We've known for a long time the powerful antioxidant astaxanthin helps keep your heart, eyes, and brain healthy.

Now, however, the word going around is that it also protects your skin, making it healthy while also guarding against loss of moisture, sun damage, and the development of new wrinkles.

That is, it also makes you look better and keeps you that way for longer.

Plus, astaxanthin keeps your skin functioning better, so it does a better job of keeping infectious bacteria, viruses and fungi out of your body. 

Besides that, the skin works as a barrier to retain moisture inside your skin. When it deteriorates because of age, it loses the ability to retain inner moisture.

That's why aging skin looks dry and rough. More wrinkles appear - and they're deeper. 

As time goes by, your skin loses elasticity and firmness. It has more mottled pigmentation, plus may have scaling, sagging, precancerous lesions, and even skin cancer.

Astaxanthin is a powerful antioxidant that guards against all these issues.

What is Astaxanthin

It's a red, xanthophyll fat-soluble carotenoid produced by certain microalgae. It accumulates in the marine animals that eat the microalgae.

In nature, it appears as pink to bright red, depending on concentration. It's the coloring of salmon and pink flamingoes.

According to a published study, it "prevents diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and neurodegenerative disorders, and also stimulates immunization."

The United States Food and Drug Administration has approved its use as a coloring agent in animal and fish feed.

Most of the astaxanthin in the human diet comes from the green micro-alga Haematococcus Pluvialis. H. pluvialis secretes astaxanthin under certain stressful conditions: deficiency of nitrogen, high amounts of light, a high temperature, and high salinity of its water.

The astaxanthin in supplements comes either from marine animals or directly from H. pluvialis. Those marine animals include salmon, krill, shrimp, crayfish, trout, crabs, and yeast.

How Astaxanthin Protects Your Skin

Astaxanthin works so well because it's both a powerful antioxidant and a fantastic anti-inflammatory.

It's such a potent antioxidant just because the microalgae produce it when they're dealing with a lot of stress. It can link with cell membranes from inside to outside, so it's more effective than other antioxidants.

According to the results of some laboratory studies, astaxanthin is up to 100X more powerful than Vitamin C and Vitamin E. 

Two Major Sources of Human Skin Damage and Wrinkles

1. Environmental pollutants. 

These include just about everything in the air except air itself: dirt, dust, wood smoke, polluting particles, and countless chemicals pouring out of the exhaust pipes of the cars and factories around you.

Astaxanthin reduces the protein-degrading enzyme MMP-1. MMP-1 goes up when your skin is exposed to smoke and pollution. It breaks your skin down.

2. Ultraviolet radiation from the sun. 

It's hard to totally escape UV sunlight, and that does a lot of damage to your skin.

Astaxanthin prevents the UV-related loss of the powerful antioxidant glutathione.

It also helps to restore UV-diminished levels of another powerful antioxidant: superoxide dismutase (SOD).

Following your skin's exposure to the UV rays of sunlight, your immune system produces inflammatory cytokines in response to stress.

These cytokines themselves cause inflammation, so suppressing them helps keep your skin smooth and clear. Astaxanthin reduces the expression of these cytokines, limiting how much of your skin is damaged by them.

Ways Astaxanthin Protects Skin

1 Studies show it improves skin elasticity and texture, reducing wrinkles.

2. It inhibits the processes that cause age spots and wrinkles. It reduces photoaging, brightens skin hyperpigmentation, and evens out skin tone.

3. By improving the skin's surface and function, your skin holds in more moisture, which helps your skin look plump and elastic - younger.

4. It enhances collagen. Collagen is like the concrete your skin needs to hold itself together. It's a major connective tissue that declines in your skin over time. Astaxanthin slows down the deterioration.

5. Astaxanthin lowers skin inflammation, so it's not red, swollen and broken. It also helps get rid of spider veins.

6. It guards skin DNA against damage from both UV sunlight and air pollutants. It neutralizes the free radicals those stressors create within your skin.

The 65 Japanese Women Study

Over a period of sixteen weeks, these women took: 6 mg daily of astaxanthin, 12 mg daily of astaxanthin, or a placebo.

By the end of the study, the placebo group had more wrinkles, reduced skin moisture, and increased skin markers of inflammation.

The women who took astaxanthin (both groups, so apparently you don't need more than 6 mg), demonstrated no skin deterioration or inflammatory markers.

How to Take Astaxanthin

At this point, we need more research. There do appear to be a lot of health benefits from taking an astaxanthin supplement. It's obviously difficult to obtain from food alone unless you often dine on salmon and flamingo feathers.

Some studies have used 6 mg daily. You can take it in the morning and at night.

I strongly suggest making sure you take a supplement with astaxanthin derived directly from the microalgae. Some companies take it from salmon, but then you're contributing to the over-fishing of the oceans and - at the same time - exposing yourself to whatever pollutants and toxins have also accumulated in the fish.

You can also apply a cream or ointment containing astaxanthin to your skin. It works well together with Vitamins C and E, so put them all on.

Topical astaxanthin also plays well with retinol and moisturizers.

Cautions

Although astaxanthin is not known to have any side effects, it could conceivably affect women who are pregnant or lactating.

It does enhance immune function, so consult your doctor if you have any auto-immune conditions.

Also, it inhibits 5-alpha reductase, which affects how much testosterone is converted to a form that greatly affects both hair loss and sex drive. Therefore, be careful if you're already using any 5-alpha reductase drugs such as Finasteride. 

https://www.webmd.com/vitamins/ai/ingredientmono-1063/astaxanthin

https://www.lifeextension.com/magazine/2023/10/astaxanthin-and-aging-skin

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3917265/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wo9L0991Hg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNMf41FgMKQ