How Niacinamide Can Help Your Skin: What It Is, What It Does and Why It Treats Almost Every Skin Concern

There is this one vitamin that we’ve been reading about recently and we wanted to do a bit of research on it and see if it’s worth all of the hype. It’s said that it can cure all sorts of skin issues like hyperpigmentation, forehead and eye wrinkles, oily skin and even rosacea. It’s a pretty diverse range of issues, right? But there’s something that all of these skin struggles have in common and that’s the fact that every single one can be treated with topical niacinamide.

What is Niacinamide?

Niacinamide, also known as nicotinamide, is the active form of the vitamin B3 (also known as niacin or nicotinic acid).

It’s usually found in water based serums, being a water soluble vitamin so it makes it perfect for anyone who doesn’t like putting oils or oily solvents on their skin.
It’s also one of the more stable active ingredients in skincare, with a pH around neutral. So unlike alpha- and beta-hydroxy acids, L-ascorbic acid (vitamin C) and retinoids, it is non-acidic and non-irritating.

How does Niacinamide work

Niacinamide is an ingredient that increases energy production within our skin cells. We convert the niacin from the foods that we eat (like liver and mushrooms) into active niacinamide, which in turn acts as a precursor to the coenzymes NADH and NADPH.

These coenzymes boost cellular metabolism. This means that they’re responsible for giving our skin cells energy to carry out their functions, being involved in more than 40 biochemical processes, including such important jobs as DNA repair and cell turnover.

The best part about niacinamide is that we can benefit from them using them topically, due to the fact that they’re readily penetrate into the skin, so their existence depend on our diets or dietary supplement intake.we don’t have to rely on our diets or a dietary supplement.

As for its mechanism of action, it has the following properties:

• Anti-inflammatory
• Antimicrobial
• Photoprotective
• Sebostatic (sebum reducing)
• Antipruritic (soothing)
• Lightening