The use of anti-ageing skin care products these days is on the increase and all things considered it is perfectly natural; it is not unreasonable to want to continue looking youthful for as long as possible when you consider how much longer most of us are living! This is achieved in beauty products by promoting the growth of connective tissue using the protein collagen which is the most abundant in the skin of all animals; with around a quarter of our skin protein being collagen, the importance of this substance has not gone unnoticed.

Most anti-ageing products (collagen included) fall into a category of natural everyday products we all use; we call them antioxidants, they aid the repair of cell damage associated with cell damage.

One of the best known anti-oxidants is vitamin C and despite continual research, no-one body involved can decide just exactly how much our body should consume on a daily basis. Vitamin C formulated skin care treatments suffer with a particular problem of oxidizing on contact with the air which causes a problem for users and manufacturers.

To get around this some skin care treatments are based on derivatives of vitamin C, which are more stable and less expensive. Unfortunately the anti-oxidant products used to replace vitamin C are not as effective but as vitamin E and lipoic acid can both have the same effect; this is not too much of a problem.

Found in human blood, vitamin E is not only an antioxidant but is designed to increase the immune system's resistance to disease and can also help ward off cancer. Lipoic acid is also an energy making component of the body, found in every cell, it can also help reduce the ageing process which affects the skin.

Another group of products used to reduce the visible signs of ageing are phytochemicals which are compounds extracted from various plants and used in many anti-ageing skin care products. Another benefit, like that of alpha-lipoic acid, is their ability to reduce the prevalence of certain cancers like prostate, colon and breast cancer.

It has also been discovered that there are anti-ageing benefits to vitamins B5, B6 and B12. This just goes to highlight just how complex and far reaching the whole field of anti-ageing skin care products is and why so much more research is required.

In time new discoveries will be made advancing our understanding of the ageing process and products that can reduce or reverse the effects more successfully. Hopefully, these challenges will get resolved in due course and better and cheaper anti-ageing skin care products will be produced.

We must not forget however, that there are many more natural methods we can all use to reduce the signs of ageing on a regular basis. You know all these things but how many do you practice? Regular exercise, restful sleep, drinking plenty of water, eating a healthy diet and keeping your stress levels low are all necessary.