By Hannah Sivak, PhD
Senior Scientist
Skin Actives Scientidic LLC

Think about it. How do you choose what eye cream to buy?

If your answer is "I buy what the sales girl in the store tells me to buy" you are doing your skin a dis-service. The sales person at the counter is not thinking about your skin. In fact, she is not thinking at all. She is telling you what she learnt in her training class. Nanoparticles, liposomes, energy, communication, palmitoyl peptides, last scientific information:  it is all words. The marketing people wrote a page full of key words and the sales person is repeating them. And most of them are myths.

Myth #1: The skin is impermeable
If the skin is impermeable, you clearly need the last delivery system consisting of these nanoparticles designed by that famous scientist in Switzerland. Unfortunately, that famous scientist in Switzerland does not exist, or never published anything in a reputable scientific journal. Even worse, they are lying about skin properties: the skin is not impermeable and your don't need any delivery system to get an active into your skin. It may help if you apply the serum after a shower, but that is more or less it. Whatever you apply to the skin, it will be absorbed, for better and for worse.

Myth #2: There is a magic bullet
There is no magic bullet and no ingredient is going to rejuvenate your skin ON ITS OWN. Your skin is a very complex system and has complex requirements. As we age, our body starts to "short change" the skin, even when you are having a healthy diet and take your multivitamins. Simply, there are less blood vessels reaching your dermis delivering less nutrients to the skin. Just one ingredient will not make a big change. Why? Because as soon as your skin has enough of ingredient A, another ingredient, B or C, will limit the capacity of your skin to regenerate. 

Myth #3: clean, tone, moisturize
Cleaning is important, even if you do not live or work in a polluted city. But, what on earth is a toner? Forget about those alcohol rich toners, they will only damage your skin. And moisturize? You need a lot more than that. Use a cream that will help your skin to keep water in, pollutants out. Silicones (the ingredient that gives "silky feel" to creams and lotions) is perfect for this job, but will do nothing else for your skin and may even slow down absorption of valuable nutrients. So go slow on silicones and think nutrition. Hyaluronic acid, natural active peptides, essential fatty acids, niacinamide and other vitamins will help your skin long-term. And if you are planning to live a long and fruitful life, you'd better thing long term.

Myth #4: DNA and stem cells will help your skin

Any skin care product that includes these is trying to take advantage of fashion. You cells have your own DNA, which you inherited from your parents. Your cells will express certain genes, those that correspond to the organ (in this case, skin) and time in your life (a baby does not express the same genes than an adult).

DNA that belongs to fish, cow or whatever, when applied to your skin, may be used. Fortunately, it will not be used to make the proteins of the fish or the monkey. Our immune system will not let anything get to the nuclei of your living cells, otherwise it would play havoc. Havoc is what happens when foreign DNA does actually get to the nuclei of your cells: it is what happens when a virus cheats your immune system and manages to get in. It will take further action from the immune system to eventually get rid of the foreign DNA.

So what happens to the DNA that marketeers get you to apply to your skin? Most of it will be washed away, some of it will be broken down and your skin may absorb the components: nucleotides, sugars, phosphate, etc.

Same thing will happen to the stem cells from cow, horse or whatever. If you immune system is working well, nothing will get in, unless it is broken down to skin food first.

This is one more example of how marketing uses "fashion" to promote useless ingredients. DNA and stem cells go directly to my "arghhhh" list. Yesterday in CSI NY the murderer was discovered because she had received a stem cell facial (from cow) before committing the murder. You can add this to the list of reasons why NOT to have a stem cell facial.

Just two words: "stinging nettle". Two more? "Poison oak". Plants can't run, and they have too many predators, starting with humans. Their defense? Producing chemicals that will stop (or deter) animals from eating them. "Natural" has lately become a buzz word, often emptied of any content. For example: "allantoin (comfrey)". It is true that you can find allantoin in comfrey, but the ingredient used in skin care products is likely to be synthetic. Not that it matters, the chemical extracted from the plant cannot be distinguished from the synthetic one, but this approach only perpetuates the myth.

No, it doesn't. Our skin gets more than enough oxygen from the air and through the blood vessels that irrigate the dermis. In fact, our skin gets too much oxygen, and oxygen is partly to blame for aging skin. The  "excess" does not result in more energy because our blood and mitochondria are saturated with oxygen (i.e. have as much as they need) but the extra free radicals will age the skin, increase mutations in our cells' DNA and break down the lipids in the cell membranes. So, if anybody invites you to an oxygen bar, run in the opposite direction. If somebody else wants to sell you a cream with hemoglobin (read: cow's blood) tell them that dead, yucky protein will do nothing for your skin. And run!

Please revisit this guide from time to time. I will be adding more myths, and the way marketing is going these days, we will end with lots of them!