You may not particularly like your scars whether they stem from zits, stretch marks, or something more grave like a wound. Depending on who you ask, there are a host of home remedies that should make scars smaller, thinner – in one word less visible. One seems to come up again and again and it’s how dabbing a bit of vitamin E can make them less noticeable. It’s known to be a powerful antioxidant with photoprotective properties and supports the proper function of skin cells. It must help, right? But the short answer is: No.
Before we debunk this myth and look at what may help, perhaps it’s a good idea to first look at what a scar is on our skin and also what vitamin E really is.
How scars form
When your skin gets a wound from an accident, surgery, or spots, your skin repairs itself. With maybe the exception of some very minor wounds, most of them result in more or less noticeable scars.
Your skin renews itself regularly, you can see it in the layer of dust even though you just cleaned your house. Now, when your skin gets a wound that is, when the dermis is damaged, that area of your skin goes into turbo.
When your skin is healthy, it’s always constructing a scaffolding system made of collagen fibres. But when it’s in turbo mode, it may make too much collagen to mend the damage, and this gives rise to raised scars (forgive the pun). On the other hand, when your skin is just not fast enough to make enough collagen during the healing process, you get sunken scars – like a dent in a car.
This is why new scar tissue has a different texture and quality than the surrounding tissue. You can also get scar tissue in your teenage years or during pregnancy. That’s when the growth spurt stretches your skin rapidly.
So, what is vitamin E and does it help make scars less noticeable?
Often, vitamin E is thought of as a single compound. It’s actually a group of vitamins found in a variety of oily foods such as seeds, nuts, leafy greens, and vegetable oils. As you probably have guessed from its sources, it’s fat-soluble. Your body stores it in fatty tissue and the liver.
Vitamin E has many roles in your body. Probably it’s best known to protect it from damage caused by free radicals. It’s also involved in immune function, helps your body produce red blood cells, and widen blood vessels and cellular signalling.
It’s essential for your skin to stay healthy. As part of the sebum, it lubricates your skin and stops it from losing moisture. As an antioxidant, plays a role in protecting your skin from free radical induced damage.
As important as vitamin E is for your body, it plays no role in improving the appearance of scars. A study found it had no effect whatsoever on 90% of the people taking part of the test. On the contrary, one third of the participants who applied vitamin E got a red and itchy rash, known as contact dermatitis.
People put a cream with vitamin E on the spot and over time see how the scar gets thinner and lighter link both together. But it’s just the natural process of gradual improvement over a period of about 12 months regardless of whether vitamin E was put on or not. So, if vitamin E doesn’t improve scars, what does?
What works
It’s true that collagen is involved in wound healing and when your body has enough vitamin E, it influences the formation and arrangement of collagen fibres. Hence, it would make sense to look at what’s needed so that your body can increase its production of collagen. And so we find the fibroblasts. Think of them as the factories that make collagen (and elastin).
Vitamin C
Vitamin C is essential, for, without it, your body can’t even make collagen. It’s involved in all phases of the wound healing process. Your body needs collagen to heal a new wound. It can also help reduce the visibility of old scars by promoting healthy tissue growth. So, in theory, putting on vitamin C helps boost collagen formation and so softens the wound.
Panthenol and allantoin
For one, both allantoin and panthenol are ingredients often added to products meant for sensitive skin or people with allergies because they have calming effects. As for reducing the visibility of scars, both are super powers. They speed up cell turnover and stimulate the growth of fibroblasts in your skin. As mentioned, the fibroblasts are the plants that make structural skin proteins like collagen and elastin.
Vitamin A
Vitamin A and all its derivatives are proven helpers in skin care. It helps you fight spots, is a known anti-wrinkle agent, and boosts your skin health but it also can help with scars. As for collagen, vitamin A is both involved in collagen and elastin fibre production and inhibits collagenase synthesis (the enzyme that breaks down collagen).
Red light therapy
NASA discovered how red LED lights can boost collagen and elastin production as well as speed up wound healing. The reason why NASA discovered how red LED can help wounds is because in space wounds don’t heal.
Cover up
You can use a dressing to trap moisture over a wound when it’s healing. This can help keep scarring to a minimum. Morever, taking these steps can also help
- Avoid unnecessary tension and strain on a scar
- Do not expose it to too much sunlight and use SPF
- Give it a simple massage for a few minutes twice a day
As for the dressing, you can use silicone gel and silicone-gel sheets, oil-based moisturisers, or even something as simple as vaseline to trap moisture, specially within the first few months.
In closing
A scare will naturally fade. It may take more than a year but in the end it will fade. Even so, you can speed it up, especially when you use an occlusive such as a silicone or oil-based moisturiser to cover it up in the first 3 months. Of course, vitamin E is fat-soluble, and hence an occlusive but it doesn’t fade the scar. Morever, the heavy lifting of sealing in the moisture is done by the oil.
