Have you ever heard the term senescence?
It’s a synonym for aging.
Senescence describes the state of our cells once they’ve reached the end of their life.
Why is this important to you? Because it means your skin no longer produces enough new, healthy cells and begins to sag, wrinkle and look older.
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The beautiful skullcap herb has a powerful skin-restoring nutrient. |
But there’s a plant nutrient not very well know in the West that offsets this effect. The root it comes from has been used for thousands of years for other health benefits … and now we’re finding that it helps restore your skin to a much younger age. It’s a proven cellular regenerator.
The effect has a lot to do with the shortening of your telomeres. These are found at the end of your DNA. Senescence (aging) occurs when your telomeres get to a critically short length.
This erosion of telomere length is especially important in your fibroblasts – the skin cells that provide structure, strength and resilience. Unfortunately, senescent fibroblasts tend to win out over young ones. This makes for a gradual loss of the characteristics of young skin.
Fortunately for your skin, a flavone from an ancient and beautiful plant called Scutellaria baicalensis georgi (commonly called skullcap) can reverse the aging of your fibroblasts and restore their youthful strength.
Flavones are from the flavonoid group of plant nutrients. Flavones have so much therapeutic potential that they have become valuable targets for drug design, including drugs that will affect your DNA.
Drug companies are desperately trying to modify flavones and patent their own man-made versions. That way they can sell the synthetic form back to you at a huge profit.
What they aren’t telling you as you rub their mutant lab creation into your skin is that these drugs could only be a shadow of something nature has been producing for millions of years … something safer and potentially more effective.
I’m talking about baicalin.
Baicalin stops skin cell senescence by restoring the telomere length of their chromosomes. Then your skin can make healthy, youthful new cells and keep your skin acting years younger.
Obtained from the roots of scutellaria baicalensis, baicalin increases skin cell working life by about 10 per cent, delaying aging. Part of the way it does this is by restoring their telomeres.
In one study, researchers blasted skin cells with sunlight-like UV-A radiation. Skin cells without baicalin had their telomere lengths reduced by almost 70%. Baicalin was able to restore the telomeres to 65% of their original length, despite the damaging radiation.1
Baicalin also helps activate a set of anti-aging genes in skin cells called P53 genes that prevent cells from becoming senescent.
Baicalin can help repair DNA breaks and keep your skin cells youthful and healthy.2 This increases skin firmness and elasticity, improves skin restructuring, and increases the number of fibroblast duplications.
And in a recent study, baicalin protected skin from UV-B radiation that can cause photo aging and even skin cancer.
When researchers tried to age skin cells with ultraviolet radiation replicating overexposure to sunlight, the fibroblasts of skin cells treated with baicalin remained youthful and normal.3 The antioxidant power of baicalin completely protected the skin cells from free radical damage that causes premature aging of skin.
Another study found that pre-treating skin cells with baicalin protected them from the DNA damage caused by ultraviolet radiation.4
Baicalin has many other benefits, too … it’s a known memory-enhancer, for instance. What it does is keep the active peptides in your brain working for longer, keeping your memory fresh and sharp.5
Here are a few key points to know before you use baicalin:
1) You can buy fresh or dried scutellaria baicalensis leaves and dried powder online and in specialty stores.
2) There are 10 mg of baicalin in every gram of scutellaria baicalensis leaves.
3) As a supplement, you can get baicalin in an extract of scutellaria baicalensis. It’s known in Traditional Chinese Medicine as Huang Qin, and as skullcap in the U.S.
4) Some extracts are in liquid form, as a tincture, and you can also get it as capsules.
Make sure you are buying the leaves, or an extract of, scutellaria baicalensis. There is another kind of skullcap called Scutellaria lateriflor, but it’s not the same and does not have the same biological effect.
1.Min W, Gao Y, Lin B, Luo D. “Effects of baicalin on ultraviolet A-induced telomere damage in cultured human primary fibroblasts.” Chinese Journal of Dermatology 2011, 44(9) 639-642
2. Chen X, Nishida H, Konishi T. “Baicalin promoted the repair of DNA single strand breakage caused by H2O2 in cultured NIH3T3 fibroblasts.” Biol Pharm Bull. 2003 Feb;26(2):282-4.
3. Zhou B, Yin H, Xu Y, Wu D, Zhang Z, Yin Z, Permatasari F, Luo D. “Baicalin protects human skin fibroblasts from ultraviolet A radiation-induced oxidative damage and apoptosis.” Free Radic Res. 2012 Dec;46(12):1458-71.
4. Zhou B, Luo D, Wei F, Chen X, Gao J. “Baicalin protects human fibroblasts against ultraviolet B-induced cyclobutane pyrimidine dimers formation.” Arch Dermatol Res. 2008 Jul;300(6):331-4.
5. Morain P, Lestage P, De Nanteuil G, Jochemsen R, Robin J, Guez D, Boyer P. “S 17092: a prolyl endopeptidase inhibitor as a potential therapeutic drug for memory impairment.” CNS Drug Rev. 2002 Spring;8(1):31-52.