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By Hannah Sivak, PhD
Biochemist and Botanist
Skin Actives Scientific LLC
If there is something I dislike is fear mongering. There have always been fear mongers, people who scare other people to make money or just for fun. These days, the category is been enriched daily with the help of the Internet: anybody can start a website with a few dollars and can start spreading false rumors and plain lies. These people try to convince others that we are being poisoned by big companies aided by complicit government agencies, and conspiracy plots are everywhere. Sunblock will poison you, preservatives used in food and cosmetics poison the environment and this is why we are living much shorter lives and are sicker than our forebears. Except, of course, that this is not true, and we, in the USA and Europe and other developed countries, are living healthier and longer lives than ever before.
What we eat and what we use on our skin is safe. But, some companies, in their pursuit of novelty and marketing fluff are using ingredients that it is silly to use, because their possible benefits are so small and the risks, however small and theoretical, are not worth taking.
Ingredients I don't like:
Anything containing human (or other mammalian) cells or tissue extracts. Mammal cells or tissue extracts may contain viral particles or prions, the agent suspected of causing mad cow disease.
TNS, for example, is discarded media used to culture human cells. It may contain some useful growth factors, but will also contain useless waste products excreted by the cultured cells and there is always the possibility of presence of viruses and other infectious agents.
Perricone's "neuropeptides" have no research whatsoever supporting his claim to be beneficial, but even without any information on their source, the only "almost legal" source of them can be the thymus of cows or other mammals. I don't think we will ever know where those were obtained from.
Note (5/29/08) : Perricone has apparently removed these peptides from his products and he is now using the usual synthetic peptides. He could do that by changing the definition of neuropeptides!!!!!
The now infamous "eyelash growth factor" used by Jan Marini turned out to be a prescription medication (please see my guide on the subject). Now it is sold under the fancy name Latisse. Known side effects: change in eye color, hyperpigmentation of the eyelid, hair growth on cheeks (!). Plus, why would you use a medication that decreases the pressure in your eye if you don't have glaucoma?
Ovaliss is an extract of a plant called glaucium and the active ingredient is an alkaloid used as a prescription medicine. We will not sell it, but you can try our cellulite cream instead.
Ethocyn is a chemical whose only effect seems to be to DECREASE collagen synthesis!
Bliss Thinny Thin Chin contains theophylline, a prescription medicine for asthma. How did this happened? The name you will see at the pharmacy is Theodur, and its the side effects are very unpleasant. It seems that if you are bothered by you aging neck you will be less lucky than asthma patients who these days have much better options.
Renovage, a fancy name to hide teprenone (geranylgeranylacetone or GGA), an old ulcer medicine used in Thailand and Japan, is not present in several expensive skin care lines like Isomers. Why would anybody use prescription medicines that are not even allowed in the USA, is beyond me.
Paula Begoun, who for decades has been looking at ingredient lists with a critical eye, coined this name for ingredients that “have the ability to tell a skin cell to look, act, and behave better, more like a normal healthy skin cell would, or to stop other substances from telling the cell to behave badly or abnormally”.
I am all for cell-cell interactions but I am aware that I don’t know enough to tell my cells what to tell their neighbors. Scientists are learning so much about how cells divide and differentiate, and it is a marvelous adventure to read and try to understand the complex mechanisms involved. But it is naïve to think that we can add an active that will switch-on just the event we want (rejuvenate, grow hair, stimulate “good” stem cells, or whatever) without tampering with the delicate mechanisms that stop cells for dividing forever, invading nearby tissue and wreaking havoc with our bodies. What we ask from our scientists is to learn enough about regulation of cell division so that they can help stop cancerous cells.
When cell-cell signals fail, the complex controls that prevent a cell from multiplying indefinitely, fail, and a tumor starts. You don’t want to mess around with such fine and crucial mechanisms. For example, you would not want to mess with telomerase, the enzyme that extends telomeres, part of the chromosome (where genetic information is stored). We know that telomerase is important to control of cell division, so important that activation of the telomerase has been observed in the great majority of the human tumors studied. I would not want to mess with that, but Jan Marini apparently knows better, as this company includes “telomerase protein” in their “age intervention regeneration booster”. Fortunately, telomerase is a very complex protein (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telomerase) so the likelihood of whatever they add to the product ever working as telomerase inside the cells of the buyer of the $225 product is practically zero. I don’t like betting on cellular biology, though.
Other distasteful (but not dangerous) ingredients are those obtained from species in danger of extinction. For example, "Ocean Actives" claims that they obtain squalene from the liver of a species of deep sea shark in danger of extinction. What is the point when you can obtain the same chemical from corn? Just the novelty value.
We at Skin Actives recognize the value of proteins found in human cells but don't want to use any ingredient capable of including infectious agents. The answer is high tech biochemistry: making perfect imitations of human proteins in the laboratory. If there are peptides that we want, make synthetic copies in the laboratory. This way, we ensure that the actives are safe and we can sleep well at night, without worrying about risks that are small but unnecessary.
For safe and effective actives, use Skin Actives Scientific products and those by reputable companies that are not using silly ingredients "just because".
Updated May 18, 2009
Biochemist and Botanist
Skin Actives Scientific LLC
If there is something I dislike is fear mongering. There have always been fear mongers, people who scare other people to make money or just for fun. These days, the category is been enriched daily with the help of the Internet: anybody can start a website with a few dollars and can start spreading false rumors and plain lies. These people try to convince others that we are being poisoned by big companies aided by complicit government agencies, and conspiracy plots are everywhere. Sunblock will poison you, preservatives used in food and cosmetics poison the environment and this is why we are living much shorter lives and are sicker than our forebears. Except, of course, that this is not true, and we, in the USA and Europe and other developed countries, are living healthier and longer lives than ever before.
What we eat and what we use on our skin is safe. But, some companies, in their pursuit of novelty and marketing fluff are using ingredients that it is silly to use, because their possible benefits are so small and the risks, however small and theoretical, are not worth taking.
Ingredients I don't like:
Anything containing human (or other mammalian) cells or tissue extracts. Mammal cells or tissue extracts may contain viral particles or prions, the agent suspected of causing mad cow disease.
TNS, for example, is discarded media used to culture human cells. It may contain some useful growth factors, but will also contain useless waste products excreted by the cultured cells and there is always the possibility of presence of viruses and other infectious agents.
Perricone's "neuropeptides" have no research whatsoever supporting his claim to be beneficial, but even without any information on their source, the only "almost legal" source of them can be the thymus of cows or other mammals. I don't think we will ever know where those were obtained from.
Note (5/29/08) : Perricone has apparently removed these peptides from his products and he is now using the usual synthetic peptides. He could do that by changing the definition of neuropeptides!!!!!
The now infamous "eyelash growth factor" used by Jan Marini turned out to be a prescription medication (please see my guide on the subject). Now it is sold under the fancy name Latisse. Known side effects: change in eye color, hyperpigmentation of the eyelid, hair growth on cheeks (!). Plus, why would you use a medication that decreases the pressure in your eye if you don't have glaucoma?
Ovaliss is an extract of a plant called glaucium and the active ingredient is an alkaloid used as a prescription medicine. We will not sell it, but you can try our cellulite cream instead.
Ethocyn is a chemical whose only effect seems to be to DECREASE collagen synthesis!
Bliss Thinny Thin Chin contains theophylline, a prescription medicine for asthma. How did this happened? The name you will see at the pharmacy is Theodur, and its the side effects are very unpleasant. It seems that if you are bothered by you aging neck you will be less lucky than asthma patients who these days have much better options.
Renovage, a fancy name to hide teprenone (geranylgeranylacetone or GGA), an old ulcer medicine used in Thailand and Japan, is not present in several expensive skin care lines like Isomers. Why would anybody use prescription medicines that are not even allowed in the USA, is beyond me.
Paula Begoun, who for decades has been looking at ingredient lists with a critical eye, coined this name for ingredients that “have the ability to tell a skin cell to look, act, and behave better, more like a normal healthy skin cell would, or to stop other substances from telling the cell to behave badly or abnormally”.
I am all for cell-cell interactions but I am aware that I don’t know enough to tell my cells what to tell their neighbors. Scientists are learning so much about how cells divide and differentiate, and it is a marvelous adventure to read and try to understand the complex mechanisms involved. But it is naïve to think that we can add an active that will switch-on just the event we want (rejuvenate, grow hair, stimulate “good” stem cells, or whatever) without tampering with the delicate mechanisms that stop cells for dividing forever, invading nearby tissue and wreaking havoc with our bodies. What we ask from our scientists is to learn enough about regulation of cell division so that they can help stop cancerous cells.
When cell-cell signals fail, the complex controls that prevent a cell from multiplying indefinitely, fail, and a tumor starts. You don’t want to mess around with such fine and crucial mechanisms. For example, you would not want to mess with telomerase, the enzyme that extends telomeres, part of the chromosome (where genetic information is stored). We know that telomerase is important to control of cell division, so important that activation of the telomerase has been observed in the great majority of the human tumors studied. I would not want to mess with that, but Jan Marini apparently knows better, as this company includes “telomerase protein” in their “age intervention regeneration booster”. Fortunately, telomerase is a very complex protein (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telomerase) so the likelihood of whatever they add to the product ever working as telomerase inside the cells of the buyer of the $225 product is practically zero. I don’t like betting on cellular biology, though.
Other distasteful (but not dangerous) ingredients are those obtained from species in danger of extinction. For example, "Ocean Actives" claims that they obtain squalene from the liver of a species of deep sea shark in danger of extinction. What is the point when you can obtain the same chemical from corn? Just the novelty value.
We at Skin Actives recognize the value of proteins found in human cells but don't want to use any ingredient capable of including infectious agents. The answer is high tech biochemistry: making perfect imitations of human proteins in the laboratory. If there are peptides that we want, make synthetic copies in the laboratory. This way, we ensure that the actives are safe and we can sleep well at night, without worrying about risks that are small but unnecessary.
For safe and effective actives, use Skin Actives Scientific products and those by reputable companies that are not using silly ingredients "just because".
Updated May 18, 2009
Guide created: 01/01/08 (updated 11/17/09)
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