Found: One Unexpected Way To Reduce Inflammation & Heal Your Skin

Just as your body needs a day (or more) of rest and recovery to perform its best, your skin needs a similar break, too. It's important to cycle through your active ingredients, like retinol and chemical exfoliants, and schedule in at least one day when your skin can simply heal.

"[Reducing] oxidative stress can accelerate wound healing," board-certified dermatologist Hadley King, M.D., previously told mbg. To lower oxidative stress in the body, we look to antioxidants.

The risk of chronic inflammation is reason enough to prioritize antioxidants, but "at its worst, oxidative [stress] can also damage DNA and cause pre-cancers and cancers," board-certified dermatologist Kenneth Mark, M.D., notes. That's why ingesting antioxidants is about so much more than skin aesthetics—but a glowing complexion certainly never hurts.

CoQ10 is one of the most potent antioxidants found in your cells, skin cells included. As you age, though, natural CoQ10 levels begin to dip, which is why refilling your bank is so important.

And while you can find CoQ10 in some foods—like fish, peanuts, and broccoli—it's difficult to get enough through the diet. In fact, only about 25% of your CoQ10 levels1 come from food intake.

And if you want to take your skin health a step further, use CoQ10 as a topical antioxidant as well. In an animal study2, topical CoQ10 facilitated collagen formation and reduced inflammation during healing. Another animal study3 found similar results, observing a link between faster wound healing and CoQ10 application. And though more human studies are necessary, CoQ10 is anecdotally reported to be a stellar treatment for wound management.