Tartaric acid and skin benefits go hand in hand. This organic acid is a real powerhouse when it comes to what it can do for your skin and your skincare products.
What is Tartaric Acid?
It is a dicarboxylic acid, a gentler member of the alpha hydroxy acid (AHA) group that also includes glycolic, lactic, citric, and malic acids. This makes it a good pick for all skin types, even sensitive skin. Like the other AHAs, Tartaric acid is a naturally occurring organic acid found in many plants and fruits, including grapes, apples, tamarinds, apricots, avocados and sunflower seeds. It is generally sourced from grapes and as a byproduct of winemaking. At room temperature, it is an odorless, white crystalline powder that easily dissolves in water.
Tartaric acid is one of the primary acids in wine and is what gives it that tart flavor and distinctive smell.
What is Tartaric Acid Used for?
Tartaric acid has a myriad of uses, including its use as a food additive. In fact, it is used for its tart taste in the cuisine of countries such as Spain, Mexico, and Nigeria. It is also used to add tartness to such things as soft drinks, jams, fruit jellies, candies, and effervescent tablets. Cream of tartar, used in cooking, is a salt of tartaric acid and is used as a leavening agent in baking powder to make baked goods rise. Tartaric acid is also used as a food preservative.
When consumed, one of the Tartaric acid’s benefits is that it boosts your immunity due to its rich antioxidant content. This helps to protect you from disease and ill health.
Aside from being a food additive, Tartaric acid has many commercial uses, such as in the tanning of leather, in making blueprints, in silvering mirrors, in cleaning and polishing metals, and in photography.
Tartaric Acid Benefits
Exfoliation
Tartaric acid has many skin benefits. Like all alpha hydroxy acids, it is a great, gentle exfoliator. This means that when applied to the skin, the AHA, in this case, tartaric acid, will cause the dead skin cells on the outermost surface of your skin, also known as the stratum corneum, to come “unglued” and slough off. This helps to reveal the newer, fresher skin cells beneath. This tartaric acid benefit helps brighten dull, lackluster skin.
It may also help to lessen acne by helping to unclog pores. AHAs help acne, not only by exfoliating the top layer of skin but also by drying up whiteheads and blackheads. Tartaric acid’s exfoliation process has even been touted as helping reduce acne scars.
It also helps to lessen fine lines and wrinkles through this exfoliating action. And, as it promotes skin cell turnover, it brightens and lightens the skin, evening out the skin tone. It even helps to fade dark spots by causing old, darkened cells to slough off and bringing new, lighter cells to the surface.
pH Stabilization and Better Absorption
In addition, this natural exfoliating action allows for better absorption of other products and nutrients. This is one of the most important tartaric acid skin benefits. Absorption can be a problem for some ingredients, including Vitamin C in its purest form, and L-ascorbic acid, which has so many of its own benefits for your skin.
Probably the most important of the tartaric acid benefits is its ability to stabilize the pH of cosmeceutical formulations, like anti-aging creams and serums.
Again, this goes back to absorption. Various active ingredients, including acids like Vitamin C, absorb better at a certain pH range. In fact, L-ascorbic acid, pure Vitamin C, needs to be formulated at a pH of 3.5 or less to enter the skin. Tartaric acid stabilizes the entire formulation to help all ingredients, specifically active ingredients like Vitamin C, absorb into the skin.
It also helps them to be less irritating to the skin.
Why is absorption into the deeper layers of skin so important?
Your top layer of skin, the stratum corneum, is your skin’s barrier against harm from outside the body and against moisture loss. It is made up of a number of layers of “dead” cells in a lipid matrix. Because of the tight formation of these cells, called corneocytes, it can be difficult for skin care ingredients to be absorbed by the skin.
However, the deeper layers are where the action is. That’s where the melanocytes, the cells that produce pigment, are. It is also where collagen, the protein that keeps your skin plump, smooth, and taut is delivered. In order for active ingredients, such as Vitamin C to get to these and work their magic, they must first be able to get past the skin’s barrier.
Antioxidant Action
Another tartaric acid benefit is its ability to act as an antioxidant. Antioxidants are invaluable to the skin as they fight off free radicals. These are unstable atoms that are missing one of their electrons. In order to complete themselves, they can attack the healthy cells of your skin and steal an electron, doing deep damage to the cells, right down to the DNA. You encounter free radicals every day as a result of ultraviolet (UV) radiation, cigarette smoke, other pollution, and some of your body’s own processes.
Antioxidants such as tartaric acid scavenge and neutralize free radicals by providing them with their missing electrons. Free radicals can cause a lot of harm, damaging your skin’s collagen and causing dark spots to be left behind. While all antioxidants help to prevent dark spots by fighting free radicals and the harm that they do, Vitamin C, a powerful antioxidant in its own right, takes it even further by stimulating the production of collagen and protecting existing collagen, among its many other actions.
Humectant properties
As if the foregoing tartaric acid and skin benefits weren’t enough, tartaric acid also acts as a humectant, binding moisture to your skin.
All of these incredible tartaric acid benefits are an important part of what makes Beautystat’s Universal C Skin Refiner so powerful. Along with the above benefits, you are provided with 20 percent pure Vitamin C with all of its own amazing rewards for your skin. Universal C Skin Refiner is formulated with tartaric acid, and its ability to stabilize pH and gently exfoliate your skin provides you with faster and longer-lasting results. Vitamin C and other ingredients are absorbed into the deeper layers of your skin for a highly effective, yet gentle result.
How does Vitamin C benefit your Skin?
First, it is a powerful antioxidant that scavenges free radicals, preventing cell damage and the appearance of dark spots. Free radical damage also causes premature signs of aging, such as fine lines, sagging skin, and wrinkles. Vitamin C helps to prevent these through its antioxidant action.
It also stimulates the production of collagen in the skin which repairs cell damage and helps your skin to maintain its smooth, taut, and full appearance. Not only does Vitamin C promote collagen production, but it also protects the collagen your skin already has. This helps to delay the signs of aging, such as fine lines, wrinkles, and sagging skin.
Vitamin C promotes cell turnover, brightening dull, listless skin by helping it to shed dead cells and stimulating new cells to rise to the surface. This cell turnover helps to fade dark spots and even your complexion, lightening your skin.
It also helps to fade dark spots by interfering with the production of the enzyme tyrosinase. This enzyme is essential to the synthesis of melanin in the melanocytes. And with this process disrupted, dark spots are faded or fail to form altogether.
This is especially the case as Vitamin C is an effective anti-inflammatory that reduces redness, brightening and lightening your skin. This anti-inflammatory action also helps to prevent post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation or PIH. This PIH occurs when melanin is released by the melanocytes in response to inflammation, such as with inflammatory acne. Vitamin C can help fade the dark spots left behind long after the acne lesions have healed.
As if that weren’t enough, Vitamin C protects your skin from both the UVA and UVB rays of the sun. However, it is not a substitute for sunscreen. You should always wear sunscreen of at least SPF 30 to protect your skin and help prevent premature aging. But Vitamin C continues to heal UV-induced damage even after you’ve left the sun’s rays behind.
Tartaric acid can cause some sun sensitivity, which is another reason to make sure you always use sunscreen. But Beautystat’s Universal C Skin Refiner contains a mineral sunscreen to give yours an extra boost.
Where to buy Tartaric Acid
You can buy tartaric acid online in bottles or jars (or in bulk) for use as a leave-in (to make baked goods rise); for making your own wine or beer; or for whatever cooking, baking, or candy-making needs you may have.
It’s also available at some retailers.
In addition, you will find it in over-the-counter anti-aging and beauty creams and serums such as Beautystat’s Universal C Skin Refiner.
