Your skin is important to your health.
We should never, ever take our skin for granted. Skin is the first and most important barrier between us and the outside world and accounts for 50% of our total body HA. The skin helps us retain the water that our bodies need to be healthy and function well. Nerve endings in intact skin help us sense what is happening in the outside world so our bodies can respond appropriately. Our skin is the first part of us that people see. The character and tint of our skin can provide doctors with important clues to what disease processes might be occurring in our bodies. For example, patients with liver failure have skin with a characteristic yellow tint. The color of their skin is a telltale sign to doctors that something is very wrong with that patient.
If skin is damaged, our continued health will be severely compromised. One of the main causes of death in strong tornados, such as the 2011 EF-5 Joplin, Missouri tornado, is puncture wounds in skin. In the Joplin tornado, punctures in the skin from people being hit with flying debris allowed fungus pathogens to enter the body and set up infections that indirectly killed more people than those who died directly in the tornado (Fanfair, et al., 2012). One of the deadliest forms of cancer, melanoma, arises when excessive sun exposure damages skin cells. Clinical researchers have found that oral HA supplements can help to slow—possibly partially reverse—age related changes (Fallacara, et al, 2018; Pérez-Sánchez, et al., 2018). Scientists have various hypotheses about how Hyaluronic Acid protects skin. In basic science research, HA has been shown to reduce antioxidant activity (McCall-Perez, et al., 2011; Braga, et al., 2015), and to protect from reactive oxygen species being produced when it is exposed to ultraviolet light (Penna, et al., 2019). Several clinical studies indicate oral HA supplements improve both objective and subjective characteristics of skin that has been damaged by sun and age (Papakonstantinou, et al., 2012).
So, no matter how you accomplish it, take good care of your skin. Protect it from trauma and too much sun. Also, eat a healthy, antioxidant diet, which will benefit your whole body. Finally, adding a high quality, high molecular weight HA supplement to your diet might add the protective benefits of HA to your skin care regimen.
Like the skin, HA drops have been extensively used in treating eye disease but, recently, understanding is rising that oral HA can be beneficial for eyes, as well.
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