Growth Factors for Skin: What are they, and Which are the Best?

What are growth factors and what do they do for your skin? Are growth factors safe? How do they help boost collagen and prevent ageing? And which growth factor products are the best for your skin?

A decade ago, Lamelle launched SA’s first-ever scientifically proven growth factor product for anti-ageing in the skin, Dermaheal. And Lamelle recently updated it, because topical growth factors play an important role in skin rejuvenation. Here’s what you need to know:

WHAT ARE GROWTH FACTORS?

Growth factors are part of your body’s natural tools for health, growth and repair. They occur naturally in your body. And each cell can make new growth factors. (Though they produce fewer and fewer as you get older).

Growth factors are specialised amino acid strings (peptides). They form special signaling proteins that bind to receptors on the surface of each cell. Here, they help regulate cell function and communication between cells. And that’s important. Because growth factors are what stimulate your skin cells to grow, differentiate (make new cells) and repair tissue.

They are essential for healthy skin and a healthy body in general.

ARE GROWTH FACTORS IN SKIN TREATMENTS SAFE?

Naturally, the growth factors already inside your body are 100% safe and effective. But what happens when you pack growth factors into a skin treatment? Is that the same thing as natural growth factors?

In Lamelle’s case, yes. Lamelle launched Dermaheal using Nobel Prize-winning Recombinant Human Growth Factor technology. Lamelle bio-engineers produce exact replicas of your body’s own growth factors. They’re made (we don’t like grown - sounds to cancer-ish) in a lab from specially selected amino acids. These are modified to be identical to your body’s own growth factors.

Importantly: Lamelle creates growth factors in a lab. They do not come from human tissue. And this is a very important point. Some companies harvest their growth factors from human stem cells. Which is where the fears about growth factor safety come from. (Never mind how gross the very idea is of harvesting something from another person’s body.)

Lamelle’s lab-created topical growth factors, on the other hand, are scientifically proven to be 100% safe. Your body recognises them and knows how to use them to stimulate skin cell growth, health, repair, and function.

HOW DO TOPICAL GROWTH FACTORS WORK?

Topical means it’s applied directly onto the skin. In a cream or serum form, for example. And, in the case of the Lamelle Dermaheal range, the growth factors are delivered to the skin in a creamy base. The base itself is designed to nourish and begin the process of repairing dry and aging skin.

A specially selected blend of growth factors then penetrates the skin. These patented, lab-designed growth factors attach to the surface of each cell. They immediately start reactivating normal cell processes. It’s important to note that, as we age, growth factor production changes and slows down in the skin. So what we see as the signs of aging (wrinkles, dry skin, photo-aging, collagen breakdown) are signs that some cells have stopped communicating with each other and the cells are not performing their normal tasks.

The growth factors restart those healthy cell activities. Checking the cell’s functions, monitoring the cells around it for abnormalities. Growth factors make sure cells differentiate, live and die as they should. It’s an incredibly powerful tool: Re-enabling every cell in your skin to start working as they did in youth.

TOPICAL GROWTH FACTORS FOR ANTI-AGEING IN SKIN

The growth factors in Dermaheal give aging skin remarkable rejuvenating abilities. Dermaheal reintroduces TGF-Beta3, for example. This powerful growth factor promotes scarless healing. And your body hasn’t seen it since childhood.

The growth factors in Dermaheal re-establish communication between cells. They re-energise skin cells throughout their entire life cycles. And They return the skin cell turnover rate to normal, youthful levels. At the same time, these growth factors also reactivate your skin’s collagen production, restore your skin’s ability to hydrate properly and rebalance one of the main causes of aging in the skin: the chronic inflammation that causes inflammation.

HOW GROWTH FACTORS STIMULATE NEW COLLAGEN GROWTH

When growth factors enter your skin, they immediately stimulate the skin to produce more healthy new cells. They also encourage more cells to “specialise” by “becoming” some of the more unique skin structures lacking in aging skin. Keratinocytes in the outer layer of skin, for example, start producing more hyaluronic acid and skin-immunity boosters.

One of the most important specialisations, though, is that the growth factors stimulate fibroblasts. They are the cells that make new collagen. Fibroblasts also begin producing more healthy elastin, nerve systems and vascular systems. All the things your skin needs to grow healthy, plump and strong.

Then, Dermaheal takes it all one step further. Specially selected antioxidants travel along with the growth factors. And their job is to stop damaging enzymes like MMP from breaking down collagen in the skin. With age, sun damage and free radical damage, our skin begins to overproduce collagen-breaking enzymes such as MMPs. And Dermaheal helps neutralise these. This promotes new collagen growth and protects the collagen that’s already there.

WHICH GROWTH FACTORS ARE THE BEST?

Don’t just assume all growth factor blends are equal. There are different types of growth factors. Some promote chronic inflammation in the skin. Some disable it. Scientists discovered chronic inflammation fairly recently, and they recognise it as a leading cause of ageing.

Chronic inflammation is an invisible killer. You can see normal wound-healing inflammation appear and disappear again when it heals a scrape on your skin. But chronic inflammation lingers inside your cells. It causes cells to malfunction, and they degrade the skin over time.

And scientists have discovered that this type of inflammation is controlled by substances called cytokines. Cytokines have the ability to either activate or deactivate inflammation.

Now, here’s the important bit: Growth factors are part of the cytokine family. And this means that some growth factors themselves will either activate or deactivate inflammation. So, if you want to deactivate aging chronic inflammation, it’s important that you only use those types of growth factors that will help “switch off” inflammation in cells.

Not everyone knows this. And it’s very common to find growth factor blends that actually promote inflammation aging by mistake.

Lamelle selected the growth factors in Dermaheal, on the other hand, specifically for their ability to deactivate chronic inflammation in cells. That’s how the Dermaheal blend is able to counteract inflammation ageing (inflammation). And it’s also why we say that Dermaheal has the most advanced growth factor blend to date.

THE BEST SKINCARE RANGE FOR GROWTH FACTORS: LAMELLE DERMAHEAL

Made with a more advanced blend of growth factors, Lamelle Dermaheal safely and effectively treats the three main causes of aging in the skin:

●     Reactivates damaged, dormant cells, restoring their normal youthful cell function.

●     Disables chronic inflammation, effectively flipping the switch on inflammation aging.

●     Stimulates collagen production and protects existing collagen by boosting fibroblast activity and keeping collagen-damaging enzymes under control.

Speak to your doctor or therapist today about the advanced anti-aging benefits of the Recombinant Human Growth Factors in the Lamelle Dermaheal range.