The way to clear, radiant and luminous skin lies in the potent ingredients in whitening skincare. JANICE YONG helps you makes sense of it all.
HERE’S A BEAUTY fact: whitening skincare is for everyone, regardless of your skin tone.
And contrary to popular belief, it’s not for women who want to lighten their skin. Skin experts say that while you can become more tanned, you can’t get fairer, although you can get a clearer, more luminous complexion by inhibiting melanin production.
Melanin is the pigment that gives skin its natural colour. There are two types: Eumelanin produces a range of brown while pheomelanin gives skin a yellow to reddish hue; the two combine to give you your skin tone.
As melanin is your skin’s natural protection against UV damage, a tan is simply the skin’s reaction to sun exposure. In a perfect world, your skin would simply absorb the UV rays and produce melanin in exact amounts.
But overexposure to the sun and not wearing sunscreen can lead to hyperpigmentation – the formation of uneven brown spots and skin discoloration, which Asian women are particularly prone to.
The skin cells that produce melanin are called melanocytes. When skin is exposed to sunlight, an enzyme called tyrosinase is activated, which triggers off melanogenesis – a series of chemical reactions that leads to melanin formation. The result: darker skin.
This is where whitening skincare comes in. Unlike the harsh whitening products of old, which stripped skin of pigment (to depigment), today’s ingredients control melanin production by inhibiting the action of tyrosinase. In their quest to unlock the melanin code, scientists have discovered the whitening action of certain food extracts, which can be found in the latest crop of whitening products.
MAIN PHOTO GETTY IMAGES PHOTOGRAPHY CHARLES CHUA/A THOUSAND WORDS & RAYMOND LEE/CAPSULE PRODUCTIONS STYLING MICHELLE KUEK
