Apart from the world of advertising mumbo jumbo, there is an entire realm of appallingly inaccurate or just plain wrong information that is disseminated on a daily basis by cosmetics salespeople all over the world. These false sales pitches are tomorrow's new myths, ingrained into the minds of a captive audience. Here are my latest favorites, though I have to admit these only skim the surface.
"Lavender is the most widely used and safest essential oil for sensitive skin. It does not cause irritation! I'm overwhelmed when people say things like that; they need to do their research."
Lavender is indeed a commonly used essential oil, but it is by no means the safest one for sensitive skin. For someone with sensitive skin, it is best to avoid essential oils completely because of their volatile nature, not to mention the many fragrant compounds in them. However, lavender oil rarely causes contact dermatitis (Source:
Natural Medicines Comprehensive Database, Fourth Edition, 2002, page 795; and
Contact Dermatitis, volume 43, issue 3, September 2000, page 157), but that does not mean its use should be green-lighted for someone with sensitive skin. Lavender oil contains more than 100 components, including linalool, camphor, and limonene, and is used primarily as a fragrance ingredient in cosmetic products (Source:
Encyclopedia of Common Natural Ingredients, Second Edition, 1996, pages 339–340). There is no definitive research to show that lavender extract or lavender oil have any benefit for the skin (Sources:
Phytotherapy Research, June 2002, pages 301–308; and Healthnotes Review of Complementary and Integrative Medicine, www.healthwell.com/healthnotes/Herb/), yet there is research proving lavender to be a skin sensitizer (Source:
Cell Proliferation, volume 37, issue 3, June 2004, page 221). Many people find lavender's aroma pleasant, which is why inhalation, not topical application, is how this plant is best enjoyed.
"Vitamin C is not an antioxidant, but it contains amino acids."
This statement was from a saleswoman who was trying to explain the differences between vitamin E and vitamin C skin-care products. Her comment is nothing less than silly. Vitamin C in any form is not an amino acid. There are only 20 amino acids, all protein-building substances, of which 10 are called "essential" for humans to consume in their diets, since the body cannot manufacture them on its own (Source:
Oxford Dictionary of Chemistry, Third Edition, 1996, pages 30–32). In its natural form, vitamin C is ascorbic acid, and is most definitely and notably an antioxidant, not a protein (Sources:
Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology, 2002, number 505, pages 113–122; and
Journal of Investigative Dermatology, February 2002, pages 372–379). Vitamin C is a worthy ingredient to look for in leave-on skin-care products such as moisturizers and toners because, when used in its stable form (watch for ingredients like magnesium ascorbyl phosphate and tetrahexyldecyl ascorbate), it can reduce the effects of free-radical damage (Source:
Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, June 2003, pages 866–874). I suspect the saleswoman I spoke with may have been confusing ascorbic acid with aspartic acid, which is a nonessential amino acid.
"[Our] product has tiny little micro pearls in it. This is the first time ever that we used isoflavones. Our labs studied the algae that washed up from the ocean. In one to five hours, these little micro pearls and the evaporation of the moisture off your skin go into the tiny little fine lines to help decrease the depth of the lines.”
Algae, in its hundreds of varying forms, are well-known ingredients and have been around for a long time. It’s true that many algae have antioxidant properties (Sources:
Journal of Agricultural Food Chemistry, February 2002, pages 840–845; and
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 2004, pages 219–222), but lots of other ingredients do as well. The “tiny little micro pearls” the salesperson mentioned are nothing more than particles of mica, a shiny rock that when powdered gives the product a soft shimmer on skin. It’s nice, but not exotic! Finally, isoflavones are plant estrogens with potent antioxidant properties (Source:
Free Radical Biology and Medicine, December 2001, pages 1570–1581). However, the amount of isoflavones in these Clarins products is too minuscule to parlay much, if any, antioxidant benefit to skin.
"You have nighttime free radicals and daytime free radicals. Daytime free radicals are the sun and pollution, the nighttime free radicals are, um, I’m really not sure what those little boogers, the little nighttime pesticides, are that damage your skin at night, but they are there!"
Free radicals are destructive molecules that cannot tell time! Yes, it is true that sunlight is a major source of free radicals generated in the daytime, yet pollution, whether coming from auto exhaust or industrial pollutants, is ever-present. The level of pollutants may be higher during daylight hours, but it certainly doesn’t disappear when the sun goes down! And what about the fact that the oxygen we need to live is a potent source of free-radical damage, and that’s around all the time, too?
I don’t know what to make of the “nighttime pesticides” comment, but unless you are sleeping in a field or on farmland that has recently been crop-dusted, I wouldn’t be too concerned about pesticides on your skin at night.
Regardless of whether it's day or night, antioxidants are state-of-the-art ingredients to look for when shopping for skin-care products, and there are dozens available (with no clear-cut "best" choice among them), but none of them can distinguish between daytime and nighttime free radicals. In theory, antioxidants in well-formulated skin-care products should perform regardless of the time of day.
"Reading the ingredient list won’t really tell you about the product; it's all about how the ingredients react to your skin."
I couldn’t disagree more. The ingredient list is the
only part of the product's copy that you can and should rely on because it is the only part of a cosmetics label that is regulated by the FDA (Source: www.fda.gov). It's true that knowing how to decipher an ingredient list is difficult, but even if you know how it doesn’t tell you exactly what percentage of each ingredient was used to create the formula; it is a far more reliable source of information than the product's description and claims. Yes, the way the ingredients react on the skin is also important, but if a product has lackluster or irritating ingredients, or only minuscule amounts of helpful ingredients, then it is a waste of money, plain and simple. In contrast, an elegant product loaded with ingredients that can make skin look, feel, and function better will in all likelihood cause a noticeable improvement, and that has everything to do with what ingredients the product contains and how they react on your skin!
"In order for the products to achieve dramatic results you must use all of them; the skin must be properly conditioned to accept all the products in the line in order for any of the products to work."
This is one of my all-time favorites because its purpose is to convince you to buy all the products from one line. It is a classic sales technique. In essence, what you are being told is that the line's wrinkle cream won’t work unless all the other products are used first, so don't bother buying the wrinkle cream unless you are going to buy everything. In my years of reviewing skin-care routines, I have never seen a cosmetics line with products so unique that you couldn't substitute a dozen other products for them, if not many that would work better. Further, every cosmetics line has products you should avoid because they contain irritating ingredients, or inadequate amounts of sunscreen, or moisturizers that oversaturate the skin. The term to note here is "dramatic results." What the cosmetics company considers dramatic results may be dramatically different from what you would really like to see the products do—even if you do use all of them.
"Our ingredients are high quality; that's why they are so expensive."
It would be nice if that were true, but I can't get any cosmetics company to give me proof of it. I've asked for the names of their suppliers to find out what grades of products they are selling and if they have inferior grades that go to some companies but not others. From what I've been able to find out on my own after talking to several cosmetic-ingredient manufacturers, the grades of cosmetic ingredients don't vary that much, and everyone buys cosmetic-grade ingredients, which are all high quality. For example, DuPont is one of the largest suppliers of glycolic acid to the cosmetics industry (they supply over 99% of the industry who use this ingredient), and they supply the same version to everyone.
"We only use natural ingredients; synthetic ingredients are bad for your skin because they are fake and made from gasoline, such as mineral oil and petrolatum."
I have yet to see any cosmetic that is "all" natural. Some synthetic ingredients are awesome for your skin, and regardless of the protestations of cosmetics companies to the contrary, every cosmetics product in the world contains its share of synthetic ingredients.
Synthetic ingredients are derived from many sources, but they all start as natural because everything comes from our environment; nothing is created via alchemy. Petrolatum and mineral oil are indeed by-products of the gasoline industry, but what is unnatural about that? Ironically, gasoline, which is derived from crude oil, is decidedly natural in and of itself as it comes from organic material, such as tiny aquatic plants and animals, that has been buried in the earth for millions of years. Petrolatum and mineral oil are remarkably good skin-care ingredients; they are also recognized by cosmetics chemists the world over for being superior emollients and completely harmless (Source:
Dermatologic Surgery, June 1998, pages 661–664). Even the claim that these ingredients are occlusive (blocking) and, therefore, bad for skin is also without proof (Source:
Contact Dermatitis, September 1996, pages 163–168).
Why mineral oil and petrolatum continue to get a bad rap from the so-called natural skin-care world is a mystery. For dry skin, you'd be far better off having petrolatum or mineral oil in your moisturizer than most plant extracts any day.
"A famous scientist [doctor, chemist, pharmacist, dermatologist, or whatever—I've heard it all] created this formula and it is only now available to the public."
Lots of doctors and chemists are involved in creating all kinds of products in the world of cosmetics, but all cosmetics contain standard cosmetic ingredients. They can't contain anything else, as drugs do, or they would be regulated quite differently.
My favorite example of this type of claim is Estee Lauder Creme de la Mer. Quite a story accompanies this very costly little cream! It was created by Max Huber, a NASA aerospace physicist, supposedly to take care of burns he received in an accident. He sold and marketed this product himself. After his death, his daughter continued selling the cream until recently, when Estee Lauder purchased the rights to manufacture and distribute it.
The reality is that this very basic, and I mean
really basic, cream doesn't contain anything particularly extraordinary or unique, unless you want to believe that seaweed extract (sort of like seaweed tea) can somehow be worth this much money, or that it can in some way heal burns and scars. According to Susan Brawley, professor of plant biology at the University of Maine, "seaweed extract isn't a rare, exotic, or expensive ingredient. Seaweed extract is readily available and used in everything from cosmetics to food products and medical applications." Creme de la Mer contains mostly seaweed extract, mineral oil, petrolatum (similar to Vaseline), glycerin, waxlike thickening agents, plant oils, plant seeds, minerals, vitamins, more thickeners, and preservatives. How expensive can it be to stick some seaweed and vitamins in a cosmetic? According to the cosmetics chemists I've interviewed, it costs pennies, not hundreds of dollars.
Moreover, several additional products with formulas that are unrelated to the first now accompany Creme de la Mer's original miracle product. If the first one was so spectacular why did it need company, and why did the subsequent products have completely different formulations? I guess the original wasn't quite the miracle formula they thought it was.
"This moisturizer is perfect for someone with oily or combination skin because it is oil-free."
I can't tell you the number of products touting this claim when they indeed do contain oils, or waxes that feel oily, or other ingredients that can clog pores. They may not be oils you recognize, like plant oils or mineral oils, but they are nonetheless in there, with names you may not have heard. Regardless, hearing that a product is oil-free still gives you no information about what it may or may not do to the skin. What is most confusing is that ingredients known for causing breakouts may not leave a greasy feel on the skin. Surprisingly, one of the greasiest ingredients, mineral oil, has been shown in study after study to not cause breakouts, although it can still feel greasy. Go figure. The fewer skin-care products a woman with oily or blemish-prone skin uses, the better off her skin will be.
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