Is there such a thing as anti aging skin care? Or is it all just a hype to create a multi-billion dollar industry built on the dreams of the (forever young at heart) population.
Is it a way to fleece our insecurities about ourselves as our bodies begin to show the changes that come with aging?
What is it about aging that we are unwilling to accept and fight like crazy to prevent from happening?
What processes does our skin go through that we are trying to reverse?
Is there an antiaging skin cream out there that will help to reverse the signs of aging and that will not cause us increased problems, or even premature aging because of the ingredients that have been used to create the so called (magic potion).
There is no doubt about it, myself included, that our skin begins to give our age away and even if you are like me and trying to reverse the trend through becoming more active, exercise and diet conscious it seems that our skin can still prevent us from successfully masking what we are desperately trying to hide, Our Age!
How the Skin Ages
The skin is made up of three layers:
a) subcutaneous: where the fat is stored.
b) dermal: contains many structures including nerve cells, sweat glands, hair bulbs etc.
c) epidermal: where new skin cells (including pigmentation cells) are created and migrate through 5 layers until they are dead cells that provide us with the top layer of skin that we lose daily.
Although our skin ages all the time throughout our lives it only really begins to show the signs of aging when we reach our late 40s and most of the aging that our skin goes through takes place in the dermal layer. Below is a list of what is happening to each of us:
a) Collagen: cells decrease or stiffen and break apart
b) Elastin: elastic fibres lose some of their elasticity, stiffen & fray. (this process is speeded up in people who smoke)
c) Fibroblasts:(the producers for collagen and elastin) decrease in number.
d) Sebaceous glands: decrease in size causing dry and broken skin.
e)Melanocytes: (pigmentation cells)- are natural UVA & UVB protectors decrease in number resulting in grey hair and white blotches in the skin but they increase in size making the skin blotchy with large brown spots (these are known as liver spots).
f) Subcutaneous fat is lost making the skin look a lot thinner.
g) Basal cell migration (new skin cells) is slowed down.
So with all these changes going on to our skin how do our most popular anti-aging skin care products live up to their claims of reducing wrinkles and making skin look younger.
In short for most of the products out there the answer is a simple: (They Do Not) if we were to take a quick glance at the ingredients list, not only would we not understand what all the ingredients were, unless we were chemists.
It would only be through microscopic analysis of the product that we would be able to dertermine how much of the essential active ingredients are actually present in the product itself and in most cases this is very little – rendering the product almost useless.
Most of the creams that make up this billion dollar industry are filled with waxes, mineral oils and other cheap and potentially lethal fillers that with constant use actually cause our skin to age faster.
The ingredients on a popular antiaging skin cream is: aqua, cyclopentasiloxane, squalane, glycerin, arachidyl alchol, behenyl alcohol, arachidyl clucoside, cetearyl alcohol, cetearyl glucoside, aluminum starch octenylsuccinate, butyrospermum parkii, C13-14 isoparaffin, laureth-7 polyacrylamide, retinyl palmitate, tricaprylyn, bht polymethyl methacrylate, dipalmitoyl hydroxyproline, avena sativa kernel oil, petrolatum,tocopheryl acetate, ethylhexyl methoxycinnamate, disodium deta, sodium hydroxide, parfum, 2-bromo-2- nitropropane-1,3-diol, dichloroenzyl alcohol.
So what does that list of ingredients mean. Let us just look at a couple of them to give you the picture:
Cyclopentasiloxane – it feels good. It coats the skin and gives it a silky feel, it evaporates so your skin will not feel greasy, it is made from sand and residue can stay in the body for five years.
C13-14 Isoparaffin is a gelling agent. It is a mixture of mineral oils derived from petroleum.
Petrolatum is mineral oil jelly, and mineral oil causes a lot of problems when used on the skin (i.e., promotes sun damage), and it tends to interfere with the body’s own natural moisturizing mechanism, it leads to dry skin and chapping.
The question you are now asking yourself is are there natural products out there that do what they say and that are perfectly safe to use that nourish the skin deep down rather than just coat the top of the skin.
The great news is that there has been research in recent years that has discovered natural products that feed the skin and are very effective in working with the chemistry of the body to actually increase the number of collagen and elastin cells, prevent water loss and assist in increasing basal cell production to truly give you more youthful skin that is well nourished.
So if you want anti aging skin care products that really work look for antiaging skin cream from companies who are not afraid to state that they do not include any ingredient that you could not safely eat.