Anti Ageing Skin Cream, Is It Worth The Money ?
Thursday, August 7th, 2008 Subscribe To Our Feed
Women, and even men of a certain age are constantly looking for a magic bullet when it comes to anti ageing skin care. In fact, women in the UK are spending around 100 million per year, trying to look younger using anti aging cream as a non surgical facelift. The real problem is, that by the time they become of a certain age, they are always playing catch up. You have to start when you are young. Are you listening teenagers and twentysomethings?
The major culprit, when it comes to skin ageing, is the sun but don’t think that you are alright because you always wear your factor 30 when you sun bathe. This will help of course, but you are mainly dealing with UV-A rays. The real agents of ageing are the UV-B rays that come down whether the sky is blue or not. This means that you are being affected by these all year round.
UV-B is hitting you as you walk from your house to the station, from the station to work and back again. It is there when you go for your lunch. This means that your first weapon to anti aging is sun blocker, all the time. Use it on your face hands and neck at all times possibly as a substitute for moisturiser cream.
You will have seen countless advertisements for anti ageing skin care products on the television and in magazines, many featuring actors in white coats pretending to work in a hi-tech laboratory setting to give the impression that your cream is the latest in scientific discovery. It also will be trying to convey a sense that these preparations have been thoroughly tested, are safe to use and are extremely effective.
Many of the active ingredients being touted as ‘new’ or ‘breakthrough’ are really chemicals that have been known and used for years for other different conditions, usually in pharmacological circumstances. Because they have this history of use without nasty side effects, cosmetic manufacturers explore some of the other possibilities to the chemicals. As long as they can determine some minor improvement in a few guinea pig people, it is rushed out as the latest thing to combat ageing skin.
A typical type of ingredient is one that goes by the name of Retinol which is actually vitamin A. This has been known and used by the medical profession in the treatment of skin problems. It is used in a quite high dosage, which means it is only available on prescription from a doctor. The amount of Retinol you will find in any preparations you can buy, are going to be relatively small and therefore the effects will match. This doesn’t mean that you may not derive some benefit from using it but you may be better off spending your money in food that is rich in vitamin A.
One problem that is rarely mentioned is the time factor. Many of these active ingredients are unstable. That is, they degrade when in contact with the air or moisture or both. As soon as they are manufactured, the air begins to degrade the efficacy of the substances. There are no date stamps on the packaging so you don’t know how long it has been since your product has been made, which means you don’t know how long the product has been sitting on the shelf. After you buy your product, once you have opened it, the process of degradation is accelerated so you should take great care in the storage and don’t leave it hanging around or it turns into a very expensive cold cream.
As most of the anti ageing skin creams are quite expensive, especially when you look at the amount that is in the jar or tube, you may wish to consider making your own. It is not that difficult, you do not need to be a scientist but you do need to make sure everything you use is very clean. You start with the base, which can be an inexpensive moisturiser to which you add the active ingredients. Only make small batches at a time so that you always have the freshest and most active cream to work on the skin. You can find any number of different recipes for face creams and sourcing the materials shouldn’t be a problem. It is then a question of experimenting until you find the right combination that is the best for your skin type. Then you will have a non surgical facelift cream to be proud of, knowing that it is your own creation. Who knows, you could end up with your own cosmetics empire.
