peptides-for-skin

With the plethora of skin ingredients on the shelves today, trying to figure out which product is best for your skin type can often be overwhelming. Beauty and skincare product shelves are full of buzzwords, popular ingredients, and brand names. When it comes to skincare products, the way a product looks might not accurately convey what’s inside or what it does. As a consumer, it’s important to know what ingredients you’re putting on your face and how they affect your skin's health, whether you’re using a gentle cleanser or an anti-aging cream containing active ingredients.

That being said, some products do live up to the hype. And the best way to find skincare products that deliver visible results from the comfort of home is to look for those containing active ingredients that Skin Health Experts like our Kate Somerville team have identified as highly efficacious, including polypeptides.

At our Skin Health Experts Clinic in Hollywood, Kate and her team have been creating rejuvenating skincare products with peptides for years to visibly transform skin as it ages.

To help you better understand what peptides are and if/why you want them in your daily skincare routine, our Kate Somerville Skin Health Experts share the many benefits they provide.

What are Peptides?



Before we dive into the benefits of peptides for skin, let’s first get a better understanding of what they are. Peptides are short-chain amino acids that act as the building blocks of protein. They help the body create proteins like collagen, elastin, and keratin - all of which are found in your skin. These proteins work diligently to improve your skin’s resiliency, texture, and strength. While there are many different peptides, research has shown that all peptides have a certain level of skin-restoring ability that can range from skin-soothing to firming [1]. By incorporating peptides into your daily routine and applying them to the skin’s surface, your body receives the message that it should make more of these skin-boosting proteins.

Now, if you’re wondering why not apply already-created proteins like collagen and keratin to your skin instead, there’s a simple answer. Peptides are fragmented portions of proteins. In fragmented form, peptides can easily be absorbed by the skin.

There are many ways you can incorporate peptides into your skincare regimen. Serums, moisturizers, and masks can all be formulated with peptides to deliver specific benefits to your skin.

Benefits of Peptides

When used in skincare, peptides act as a messenger, sending signals to our cells to start specific functions and direct them into carrying out these functions. Peptides can be divided into five main categories: carrier peptides, signal peptides, enzyme-inhibiting peptides, neurotransmitter-inhibiting peptides, and antimicrobial peptides [2]. These different peptides all have significant positive effects, contributing to more healthy-looking skin, including:

1. The smoothing of fine lines and deep wrinkles

Peptides can provide fullness and preserve your skin’s youthful appearance. Our Kx Active Concentrates Bio-Mimicking Peptides Serum is one peptide-rich product that, when added to your daily skincare routine morning and evening after cleansing, exfoliating, and hydrating, improves skin firmness.

2. Increasing hydration

The older you get, the more your natural collagen production decreases, causing skin dehydration and transepidermal water loss. Adding peptides to your skincare routine locks in moisture from your other skincare ingredients. Using a peptide-rich cream like our Peptide K8® Power Cream not only locks in hydrating ingredients like Hyaluronic Acid which replenishes thirsty skin. Its advanced moisture complex helps keep skin more evenly balanced with humectants and conditioners while peptides work to diminish the visible depth and density of wrinkles while firming skin.

3. Soothing irritation and skin redness

Peptides help to calm and soothe a damaged skin barrier, relieving it of visible redness. This is especially good news for people with sensitive skin who also want an anti-aging skin care routine. Our Kate Somerville DeliKate™ Recovery Cream is a breakthrough clinical moisturizer with a peptide complex and ceramides that work together to relieve visible redness, and irritation while restoring skin’s protective barrier. When you blend it with a couple drops of our Kx Active Concentrates Bio-Mimicking Peptides Serum, you get both the power of firming, smoothing peptides alongside the visible redness-reducing, skin-soothing benefits peptides provide.

4. Increasing firmness and elasticity

When collagen fibers break down, peptides signal our skin to make more. As we age, collagen production naturally decreases, resulting in wrinkles, dehydration, and weakened skin elasticity. Think of it as the ultimate win-win. Peptides work to firm skin from the outside-in and signal for your skin to firm it from the inside-out. Our NEW KateCeuticals™ Collection is a clinical age repair system chock full of powerful peptides that takes a comprehensive approach to reversing the visible signs of aging. Specifically, our KateCeuticals™ Total Repair Cream is clinically proven to improve firmness in just two weeks. When used with KateCeuticals™ Firming Serum, you’ll see smoother, softer, firmer, more radiant skin in 1 week.*

5. Improving skin texture

Peptides can help improve skin texture in a variety of ways. They increase your skin's firmness, and with higher levels of collagen, your skin will likely become smoother, too!

How to Use Peptides



Now that you know the many benefits of peptides and the different kinds of products formulated with them, you may be wondering where to start. From serums to face masks, keep scrolling to discover peptide-rich products recommended by our Kate Somerville skincare experts you can incorporate into your daily skincare routine.

Worried about wrinkles?



For clinic-level results without the clinic injections, try our KateCeuticals™ Lifting Eye Cream. This innovative under eye serums and creams utilizes Peptides that mimic snake venom to visibly relax muscle contraction, smoothing the look of wrinkles caused by facial movements. It works quickly to reduce the appearance of lines and wrinkles while depuffing, lifting and firming skin around eyes. You’ll even see diminished look of under eye bags and dark circles in as little as one use.

Missing that firm feeling?



Improve your skin’s firmness in just two weeks with the KateCeuticals™ Firming Serum. Inspired by the injectable Hyaluronic Acid dermal fillers used in our clinic to plump, lift and blur the look of wrinkles caused by collagen and volume loss, this serum is super charged with hydrating ingredients formulated alongside a firming Tri-Peptide and Nasturtium Extract to oxygenate the surface of your skin for brighter, plumper looking results. It’s a leave-on serum you can apply before your moisturizer and SPF to keep skin smooth, firm, and refreshed throughout the day or night.

Remember, when using products rich in peptides, most peptides are safe to use twice daily. However, we recommend opting for a product that can be left on your skin all day long so that the peptides have time to soak into the skin. Peptides are a vital ingredient in the fight against aging skin and can be incorporated into your everyday regimen to boost your skin's health and appearance. Because after all, we know that healthy skin requires daily attention!

Sources:

1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7178072/
2. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15648443/