You may have heard the buzz around this gold standard skincare ingredient, but let us assure you that the love for hyaluronic acid isn’t just empty hype. This is one of our favourite beauty-boosting ingredients because it is natural, versatile, and it really works.
You’ll find it on the labels of hydrating and anti-ageing treatments hailed as the all-star route to soft, youthful skin. At Araya Beauty & Aesthetic Clinic, we know the effectiveness of hyaluronic acid firsthand thanks to our popular facials, aesthetic treatments and fillers that deliver fast results using this skin-plumping ingredient.
The reasons that it works are simple and proven by science, and it’s easy to incorporate into your beauty routine. Here’s your guide filled with everything you need to know about hyaluronic acid, how it works, and what it can do for your face and body.
Hyaluronic acid is a clear, gooey, gel-like substance that’s made naturally by the human body. It’s a sugar molecule that’s responsible for hydration and lubrication, retaining moisture in areas like our skin, eyes, joints, and other connective tissues.
This ingredient is what’s known as a humectant, which means it can attract and hold on to water molecules, kind of like a sponge. Hyaluronic acid is a potent humectant, able to hold up to 1000 times its molecular weight in water.
Our skin cells make a lot of hyaluronic acid while we’re young, but as we get older our natural production slows down and our supplies dwindle. This affects the quality of our skin and contributes to the formation of those pesky wrinkles, increasingly dry skin, and sagging folds. This is where skincare products and treatments come in, to help replenish lost hyaluronic acid and improve our skin quality and texture.
Hyaluronic acid can be made in a lab from animal or plant-based sources, with plant-based being the preferred and most common option these days. This is the type of hyaluronic acid we typically find in skin care treatments and other products.
Hydrates For Smoother, Softer Skin
The key role of hyaluronic acid is to increase skin moisture content and maintain skin elasticity. The main cause of dry skin is something called trans-epidermal water loss, which basically is the process of water evaporating out from your skin. Hyaluronic acid binds to water molecules in your dermis (the deepest layer of skin), preventing water from escaping and ensuring you have properly hydrated skin.
By increasing the water content of your dermis, these hydrating benefits can make your skin plump, soft, and smooth.
Reduces Fine Lines & Wrinkles
Improving moisture levels in the dermis doesn’t just reduce dry skin, it also has a really big impact on reducing fine lines and wrinkles.
Because hyaluronic acid is a plumping and hydrating component of the skin, without it, our skin can begin to look sunken and thin. When we add more hyaluronic acid back into the dermis through skincare products and treatments, we can fill out wrinkles by soaking up moisture and plumping up the skin from the inside out. It’s like a deflated balloon being gently re-inflated from within.
Speeds Up Wound Healing
Not just a hydrating, anti-ageing ingredient, hyaluronic acid also plays an important role in the overall health and strength of your skin. Hyaluronic acid helps speed up tissue repair throughout the body, and it contributes to your body’s wound-healing abilities.
This makes it a great aid in healing cuts and scrapes, and many facial treatments use this benefit to maximise their impact. After a facial like microneedling – which creates tiny puncture wounds in the skin to increase collagen production – a hyaluronic acid serum may be applied to help speed up the skin’s recovery and give you a younger, brighter-looking complexion.
It’s not just for your skin, hyaluronic acid can also have a big impact on other areas of the body. Here are some of its top health benefits:
So as you can see, treatments involving hyaluronic acid have the potential to really improve the quality of life for many people with varying conditions.
This ingredient can be found in so many products and treatments, here’s how to use it to your best advantage:
At-Home Skincare Products
Topical products like serums, moisturisers, and face masks containing hyaluronic acid are a great way to infuse some serious moisture into every layer of your skincare routine.
A hyaluronic acid serum is a great way to provide lightweight skin hydration to oily skin or combination skin types. This can also be the perfect treatment for sensitive skin and dehydrated skin types, especially when used in combination with skin barrier-protecting ingredients like ceramide to really lock in the moisture.
Pro tip: Apply a hyaluronic acid serum or moisturiser to slightly damp skin in order to trap in all of that water!
Shop our range of SkinCeuticals hyaluronic acid skincare products here.
Professional Facials
There is a huge array of facials that use hyaluronic acid products as part of the treatment. Our HydraFacial at Araya Beauty is a popular and powerful facial that combines thorough exfoliation with a deep infusion of serums packed with hyaluronic acid, antioxidants, and other active ingredients. It offers many of the benefits of a chemical peel, microdermabrasion, and a luxury face mask all in one treatment.
Using patented technology, this facial truly drenches your skin and leaves you with a dewy glow. A course of HydraFacial treatments can also help tackle more significant skin concerns like pigmentation, scarring, and wrinkles.
Hyaluronic Acid Fillers
This versatile acid is also a common dermal filler substance because it’s great at plumping the skin with instant results. Here at Araya Beauty, our Lip Fillers use natural hyaluronic acid to add volume below the skin surface, offering a fuller pout and reducing the appearance of wrinkles on the lip surface.
Hyaluronic Acid Injections
Not to be confused with fillers, hyaluronic acid injections penetrate into the dermis to provide a slow release of hyaluronic acid below the skin surface.
At Araya Beauty, we’ve recently added Profhilo hyaluronic acid injections to our treatment list. Profhilo can be used on the face and hands (where signs of ageing show most prominently) to help reduce sagging, even skin tone, boost luminosity, and improve skin quality with results lasting up to 6 months.
Supplements
You can also take an oral supplement containing hyaluronic acid to help boost your body’s natural supplies of this ingredient from within. This can be helpful for your skin as well as for relieving joint pain in conditions like osteoarthritis.
ARE THERE ANY SIDE EFFECTS?
One of the best things about hyaluronic acid is its gentle versatility, as it can be used in a huge variety of treatments without causing unwanted side effects. It is possible to have an allergic reaction to hyaluronic acid but this is very rare. If you have any history of sensitivity or contact dermatitis with skincare products, we always recommend you do a patch test for any new ingredient.
Of all our hyaluronic acid treatments and products, Profhilo is the most potent, offering an impressive 64mg of hyaluronic acid per injection. This slow-release treatment works to gradually stimulate four types of collagen and elastin production in your skin, improving skin strength and elasticity for a more youthful complexion.
Clients love how this treatment can hydrate, tone, and brighten the skin, reducing the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles. The results are really natural, offering a dewy glow that lasts for up to 6 months.
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