), its uses, and how it works on your skin.

What Is Hyaluronic Acid?

If you’ve seen it in all those pricey anti-aging skin serums and joint-supporting formulas and wondered why you should take an acid for your particular problem, the answer is not a simple one.

The thing is, HA is found in your body in many organs and bodily functions that wouldn’t be able to work correctly without it. It is located in the highest concentrations in the skin, inside joints, within the eye sockets, and in other tissues where it helps retain collagen, increase moisture, and provide elasticity and flexibility.

Just like any vital substance, it has many beneficial properties. So let’s look at several of them more thoroughly:

Hyaluronic Acid Benefits

Hydration of Dry, Aged Skin

HA helps in the reduction of water loss. This makes your skin not only more nourished but smoother and lighter as well.

Dryness, dandruff, drooping eyes or lips, and sagginess are associated with aging skin because as we get older molecules in our skin lose some of their ability to bind and retain water.

This is why you need HA to naturally reduce the signs of aging by decreasing “epidermis water loss” associated with sun exposure, skin dryness or flakiness.

Faster Anti-Wrinkle Treatment

HA works faster and more effective than any other anti-wrinkle treatment out there.

Even though dermatologists say HA might take six weeks or more to improve skin’s appearance, some studies have found that anti-wrinkle HA serums and eye creams can sometimes start to work within just two to four weeks of use.

Sores, Sunburns, and Wounds Treatment

Aside from lowering the appearance of wrinkles and dryness, HA is beneficial for treating cold sores and mouth sores, ulcers, wounds, bites, and burns due to how it keeps the damaged tissue moist. It also provides sunburn relief.

Many cold sore treatments for the lips and mouth contain hyaluronic acid gel to speed up the healing process and prevent cracking or bleeding.

Because HA binds to water, it hydrates the skin and tissues of the mouth/lips and keeps skin junctions tight, helps bring nutrients to damaged tissues, controls inflammation, and helps fluids carry out waste.

Joint Solution

Hyaluronic acid is found in all bones, connecting tissue, joints, tendons and cartilage structures throughout the body — especially a type called hyaline cartilage, which covers the ends of bones and provides cushioning.

Because it helps buffer bones and provides resistance to wear and tear, HA is useful for lowering pains and tenderness associated with degenerative joint diseases.

Dry Eyes and Eye Discomfort

The fluid inside the eye socket (called the vitreous humor) is composed almost entirely of hyaluronic acid.

Hyaluronic acid eye drops can help relieve chronic dry eyes by replenishing moisture within the eye socket, helping with tear production and restoring fluid balance.

Some studies have also found that hyaluronic acid helps suppress oxidative damage caused by UVB light within the cornea.

How Does Hyaluronic Acid Work?

Over the past two decades, emerging research has shown that beneficial functions of hyaluronic acid include:

• hydration
• lubrication of joints
• a space-filling capacity within tissue and between cells
• building the framework through which cells migrate
• repairing tissue and wounds
• regulating activation of inflammation
• enhancing immune responses
• repairing injury of fibroblasts
• maintaining skin’s epithelial cells

The size of different HA molecules is critically important for hyaluronic acid’s various functions.

Larger molecules are found in healthy tissue and help keep inflammation/free radical damage and dehydration under control (they’re “antiangiogenic and immunosuppressive”).

On the other hand, smaller polymers of HA can send distress signals to the immune system and raise inflammation to help with an injury or wound healing.

Hyaluronic Acid Facts

HA has been referred to as “the key molecule involved in skin moisture.”

In recent years, there’s been an explosion of new natural skin care products hitting the market that contain hyaluronic acid, promising to make skin smoother, plumper, more even-toned and generally more “refreshed” looking.

HA is capable of holding up to 1,000 times its weight in water — however, because the size of its molecules is relatively big compared to other acids, it’s never been easy for skin care manufacturers to produce a hyaluronic acid product that penetrates and stays on the skin.

Only in the past decade have scientists been able to create technology-advanced HA formulas that are capable of really seeping below the skin’s surface.

Recent studies show that topical application of advanced (low molecular weight) HA serums can improve skin moisture and lead to significant reductions in wrinkle depth within just several weeks.

HA is beneficial for reducing oxidative damage to the skin caused by both internal and external factors, especially ultraviolet irradiation (also referred to as photoaging).

In addition to UV damage, researchers now believe that skin aging is also influenced by hormonal changes, including decreased production of sex hormones like estrogen. Decreased estrogen can result in collagen degradation, which leads to dryness, loss of elasticity and wrinkling of the skin (along with other aging problems, such as joint achiness and dry eyes)..

Because HA is involved in slowing down collagen loss in addition to reducing fluid or water loss, it can also help improve joint lubrication, reduce pain, and treat various problems of the eyes and mouth.

DIY Hyaluronic Acid Serum Recipe

If you feel like HA is the superpower in your body you are not alone. HA is needed, and it is produced by your body to supply the support of many vital functions.

Unfortunately, due to a lack of healthy food, exercise and because of the toxins all around us, HA production decreases in time. The effects of it are visible mostly on the facial skin, as well as the joint pain many people experience when they age.

However, this doesn’t have to be the case. You can now make your very own HA potion and use it to help restore the vitality of your skin. But before we get into the recipe, let’s cover a few points:

• The following recipe is made to be a 1% HA solution. You don’t need to make your serum any more concentrated than that. Using more HA will only result in a very hard gel that will be unusable.

• It is a misconception that HA adds hydration to the skin - rather HA is a
• humectant – which means it attracts water. It then binds and holds the water, like a sponge. For this reason, it is necessary to apply your HA serum over damp skin.

• After applying your serum, an emollient oil or moisturizer is needed on top to lock in moisture and prevent the HA from pulling moisture from the air (only effective in a humid environment) or from deeper skin layers.

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup Distilled water
• 1/8 tsp. Hyaluronic Acid
• 1/8 tsp. Leucidal Liquid (optional as a natural preservative if you’re making doses to use over 2 weeks)

How to

• Add your COLD distilled water (the cold might help with dissolving the HA) into a small glass Try using a funnel for better distribution.
• Add the hyaluronic acid on the top of the water.
• Replace the cap and shake your mixture. It might appear lumpy after it’s been shaken but that’s fine, just mix the best you can by shaking.
• NOTE: Shaking doesn’t always help to distribute the HA to the water so you might want to try using a blender. If your serum thickens by blending, instead of a small glass bottle, use a small glass jar to store it easily.
• Put your serum in the fridge. Over the next couple of hours, your serum will thicken, and the clumps will dissolve.
• Apply morning and/or night after toning and before moisturizing.

The following video shows a 1% solution of HA and water being made so you can see how thick it becomes even at low concentration.

You’d be surprised how amazing a cold HA serum feels first thing in the morning. The cool also cuts down on inflammation and redness so that you can use it on sunburns any time of the day.

Feel free to leave your opinions and experiences with HA in the comments below. Different points of view are always welcome.

To Your Youthful Skin,

Monika