Purica - Skin Care (Red Orange Complex H & Hyaluronic Acid)

Product Notes:

Purica is a Canadian company which uses organic local ingredients whenever available, but of course it realizes there are also other advanced nutraceutical companies situated all over the world with hard to find or innovatively extracted ingredients of their own that they can draw from for specific purposes. So in this case, they have turned to an Italian company, BIONAP (an acronym for Bioactive Natural Products), who have developed a proprietary extract with very strong antioxidant and anti-aging properties called "Red Orange Complex H".

RED ORANGE COMPLEX™ is a powdered extract standardized for a minimum amount of certain active ingredients (anthocyanins, hydroxycinnamic acids, flavanones, and ascorbic acid) that's been produced from the juice of three types of "Blood" (also known as Red or Raspberry) Oranges, whose edible inner flesh looks more like a pink grapefruit than an orange. Not only are these three types (Moro, Tarocco and Sanguinello) unique to the southern Mediterranean, but the ones for this particular extract are all grown in one specific area: an uncontaminated volcanic environment on Mount Etna in Sicily, where they're subject to extreme temperatures (hot and sunny during the day and cold at night), which causes the plants to up their natural production of antioxidants as a defense against the harsh external environment.

Red Orange Complex has been tested both in the lab and in clinical trials by several teams, and the results have shown it to be both safe and effective in counteracting both the signs of aging and the harmful effects of ultra-violet radiation exposure: not only in hairless mice but also in us (relatively) hairless apes: not only by reducing the extent of UV-induced skin erythema (sunburn) and dark spots, but also of trans-epidermal water loss and wrinkle depth, while also increasing the elasticity, moisturization, and radiance levels of the skin and improving its resilience.

The other major ingredient in this formula is of course hyaluronic acid – a naturally occurring anti-aging chemical found in various tissues throughout our bodies, whose main purpose with respect to the skin* is to attract and retain moisture in it, which contributes to its "fullness" or "plumpness," and diminishes the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles. (*It also helps lubricate our joints.) Hyaluronic Acid has also been found to be able to reduce the dryness and thickening of the skin caused by UV rays (at least in mice). Thus, it should come as no surprise that a study (by Penna et al., 2019) of a similar combination of the two (albeit it liquid form) produced in Europe has found it's able to decreasing both of the main events involved in skin photoaging: the inflammatory response and the generation of reactive oxygen species (a.k.a. free radicals or oxidants).