Vitamins in Cosmetics – Do They Help?

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When you see full of Vitamin C written on a label, do you often wonder if this does anything for your body? The truth is vitamin fortified cosmetic products that you spread on your skin and hair, are never beneficial. Why do all these products advertise it then? The answer is, strictly for sales and marketing purposes.

Many companies will advertise what Vitamins you can find in their products: Body Washes with Vitamin C, Nail Polish Removers with Vitamin E, and shave gels with pro-vitamin B5. Alberta V05 expresses how their Multi-Vitamin Complex will “leave your hair looking and feeling beautiful” and St. Ives Fresh Berry & Vitamin C moisturizing body wash exclaims that it will “leave your skin clean, soft and smooth.”

Vitamins are great if you consume them in food products, or as supplements, but in cosmetic products, you aren’t going to have the same effects. Dermatologists indicate that Vitamins will stay on your skin, but that they won’t make it to the blood where it really makes a difference.

Vitamin C for example, you will find in St. Ives body wash and many other body washes, but Vitamin C dissolves in water therefore it will rinse right off your skin and down the drain. Vitamin E can stay on the skin, but it hasn’t been proven to do anything else other than moisturize.

Cosmetic companies are not allowed to use high products of Vitamin A in their products that would give your skin any medical benefits, because if the product has higher than 1% of it, it is considered a drug by Health Canada. Therefore, you would need a prescription to get such a product.

The reality is with hair products, added vitamins are never going to do anything but maybe add a longer shelf life to the product. Dermatologists say added vitamins do nothing for hair because hair is dead. Dead hair can’t absorb vitamins, it grows deep down under the skin, and the only way it gets air and food is through blood supply.

The only other good thing added vitamins are for is to keep the added ingredients balanced, and prevent discoloration. Other than that, when companies advertise Vitamins in their products, you can bet 100 times over it is strictly for marketing and sales purposes.