Natural Antioxidants for the Skin
2026-09-08 Cathy Molenaar
Antioxidants help protect the skin from free radicals, the unstable molecules formed by sun exposure, pollution, and stress. No single antioxidant does this alone: different substances capture different radicals. A mix of vitamin E, Q10, polyphenols, and carotenoids therefore protects on more fronts than one isolated ingredient.
What do antioxidants do for your skin?
Antioxidants neutralize free radicals and thus help protect the skin from external influences. This formulation is important: helping to protect, that is what research supports! Anyone who promises that antioxidants prevent wrinkles or stop aging promises more than science. What you can expect: support for the skin in dealing with daily stress from sun, pollution, and climate.
What are free radicals and oxidative stress?
Free radicals are unstable molecules that are constantly formed, especially by UV radiation and air pollution. They are looking for an electron and take it from the first best molecule in their vicinity, for example from collagen or from the fats in your skin barrier. If this happens faster than your skin can repair it, it is called oxidative stress. It is one of the most important factors in how the skin will look over the years, and precisely the process that antioxidants intervene in.
Why a mix of antioxidants does more than one
Antioxidants work as a team. Vitamin E protects the fats in your skin, other antioxidants do their work in other places, so they complement each other. There are even indications that they help each other restart: Q10 can make vitamin C and E, which have already done their job, usable again. Research on combinations points in the same direction: together they do more than separately. Marketing likes to put one ingredient in the spotlight, but your skin benefits more from a team than from one star.
Natural antioxidants in our products
|
Antioxidant |
Natural source |
Where to find it |
|---|---|---|
|
Vitamin E (tocopherol) |
Vegetable oils |
Tomato Base Cream, Carrot Cleanser, Berry Balm, Mineral Sunscreen SPF30, Elderberry Shower Oil, Rocket Eye Cream |
|
Q10 (ubiquinone) |
Body's own co-enzyme |
|
|
Lycopene |
Tomato |
Tomato Base Cream (78% tomato in the formula) |
|
Carotenoids |
Carrot, pumpkin seed, sea buckthorn, algae |
Carrot Cleanser, Pumpkin Serum, Berry Balm and Rocket Eye Cream |
|
Polyphenols |
Rosemary and grape extract |
Rosemary extract: Cucumber Serum, Pumpkin Serum, Avocado Serum. Grape: Mineral Sunscreen SPF30 |
|
Vitamin C |
Kakadu plum |
And the most important teammate of all: daily sun protection. The best way to deal with free radicals is to cause fewer of them, and you do that by protecting your skin from UV radiation.
