What Is Niacinamide? How It Can Improve Your Skin
As we age, our skin can use extra help in maintaining its strength, radiance, and function. While there are many topical options to cultivate healthy skin, creating the complexion of your dreams is often an inside job.
Have you heard the latest beauty buzz around niacinamide? Lately, it seems like this skin-supporting nutrient is everywhere, with all of the popular skin creams, lotions, and serums touting its many benefits.
So what is niacinamide, and does it deserve all of this hype? Here’s everything you need to know about the versatile skin supplement and why Quality of Life’s Oligoderm™ is the best way to get it.
What Is Niacinamide?
Niacinamide is a form of the essential nutrient, B-3, also known as niacin. It is one of eight B vitamins. As an essential nutrient, B-3 is critical in converting food into energy. It also helps the body use protein and fat efficiently, fueling the skin, hair, and nervous system.
Since the body excretes unneeded niacin through the kidneys and doesn’t store it, you need to consume B-3 daily to prevent deficiency. In addition, since niacinamide is a water-soluble vitamin, the body doesn’t manufacture it, so consuming it regularly is the best way to reap its benefits.
The body doesn’t produce or store niacinamide on its own. However, the body can produce niacinamide from tryptophan, an essential amino acid. Unfortunately, it takes 60 milligrams of tryptophan to create one milligram of niacinamide.
Why Choose Niacinamide over Niacin?
While the names and origins are similar, niacinamide and niacin are not the same. They are two different types of vitamin B-3.
Oftentimes, niacinamide and niacin are used interchangeably, as they’re both components of vitamin B3. However, they do have different properties and different effects on the body.
Most notably, niacin can cause blushing or flushing of the skin, which occurs as blood vessels widen from the nutrient. Skin can also become red and itchy. However, niacinamide does not affect the skin, making it the preferred treatment.
While niacin can convert in the body to niacinamide, it’s niacinamide that gets converted to the compound NAD+. NAD+ deficiency leads to increased sensitivity to UV rays, impaired DNA damage response, and is associated with aging in human skin.
Choosing niacinamide supplements, like Quality of Life’s Oligoderm™, allows you to protect and improve your skin efficiently, without niacin’s bright red side effects.
What Are the Benefits of Niacinamide?
Niacinamide is particularly beneficial for the skin as it can help build proteins and lock in moisture. These properties allow niacinamide to help the skin prevent environmental damage.
In addition, niacinamide can help the body build keratin. Keratin is a protein that makes up hair, skin, and nails, as well as internal organs and glands. It can help keep your skin firm and healthy and make it less prone to damage.
Niacinamide also helps the body grow a lipid barrier. The lipid barrier is critical for retaining hydration in the skin and reinforcing the skin’s ability to protect the body from environmental stressors, bacteria, and allergens.
While everyone can benefit from a strong lipid barrier, those with skin concerns and mature skin will find this especially beneficial. In addition, those whose skin is prone to an inflammatory response can benefit from niacinamide for reducing redness and blotchiness and restoring a calm, even tone to their skin.
Additionally, niacinamide offers the immediate benefit of minimizing the appearance of pores and keeping skin moisturized and smooth, but it may reduce pore size naturally in the long term.
The ability of niacinamide to support moisture retention offers benefits for dry and oily skin types. Since the essential vitamin keeps skin from becoming stripped of its natural moisture and lubrication, the sebaceous glands aren’t triggered into overdrive, helping to regulate oil in the skin and reduce breakouts.
Niacinamide offers skin protection against sun damage while reducing the visible effects of UV rays on the skin. As a result, the skin may have fewer visible sun spots, a reduction in the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles, and increased collagen production.
With all these benefits, it should be no surprise that niacinamide is the new beauty-boosting powerhouse ingredient everyone in skincare is clamoring to get their hands on.
How Does Niacinamide Work?
Your cells contain two coenzymes, nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+ or NADH) and nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate (NADP+). These molecules are critical to the chemical reactions that the cells need to repair damage, reproduce, and function correctly. Niacinamide is essential for cells to make NAD+.
By supplementing your body with niacinamide, the cells can make more NAD+, and the body can absorb and neutralize more free radicals. These cell production benefits may be the source of all of the benefits niacinamide offers the skin.
With increased niacinamide, healthy skin cells can rebuild with added protection from oxidative stress, offering reinforcement from damage caused by sunlight, toxins, and environmental pollution. Niacinamide’s ability to repair skin by supporting the production of healthy skin cells is an essential component of its benefits.
Niacinamide and Oligonol®: Better Together
One of those not-so-secret beauty insider tips is that some products work better when paired with other active ingredients to boost performance. For example, Niacinamide, and all derivatives of vitamin B3, pair well with stable and powerful antioxidants, like the polyphenol present in Quality of Life’s Oligonol®.
Niacinamide and Oligonol® both work to promote youthful-looking skin, reduce oxidative stress, protect skin against harmful UV rays, and enhance skin cell growth.*
When you combine the benefits of both Oligonol® and niacinamide, your skin gets an extra boost from the multi-faceted approach only found in Quality of Life’s Oligoderm™. Oligoderm™ addresses your current skin concerns and protects your skin from new damage.*
Quality of Life’s Oligoderm™ is a groundbreaking supplement that combines the skin-boosting effects of these two essential ingredients – niacinamide and polyphenol, to repair, restore, and rejuvenate the skin.
We all want clear, even, hydrated, youthful skin. With the skin-boosting benefits of Oligoderm™, everyone will want to know your anti-aging secrets.
