Niacinamide helps with skin pigmentation issues in 2 ways…
1. Melanin and Niacinamide
Melanin is a pigment found in the deeper layers of skin. It is dark in colour. It defends the skin from harmful environmental effects (like the sun’s UV rays). It also gives skin its colour.
Melanin is produced in cells called melanocytes. Once it is produced, packets of melanin are transferred to cells called keratinocytes, which travel to the visible layer of the skin.
Excess melanin is sometimes produced in the skin’s deeper layers, which also gets transferred to keratinocytes.
Excess melanin has no additional benefits for the skin. It simply deposits in the visible layer of the skin.
These deposits inherit melanin’s colour—and because they have lots of melanin, they are very dark.
These deposits are hyperpigmentation.
Sometimes, these deposits are dark patches. Sometimes, they are just dark spots.
How niacinamide helps?
Niacinamide reduces the transfer of excess melanin from melanocytes to keratinocytes. When transfer gets reduced, there are no melanin deposits in the skin’s visible layer, i.e., no dark patches or dark spots.
2. Redness and Niacinamide
Niacinamide has anti-inflammatory properties.
This property helps reduce redness and inflammation in the skin.
It is essential to reduce redness in the skin because if it is red and inflamed, the skin starts producing more melanin—often, some of this melanin is excess.
Once excess melanin is produced, it can result in dark spots and dark patches—because dark spots and patches are nothing but deposits of excess melanin.