New Ingredient in Vitamin C Serum 15%

We’ve added a phytic acid to our reformulation of Vitamin C Serum 15%.

Phytic acid is used in some alpha hydroxy acid serums because it is a weak acid like ascorbic, malic, etc.

Phytic acid is the way we and plants and other organisms store phosphate. Why do we need to store phosphate? Because it is vital for everything that has to do with energy production and use and synthesis of everything that is important to life so it is very useful to have it handy while at the same time without interfering with what is going on at the time. Hence, storing it as phytic acid makes sense.

Why is phosphate so important? For example, to store energy produced through respiration we make ATP (adenosine triphosphate) out of ADP (adenosine diphosphate) plus inorganic phosphate. All living beings store energy as ATP and use ATP as a source of energy for biosynthesis of macromolecules like proteins, DNA, etc. and for housekeeping tasks within the cell.

Because of the importance of phosphate, humans and plants store it as phytic acid, a phosphate ester of inositol, and because of the structure of inositol there is enough “space” for six phosphate groups.

Phytic acid can also sequester some metals, making it somewhat unsuitable as a food but great as an ingredient in a vitamin C serum, where metals like iron or copper can oxidize the ascorbic acid and make it behave as an oxidant (rather than an antioxidant).

Phytic acid has been claimed to work against different types of cancerous cells but a lot more evidence will be needed to prove this claim. In the meantime, let’s use it for the so many reasons it has been proven useful.