In our connective tissue lecture, we talked about hyaluronic acid, this incredibly huge glycosaminoglycan. I mentioned I’d look up a couple things: its molecular weight (over a million daltons – wow!), and the amount of water it holds (hyaluronic acid holds up to 1000 times its weight in water!).
We talked about how it’s used in dermal fillers like Restylane and Juvederm, as well as in topical products that you can buy over the counter.
I didn’t get into this, but I just wanted to mention something about topical hyaluronic acid products, since they’re super common and it’s kinda important to understand a little about how they work.
Older formulations of topical hyaluronic acid had just plain old huge hyaluronic acid (HA) molecules in them, so the HA just sat on top of the skin and – at most – did a little moisturizing. But now, most good HA products contain several different sizes of hyaluronic acid molecules (some even have HA packed into nanoparticles), so they can actually permeate the skin and add some resiliency. Nice!
You guys are young and beautiful already – so you don’t need a lot of extra, expensive products! But topical HA gives you a really nice, moisturized, glowy appearance. In fact, last year after I gave this lecture, several students talked to me about their use of topical HA products and how they swear by them.
So I thought I’d share some information on topical hyaluronic acid products here in case you’re interested.
First, here’s a great overview article on topical hyaluronic acid products from a website I love called Into the Gloss, As an aside, this website was created by Emily Weiss, who founded the blockbuster beauty and skin care brand Glossier. Love, love, love their products!
Here are some high-quality but reasonably-priced topical HA products. These all have multiple sizes of HA so you can be sure you’re getting absorbable HA:
General Histology 