Home Remedies for Skin Lightening | Tips | Use of Vitamin C | Causes

By | May 21, 2010

Home Remedies for Skin Lightening

Skin lightening is one of the biggest crazes right now in some parts of the world with some of the big corporate names involved in marketing products to people who are trying to either change their natural color endowment or reverse a sun tan. Home remedies for skin lightening needs to be understood in the context of skin darkening – a natural process of the skin that is required to protect us from the harmful ultraviolet rays of the sun. Only with this understanding can skin lightening tips be undertaken sensibly.

In our skin exists a skin pigment called melanin created by special cells called melanocytes. This is what gives human beings their different colors. Some of us who hail lineage from the tropics are endowed with more melanin or melanocytes and this is where the protective mechanism of melanin comes to play. When ultraviolet radiation that we cannot see hits our skin, the DNA of our skin cells are destroyed and along with it the cell itself – this is what happens in sunburn. More damage could also occur when the DNA is mutated and forms a skin cancer. Melanin protects us from this damage by converting this radiation in to heat but in the process, a chemical reaction called oxidative stress turns the natural melanin darker by a shade. This is reversed naturally as oxidation and replacement of the melanin occurs. Melanin is transferred in pouches called melanosomes into the topmost keratinocyte layer of the skin where they reside until this layer forms a dead skin cell layer to be sloughed off or washed away.

Preventing this means that you need to ensure minimal exposure to UV light. This can be done by avoiding the sun between noon and three pm in the evening.  Working on existing skin darkening can be done by some simple home remedies like the use of vitamin C from strawberries and lemon juice pulped together and applied on the skin. Azelaic acid is another useful method of reversing darkening by eating more rye, bran, and wheat. Pomegranate is also known to affect the activity of the melanin producing melanocytes. The last therapy that is worth a shot is the use of vitamin E. This can be applied topically and is available in a number of products and creams. It should also be taken orally in the form of supplements and in seafood and soy as natural alternatives to the supplements.