Lowyat.NET: Latest topics by qaphsiel

Non-Comedogenic and Non-Acnegenic Products

qaphsiel — Mon, 07 Aug 2017 21:34:19 +0800

Disclaimer: Please respect intellectual property. This content is originally produced by me. Feel free to share if you find it useful for your loved ones by indicating its source. Do not copy or rephrase and make it your own

Comedogenic refers to ingredients or products with high tendency to clog pores and cause blackheads; acnegenic, on the other hands, is a term used to denote ingredients or products with high possibility of causing acne and breakouts.

You have seen brands intentionally label their products as non-comedogenic or non-acnegenic. How truthful and useful are these labels or claims?

You have also probably browsed some cosmetics analysis websites with comedogenic ratings on ingredients. Are there really ingredients that are more likely to give you blackheads and acne than the others? Will you be completely worry-free from blackheads and acne when you avoid products with these so-called “acnegenic” and “comedogenic” ingredients?

Before anything else, you have to understand, how these people decide which products or ingredients are acnegenic or comedogenic, and which aren’t.

How Cosmetics Brands Decide to Label a Product Non-Comedogenic or Non-Acnegenic?

Over the years, I have seen too many products loaded with irritating ingredients with non-comedogenic or non-acnegenic terms printed on their packaging. The truth is, too many cosmetics companies make too many too-good-to-be-true claims just to get your attention. So they have lots of flowery terms like hypoallergenic, cosmeceutical, dermatologist-tested, dermatologist-approved and the list goes on.

Why does a brand choose to label a product non-comedogenic or non-acnegenic? Disgustingly yet truly, these marketing words dramatically stimulate sales. Consumers buy products that say they aren’t causing blackheads and acne.

Then, must a product be free from irritating ingredients in order to be labelled non-comedogenic or non-acnegenic? Frustratingly, NO. There are no supervised or regulatory standards for these terms, not anywhere in the world. No one will fine and penalize these brands, if you buy and use their product with non-acnegenic label, yet you have breakouts thereafter. Even the greasiest, oiliest cream can say it won’t give you breakouts.

If you think further, the opposite logic is true as well. A product not labelled “non-comedogenic” or “non-acnegenic” will not certainly give you blackheads and breakouts. Lots of brilliantly-formulated products help reduce acne and blackheads, even though they do not come with non-comedogenic or non-acnegenic labels.
Thus, these claims are misleading and useless. The act of purchasing only products with “non-acnegenic” or “non-comedogenic” claims is meaningless too, and this will in turn instigate more brands put on these claims to delude consumers.

What about Research-Claimed Comedogenic or Acnegenic Ingredient?

Some ingredients are said to have the potential of causing blackheads and acne, via the direct animal-testing.

These scientists will take some rabbits, slather on a certain ingredient on the rabbit ears for weeks and then observe the histology of their hair follicles. If the hair follicles appear to have microscopic structure of tissue changes similar to those in acne, this ingredient will be considered as acnegenic.

Much as we hope and pray animals aren’t suffering for ingredients we put on our skin, but testing cosmetics on animals is happening.

Because the rabbit ears aren’t your human ears. What causes acne on the rabbit ears might be so safe for your face skin. The opposite is true. The ingredient that doesn’t give the rabbit ears breakouts might give you breakouts anyhow.

Plus, in the experiments, they are testing just one ingredient, in 100% concentration. But in reality, you use products with multiple combinations of ingredients in much lesser concentration.

Thus, relying on the analysis if certain ingredient is acnegenic or comedogenic, is again meaningless.

But, what can you trust? Your own skin.

Stimulants for Blackheads and Breakouts
Too many factors could lead to the outburst of blackheads and acne.

Combination of ingredients, concentrations, textures, pH level, your inherent skin type, the way you apply a product, the time you let a product sits on your skin … You have no reason to believe if a product will cause blackheads and breakouts by just looking at the marketing claims on the product packaging.

For instance, industrial grade petrolatum jelly and medical grade petrolatum jelly have a vast difference in their level of comedogenic. Whether you apply a thin layer, or a thick layer, will have different impacts on your skin too.

Reasons to blackheads and breakouts are often complicated. Without trials and errors, you can’t always conclude a direct relationship between a product or ingredient and its tendency to cause blackheads and breakouts. You can’t avoid, but to experiment yourself and let your skin tell if a product seems to be acnegenic and comedogenic especially for you.

Some general rules to drastically increase your chances of getting non-acnegenic or non-comedogenic products
i) Directly ignore the “non-acnegenic” or “non-comedogenic” labels on the packaging
ii) Look straight into the list of ingredients. Make sure the products you use contain only skin-loving ingredients that do no harm, without any irritant (fragrance, high concentration of alcohol, menthol, peppermint etc)
iii) Choose a lightweight product if you have oily skin
iv) Not to have many layers of thick products even though you have dry skin

Screen your interested products with these four essential tips. For the “finalists”, purchase the samples first (not the full size), enough for you to use for two weeks. Put on the product on small areas of your cheeks. Observe for 14 days. If no blackhead and acne appears, then you can label it “non-comedogenic” and “non-acnegenic” for yourself.

5 Common Acne Myths, Busted!

qaphsiel — Sat, 15 Jul 2017 19:15:08 +0800

Disclaimer: Please respect intellectual property. This content is originally produced by me. Feel free to share if you find it useful for your loved ones by indicating its source. Do not copy or rephrase and make it your own

Better with facts than fiction, especially when it comes to having breakouts! Believing in the wrong advice could worsen the condition of your acne.

Myth 1: Washing the Face Regularly Can Reduce Acne
Fact: The mistaken belief that acne is caused by dirty or oily skin often leads to excessive-cleaning of the face. We are surprised when many with acne prone skin have shared with us they cleanse their face more than 3 times a day, but unsurprised when they later told their acne condition remains the same severe despite frequent cleansing.

True that clogged sebum as a result of hyperactive sebaceous glands plus the influence of bacteria propionibacterium acnes (P. acnes) give rise to acne. Thus, having healthy, non-clogging pores is the ultimate goal for all with acne prone skin. BUT, no cleanser can clean pores thoroughly!

The fact is that cleansers only take down the surface dirt and sebum. After you remove the layer of sebum with harsh cleansers, the squeaky clean sensation and dryness on the skin will naturally signal your sebaceous glands to start secreting sebum for moisturization. Cleanse your skin, so it feels clean, but oil glands begin producing sebum, you feel oily again. It’s never ending.

To combat the oiliness in long-term, you will need to include a BHA (or salicylic acid) exfoliant in your skincare routine. This impressively oil-soluble agent will interact with the sebaceous pore lining, go deep into the pores and dissolve the sebum to prevent acne. Washing your face less than 3 times a day will help to avoid the unhealthy dryness. If you can’t stand the face oiliness at noon, get yourself an oil-blotting paper that absorbs the excess sebum instantly without ruining your makeup.

Myth 2: Products with Non-Comedogenic Label Will Not Cause Acne
Fact: I wish the cosmetic industry is always being so honest to you, but no. Labels like “non-acnegenic” and “non-comedogenic” carry no meaning. The fact is that there is no regulation for cosmetic brands to put these labels on the products. Anyone can label their products as non-comedogenic and non-acnegenic freely. In other words, no cosmetic science expert in the regulatory department will run tests for you if the product causes acne before you buy it.

From my observations, there are just countless products loaded with skin-irritants in nice and elegant packaging with “non-comedogenic” and “non-acnegenic” claims.
These labels are entirely marketing materials. Totally useless. We know for sure because many of us tried products assuring they won’t cause acne, and we broke out regardless!

But how to choose the real and right products for acne prone skin? Equip yourself with basic cosmetic science knowledge enough to analyse the list of ingredients and avoid skin-irritants. I understand most people find it impossible to differentiate ingredients that will help and those that can make matters worse. If chemistry reads like alien for you, look for down-to-earth product reviews from the credible beauty experts, scientists and dermatologists (not some unreliable bloggers profited from producing blog posts).

Myth 3: An Anti-Acne Product Works If It Tingles
Fact: It is not okay when skincare makes skin tingle, causing you to be so aware of your skin all of a sudden. If your skin feels the tingles, it means the nociceptors (pain receptors in the skin) are signalling you that your skin is being targeted by skin irritants.

Common tingling ingredients or irritating ingredients found in anti-acne products are fragrance, denatured alcohol, peppermint, menthol, lemon and eucalyptus. Research are clear these ingredients aggravate skin. Not only the nociceptors, but our sebaceous glands are reactive to these irritants as well, responding by secreting more sebum, making acne skin worse!

Myth 4: If My Breakouts Aren’t Faded Overnight, The Anti-Acne Product Isn’t Working.
Fact: We hope too skincare products perform like magic, disappearing your breakouts instantly. Hopes start out so high that we desperately want an anti-acne product to work. We have all been through the time of waking up in the morning, looking into the mirror and examining if the breakouts on our face are not there anymore, if not diminished in size, because of the anti-acne products we applied last night. Disappointment arises when the breakouts are still there.

Oftentimes, you are disappointed not because the well-formulated anti-acne treatments aren’t working, but because of your unrealistic expectations towards these products.
The keyword in the myth statement is “overnight”. Nothing, not even medicine prescribed by experienced dermatologists, can transform a face of terrible acne into glowing, healthy skin overnight.

The truth is that it takes weeks if not months for most to proudly declare a winner in the battle with acne. You need to stick to an anti-acne routine for at least 8 weeks to see results. Use the essential products religiously, every day, as advised.

Most acne strugglers (especially adolescents) have ongoing acne because they impatiently cease using the well-formulated products (with BHA, retinoids, benzoyl peroxide etc.) before their skin improves healthily from these products.

Myth 5: I Can Remove Acne and Blackheads with Physical Scrub
Fact: Blackheads and breakouts have their roots deep underneath your skin. Imagine how horrible it is if any solid particle can get into your skin easily to uproot these blackheads.

Scrub can only glide (and damage) the skin surface. Even the impressive BHA or salicylic acid takes hours to penetrate the lipid-soluble pore lining, dissolving sebum within the pores. Scrubbing your face for just a few minutes will do nothing beneficial to your breakouts.

But it causes harm, for sure. Numerous tiny holes (micro-tears) are created when you harshly scrub your all-important skin barrier. Like applying tingling products, once the skin is in touch with abrasive scrub, it is signalled to secrete more sebum, which I am confident isn’t what you want.

You don’t have to believe in any “anti-acne” cleanser or “anti-acne” scrub too. We should only have faith in some antibacterial agents, retinoids, benzoyl peroxide and salicylic acid (BHA) when it comes to the concept of anti-acne. And these gold-standard ingredients takes hours to work amazingly on reducing breakouts on the skin. Cleansing your face for just a few minutes just wouldn’t help with treating acne. Acne prone skin will get better with any gentle, non-irritating cleanser, regardless if it is labelled “anti-acne”.

Cheers,
Qaph

Can SkinCare Repair DNA and Reverse Aging?

qaphsiel — Thu, 13 Jul 2017 16:37:41 +0800

Disclaimer: Please respect intellectual property. This content is originally produced by me. Feel free to share if you find it useful for your loved ones by indicating its source. Do not copy or rephrase and make it your own

The popular words utilized by the beauty industry to capture the attention of consumers are becoming more advanced – from stimulating collagen regeneration, shaping facial lift to creating perfect V-shaped contour, and now products come with claim of repairing DNA for youthful skin.

Such seemingly-professional influential advertisements overturn the traditional skin care concepts, giving consumers a new hope of beauty, conquering consumers’ desire for something novel and different from the past, therefore dramatically increase the sales of the products.

Two short Q&A to summarize my article on this.
Q: “Repairing DNA” sounds really powerful. Are there research-proven ingredients that could repair DNA in the skin?
A: Excitedly, YES!

Q: So if I apply products with DNA-repairing ingredients, I can have youthful skin for sure?
A: Unfortunately, NO!

What is DNA (or Deoxyribonucleic Acid)?
DNA is a molecule that lies in each of your trillion cells. DNA in the skin cells holds the genetic instructions responsible for the growth, development, reproduction, and functioning of the skin.

Ultraviolet radiation from the sun, pollution and natural aging are common factors damaging DNA in the skin. Fortunately, depending on the types of damage inflicted on the DNA’s double helical structure (single-strand damage, double-strand breaks etc.), it undergoes self-reconstruction with the assistance of DNA repairing enzymes, via processes like base excision repair (BER) or nucleotide excision repair (NER).

DNA damage plays an important role on multiple signs of aging on the skin.

Are There Ingredients that Repair DNA?
There are research-proven DNA repairing enzymes that help repair DNA in the skin. Here’s how usually such research are conducted.
1. Take two groups – test tubes with incubating skin cells containing DNA only (control group) and test tubes with incubating skin cells containing DNA plus the test-targeted DNA-repairing ingredient.
2. Impose damage to both groups (usually raying the test tubes with UV light)
3. Carry out Comet Assay, a technique commonly use to analyse the DNA damage in individual cells.
4. If there is a significant difference between the DNA damage of test tubes with and without the test-targeted DNA-repairing ingredient, and the result is positive, then that ingredient will be considered as research-proven DNA-repairing ingredient.

Yes, such ingredients exist. But the more important question is that
Can the DNA-Repairing Ingredients Repair DNA in the Skin?

DNA-repairing enzymes do prove they reduce damage in test tube experiments. But there’s a sheer difference between theory and reality. In test tubes, those DNA in skin cells have been technically extracted beforehand; on your skin realistically, DNA is well preserved and protected under the skin surface. Touch your face now, and you’re touching the epidermis layer of the skin with keratinocytes.

Our skin, being the body’s first line of defence, is physiologically structured as a strong barrier to keep things out for protection purpose. Imagine how horrible can it be if everything you apply on the skin reaches and changes your DNA easily and conveniently.

Even if the concentration of the research-proven beneficial DNA-repairing agent is enough in the products (not like including only 0.001% yet the product advertisement sounds like the serum has full 100% of the ingredient), it can still be highly uneasy for it to reach and react with the deep DNA of the skin.

Hopefully in the next few decades, there will be newly-invented formulary delivery systems that deliver these ingredients successfully into the skin. For now, considering the price of products containing DNA-repairing ingredients is ridiculously expensive, they just don’t worth the money.

We need to protect DNA in one sense to delay the appearance of signs of aging. Besides applying costly products with claims of repairing and restoring skin’s DNA, here’s what you have to do for your skin.

How to Reduce the DNA Damage of Our Skin?
Allow us to utter the platitude again – sunscreen, sunscreen, sunscreen. As mentioned, ultraviolet radiation emitted by the sun is the biggest contributor for DNA damage. Religiously applying sunscreen absolutely cuts down DNA damage.

Next, make sure all of your products are free from irritating ingredients, which can provoke inflammatory responses from the skin surface down deep beneath the skin, damaging the cells.

You have to love antioxidants by having an antioxidant-rich diet and including serums enriched with high concentration of antioxidants in your skincare regime.

Your Sharing: Have you tried any products with DNA-related claims? How your skin reacts to them?

Cheers,
Qaph

Are Preservatives in SkinCare Bad for Skin?

qaphsiel — Mon, 10 Jul 2017 21:31:17 +0800

Disclaimer: Please respect intellectual property. This content is originally produced by me. Feel free to share if you find it useful for your loved ones by indicating its source. Do not copy or rephrase and make it your own

You may have heard of both sides of the story:
“Preservatives must be bad for skin. Otherwise, why would countless brands purposely claim that their products are preservative-free?”

OR

“Almost every cosmetic product on the supermarket shelves or in the cosmetic stores is formulated with preservatives. I am personally using products containing preservatives too, and nothing bad happens for my skin. Preservatives are not bad for skin.”

Why Do Cosmetic Products Need Preservatives?
Do note that the title is not about why your skin needs preservatives. Your skin certainly will stay healthy without applying preservatives, but products need preservatives because microbes can grow almost everywhere! And microbes could horribly bring you unpleasant skin diseases later.

Microbes (fungi, yeast and bacteria) are harmless if they present in small quantities. The bad news is that they multiply rapidly under preservative-free condition. On the skin, Candida Albicans (a dimorphic fungus) is responsible for athlete’s foot, and can cause terrible breakouts. Pseudomonas (a bacterium) elicits redness and draining wounds. Not to mention when these microbes from contaminated products unfortunately get passed the skin and into your body, where they could cause all kinds of serious infections and health issues.

Choosing between preservative-free, or microbe-free, we will certainly go for the latter.

Do All Products Need Preservatives?
All products need to be free from microbes, but some products naturally inhibit the growth of microbes. Like humans, microbes feed on the same nutrients your skin needs, and survive when there is water.

Waterless products, such as makeup remover in oils, pure moisturizing facial oils, cleansing powder and the like are natural suppressor for microbes. Bacteria, fungi and yeast could never survive in these conditions or textures, so adding preservatives into these products is unnecessary. These products are truly authentic to use “preservative-free” as their marketing claim.

Besides pure oil-base products, some products formulated in high concentration of alcohol or solvent (which is extremely irritating) and surfactant (ingredients that do the washing, foaming or emulsifying), are safe without the inclusion of preservatives.

Are Products with Preservatives 100% Safe?
Sadly, not really! Two perspectives to explain this:

i) Types of preservatives incorporated in the product formulas, concentration, pH condition and so on are affecting whether or not the preservatives are sensitizing to your skin. The in-depth knowledge of preservatives deserves a separate writing, we will discuss this in our next post.

ii) Careless use of products can give birth to microbes, which are detrimental to your skin. Even if a product is well-formulated with the most ideal preservatives, the environment you store your products, and the way you use the products, could degrade the effectiveness of the preservatives, and contribute to the growth of harmful microbes.

Yes, we just mentioned that pure oil-base products need no preservative. But if you store these products under humid condition after you bring it home, the high level of water vapor will get absorbed into the facial oils. Microbes are always happy when they feel moisture, so they could start proliferating. For this reason, you must close your products properly after each use.

That is also why most experts are strongly against the use of jar packaging. Imagine each time you open the lid and use your finger to dip the content, you are transmitting the invisible and detrimental microbes from your finger to your product.

Aesthetically, jars on the shelves look beautiful and lovely to women, and this gives idea for marketing people to package products in jars to lure women into purchasing the products. But honestly, jar packaging is never the cleanest and safest method of accommodating skincare ingredients.

We know some high-end creams in jars now come with a spatula. But if you were to cleanse and sterilize the spatula inconveniently after each use, why not choose products packaged differently, or not-microbe-friendly?

In conclusion, avoid jar-packaged products, and never get terrified when you see preservatives. They are there to prevent something bad from happening on your skin.

Your Sharing: Are You More Inclined to Buying Products Without Preservatives? Why or why not?

Cheers,
Qaph