Do you know what accelerates skin ageing? Or the number one ingredient to prevent it?

How much do you understand about how your skin ages?

When it comes to ageing in the skin, there are two main causes.

First up, your genetic make-up. Not much you can do about that I’m afraid, except take a look at your parents and see what’s coming up for your skin the future. The good news is, only 30% of ageing in the skin is down to internal genetics, meaning you can take hold of the other 70%. External factors like smoking, UV damage, environmental pollution and all the baddies you hear about all the time are ravaging your juicy collagen and elastic tissue and accelerating your skin’s ageing process.

To quote director Baz Luhrmann’s cult song, Everybody’s Free to Wear Sunscreen, “if I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it.” Wear your SPF every day, rain or shine.

The other key ingredient to protecting the barrier of the skin is Vitamin C. It’s an antioxidant, meaning that it’s a destroyer of all the free radicals mentioned above that are working to accelerate the ageing process in your skin. Antioxidants not only soothe and calm the skin but they defend it and prevent wrinkles and fine lines. Vitamin C, when it includes all the right elements to make it truly effective, is one of the greatest anti-ageing products you’ll ever add to your routine, along with broad-spectrum sunscreen. Vitamin C will also brighten the skin, even out bumpy and uneven skin tone, boost your collagen and exfoliate away the dead skin cells on the surface of your skin.

But how to get a Vitamin C that’s truly effective?

Well, there’s a whole lot that goes into it.

Vitamin C comes in many beneficial forms, the purest form of which is called L-ascorbic acid, or abscorbic acid. It absorbs quickly and has the highest potency when you apply it to your skin. It’s the only bioavailable form of vitamin C, which means that it’s the form our cells need in order to be able to use it to improve the skin. If you’re really looking for results from your Vitamin C serum, avoid derivatives. You know that shopping montage with Steve Carrell and Ryan Gosling in the movie Crazy, Stupid, Love when Ryan Gosling says, “be better than the Gap?”

Well, be better than derivatives.

You also need to be cautious of the pH of your Vitamin C, in order to keep it at it’s most active. How your Vitamin C is packaged can also affect it’s stability. However, if you have sensitive skin, you might find Vitamin C to be problematic.

Not anymore though. La Roche-Posay, my go-to brand for whenever my skin starts acting up, has developed another game-changer for the sensitive skinned among us. The new La Roche-Posay Pure Vitamin C10 serum is made with 10% abscorbic acid, housed in a UV-filtered orange bottle and has a physiological pH of 5.5, meaning it ticks all the boxes for a truly effective Vitamin C product.

Where it goes above and beyond though, is the addition of salicylic acid, which has a hold host of incredible benefits like  exfoliating the skin, reducing inflammation, speeding up skin cell renewal, unclogging pores and speeding up healing of pimples. And where La Roche-Posay Pure Vitamin C10 serum becomes a true gamechanger is with the addition of their Thermal Spring Water, which has a natural antioxidants used in the La Roche-Posay Thermal Center, Europe’s leading Center of Thermal Dermatology since 1905 and in their skincare since 1975.

Through the usage of La Roche-Posay Thermal Spring Water, a team led by 8 dermatologists manage various skin disorders and over 7,500 patients every year at the dermatology center. This water, plus added ingredient neurosensine, work together to reduce inflammation and redness, making La Roche-Posay Pure Vitamin C10 serum the go-to Vitamin C serum for those with sensitive skin.

La Roche-Posay Pure Vitamin C10, €38 now available at pharmacies nationwide.