Elastin is the compound that keeps your skin ripe and full of bounce.
And extract of maple leaves protects the elastin in your skin.
Beware the Enzyme Elastase
Elastin is the elastic fibers in your skin. Those fibers make up your skin's foundation.
When you have plenty of those elastic fibers, your skin maintains its tone, just as it did when you were 19.
Sure, time wears away elastin.
But let's be more specific. It's not "time" that wrinkles skin - it's the enzyme elastase which gradually wears away your elastin.
And maple leaf extract inhibits elastase. That means, maple leaf extract holds the elastase back, keeping it from eating your elastin.
All this is according to a research study conducted by the University of Rhode Island.
The advantage to maple leaf extract is that it's a plant-based approach to preventing wrinkles, fine lines, crows feet, age spots and turkey neck.
There are hundreds of expensive, high-tech products with long chemical names. But do you really want to inject yourself with neurotoxins - which is what Botox and Dysport are? And what are the long-term effects on your skin and overall health of applying compounds to your face that exist only in a test tube?
Canada has Plenty of Maple Trees
The original research used red leaf maple extract, but extract of sugar maple and striped maple leaves may also help protect your skin.
This is not some rare and exotic herb found only in the depths of the Amazon rain forest, and on the verge of extinction, especially when in high demand by personal care companies.
Canada has more than enough maple trees to supply every person on Earth enough extract to rub on their skin every day.
The Key Compounds
They're glucitol-core-containing gallotannins (GCG)s.
GCGs not only inhibit wrinkles by blocking elastase, they're anti-inflammatory and can lighten up age spots.
Native Americans apparently used maple leaves in a medicinal way, and scientists have previously explored the health benefits of maple sap and syrup.
GCGs are Antioxidants
Therefore, they fight free radicals that could damage your skin.
What is also exciting, they may help destroy - or, at least, prevent - AGEs.
AGEs are Advanced Glycation End-products. They're damaged flesh, the result of protein and fat combining with excess sugar in your bloodsream.
On your skin, AGEs are "age spots," and seem harmless although unsightly.
Unfortunately, if you have them in your skin you may have AGEs in your organs as well - caused by a poor diet.
If the antioxidant power of GCGs can actually erase AGEs in your skin, that is actually undoing the harmful effects of past unhealthy lifestyle behaviors. It's actually repairing damaged skin, making it healthier and younger, not just lighter in color.
The dark spots of AGEs are correlated not only with aging, but with the high blood sugar of diabetes.
What Else Inhibits Elastase to Help Keep Skin Young?
Maple leaf extract is not the only compound that keeps elastase from destroying your skin's elastin.
One interesting study researched and compared the ability of 21 different plants to inhibit elastase, inhibit collagenase (an enzyme which similarly whittles away your skin's collagen) and demonstrate antioxidant power. That means keeping free radicals from damaging your skin's structure.
Out of the 21 plants tested in the study, these demonstrated the highest anti-elastase power: white tea (89%), cleavers (8%), burdock root (51%), bladderwrack (50%), anise and angelica (32%), rose tincture (22%), green tea (10%), rose aqueous (24%) and pomegranate (15%).
The researchers found these plants had the highest anti-collagenase power: white tea (87%), green tea (47%), rose tincture (41%), lavender (31%). bladderwrack (25%), cleavers (7%), rose aqueous (26%), angelica (17%), anise (6%) and pomegranate (11%).
The following plant extracts exhibited the highest antioxidant activity: white tea, witch hazel, rose aqueous, green tea and rose tincture.
White tea is not so common or well-known as black tea and green tea. It's basically ordinary tea, but with the leaves picked at a young age, and minimally processed. Maybe it's so powerful because the plant was young, and because the tea is processed as little as possible for consumption.
You can find products out there with maple leaf extract and extracts from some of the other plants mentioned.
Be sure to accept ONLY ingredients certified USDA organic.
A simple "organic" or "all-natural" on the label is NOT good enough. Every personal care product you buy should be certified USDA organic by a third party laboratory.
https://bmccomplementmedtherapies.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1472-6882-9-27
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6147582/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3583887/
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/advanced-glycation-end-products#what-they-are
https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2016/fo/c6fo00169f#!divAbstract
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vn_yXNbvzf8
https://www.allure.com/story/maple-leaf-extract-wrinkle-skin-effects-study
https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/lifestyle/maple-leaf-extract-used-in-native-american-indian-medicine-may-prevent-wrinkles/20/08/