The term anti-aging is dead. Adaptogen is poised to become the drop-in replacement for ‘anti-aging’ in skin care nomenclature. After all, what was anti-aging about, anyway? The concept suggests a battle with time that is not win-able. Everyone ages – every single day – by definition. It’s inevitable. The key for us mortals is to adapt our body (and our skin in particular) to optimally cope with the multitude of environmental stressors and normal physiologic processes that damage health and beauty with time. With the death of anti-aging, a void was created in the modern skin care lexicon for a common descriptor to categorize the multitude of substances that help preserve and enhance skin health and beauty. Enter the adaptogen. Adaptogens are substances that help protect and improve skin health and beauty by allowing skin to better adapt to the potentially deleterious effects of environmental stressors/toxins and natural physiologic processes.
To maintain optimal beauty and health, what matters is how we manage the multitude of forces that influence damage – from the cellular to whole body level – from the standpoints of both health and beauty. Factors that influence cumulative cellular damage and subsequent physical decline are numerous. For the skin, they include ultraviolet, infrared and visible light, topical irritants and allergens, and a diverse array of cytotoxic compounds such as heavy metals, formaldehyde, and volatile hydrocarbons. Other detrimental skin forces include oxidative and inflammatory stressors and any substance that contributes to cellular cytoplasmic or DNA damage and/ or prevents DNA repair as well as any substance that shrinks the DNA caps called telomeres that tend to shrink with time in correlation with cellular decline. The term adaptogen can be applied to identified active extracts and elements that provide protection from these processes.
What are adaptogens?
Derived from the Russian word adaptatsiya and first observed in published works in 1969, the term adaptogen, per Merriam Webster Dictionary, denotes a nontoxic substance and especially a plant extract that is held to increase the body’s ability to resist the damaging effects of stress and promote or restore normal physiological functioning. The concept of adaptogenic stabilization and optimization of body function is as old as humankind. Only the broad and common use of the term adaptogen in skin care is new. This newly popularized descriptor helps intellectually encapsulate the concept of beneficial naturopathic and herbal remedies with a succinct one-word descriptor. Instead of broadly considering an ingredient ‘anti-aging,’ classifying an ingredient as an adaptogen suggests that that it helps the body adapt to a specific problem by a certain mechanism. When an author claims adaptogenic properties for an ingredient they understand that their readers will infer that more information as to the specific pathway of the benefit(s) is known/available.
The definition of the term adaptogen allows for very broad inclusive latitude of substances. While current widely cited references have short lists of known adaptogens, the actual number of ingredients that qualify as adaptogens per the broad formal definition is hundreds to thousands. The term applies accurately to a wide array of topically applied active extracts and active molecular elements.
Benefits
Adaptogens help maintain and/or optimize skin’s physiologic function while providing a shield from stressors, thus enhancing skin’s aesthetic, health, and longevity over time.
Adaptogens, when considered for topical application, do not directly decrease emotional stress. A person with calm and stable physiology, however, may have more physiologic capacity to handle emotional stressors. In this way, adaptogens may help minimize negative physiologic impacts of certain emotional experiences.
Immune function is greatly influenced by physiologic homeostasis. By stabilizing physiologic processes, adaptogens may have general nonspecific beneficial effects on immune function. Additionally, certain adaptogens have scientific data suggesting specific immune functional enhancement.
Choosing Adaptogens
Picking the best adaptogens can be interesting. There is no authoritative research or text on the best selections for each specific personal situation. Fortunately, adaptogens, by their very definition, are non-toxic at therapeutic levels so trial-and-error is a reasonable approach to finding the best adaptogenic regimen. These natural substances do take time to provide benefits, so give each adaptogen time before considering a change.
Health food stores (for oral adaptogens) and online resources may offer the best guidance now. There likely will soon be an explosion in products defining themselves as adaptogens. In fact, a small skin care company trademarked the term ‘adaptogen,’ but this trademark will likely be invalidated given the term’s history and wide common usage. Much like the terms ‘natural,’ ‘organic,’ and ‘cosmeceutical,’ ‘adaptogen’ is ‘a shining city on a hill’ – all good with no detractors…and extremely difficult to fully vet in terms of ensuring that any product or formulation truly meets the formal definition of the term. As adaptogen becomes a more trending buzzword, expect many products to proclaim adaptogenic properties – some accurately and others less rigorously.
Most adaptogens active within skin are topically applied. Increasingly, however, skin-focused adaptogens are taken orally. Heliocare is a perfect example of an increasingly popular oral adaptogen. The fern extract within Heliocare is anti-inflammatory and defends against sunburn and ultraviolet induced skin damage in a very noticeable way.
Adaptogen Skin Care
Adaptogens provide protection from skin stressors. These include inflammatory, circulatory, oxidant, and ultraviolet aggressors. Topical applications of natural extracts with anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidant, brightening, ultravioletprotective, and vaso-stabilizing properties (among many others) benefit skin by promoting a calm and normalized appearance and delaying the cumulative changes that occur in skin appearance and function with time.
Many protective, brightening, and rejuvenative aspects of skin care are the result of adaptogens. A few companies have so many adaptogens in their product line that they are subcategorized into, for example, ‘active extracts’ and ‘active elements.’ Most adaptogens are botanical extracts or molecules derived from botanical extracts. Others, such as purified elemental sulfur, are non-plant derived but fully adaptogenic. As an example of where this trend is going, a recent high-end facial sunscreen was developed that includes, among several others, four adaptogens with published scientific data suggesting anti-cancer benefits.
A potentially anti-cancer adaptogen- rich sunscreen is an amazing concept. What follows is a list of these four unique adaptogens to help provide a sense of what adaptogens are all about and where this trend is going in the professional skin care arena:
- Phellinus linteus extract is derived from a medicinal mushroom used in Korea for centuries to treat various ailments. Harvard University and other researchers have recently reported it to be a promising anti-cancer agent. It possesses antioxidant and antiinflammatory properties and has been recently shown to provide benefit for those with eczema.
- Thymus serpyllum extract – wild thyme – is a potent antioxidant preparation with anticancer properties.
- Opuntia ficus-indica extract is derived from prickly pear cactus. Rich in antioxidant flavonoids, it has been scientifically demonstrated to have anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer properties.
- Aspalathus linearis extract is derived from antioxidant and phenolic compound rich leaves of Rooibos, a broom-like red bush from South Africa. Contains quercetin and luteolin which are reported to have anti-cancer properties.
To summarize, the term ‘adaptogen’ is poised to become the dropin replacement word for ‘anti-aging’ in skin care nomenclature. Adaptogens have been part of human life from the very beginning but the term adaptogen is a newer vocabulary word. Until recently, we thought about these substances in a broader context and used different words to describe them. Adaptogens are harmonious with the concepts of naturopathic therapy and Eastern medicine. Utilization of the term adaptogen enables better reflect upon the human instinct to develop safe natural substances that promote health, wellbeing, longevity, and beauty – through protection of the body from environmental and physiologic stressors and optimization of beneficial natural physiologic processes.
