May
14
Anti Aging Skin Care Treatments – Reality Or Illusion ?
Can Anti Aging Skin Care Products
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A quick look at the marketing presentations for the elite, big name skin care companies would have you believe that their anti aging skin care treatments turn back the hands of time and make you look “years younger”.
In fact not long ago I saw a commercial from a leading, global skin care company, claiming that their Retinol products are “ a breakthrough treatment clinically proven to give 10 years back to the look of your skin”. Wow!
SMOKE AND MIRRORS?
No matter where you look in the anti aging industry you can see similar claims being proudly highlighted for all kinds of miraculous ‘fountain of youth’ type products. Of course what we consumers really want to know is:
DO THEY ACTUALLY WORK?
Any of them?
Or is it all just make believe – smoke and mirrors – snake oil ?
Well, the truth be told it’s part reality and part illusion! Let me break it down for you.
For the majority of anti aging skin care skin treatments these claims are just pure fantasy (as any of us aging baby boomer’s know all to well). A careful examination of the majority of skincare formulas reveal that the pitifully small concentrations of the key active ingredient(s) means there’s no way they could duplicate proven results from clinical research and studies.
Most of them do make your skin feel great and look decisively better just after you’ve applied them BUT what about when you wash them off or don’t apply them? The reality is that the saggy skin, blemishes, fine lines and hardcore wrinkles are still there – unchanged!
These ridiculously small concentrations barely qualify the active ingredient(s) as active ingredients! |
Notice I said “majority” of products? There are some chemical free, anti aging skin care products out there with the formulas and necessary levels of leading key actives to truly help with firming up your skin and structurally reducing fine lines and blemishes.
It’s also true however that you must be a realist in accepting that there are limitations to what even the most effective products can do by themselves. The reality is you need more than just a ‘one track’ topical skincare approach in your anti aging efforts. A comprehensive, three part, ‘inside-out’ anti aging skin care system is what you need to produce the most effective results.
Naturally, you want to know which anti aging skin care treatments will work the best. That will require you to understand what causes your skin to age. So, let’s get straight to it. There are 3 fundamental causes of skin aging and any anti aging skin care treatments whose formula does not contain ingredients which address ALL THREE (for starters) is not worth your attention and definitely not worth your money.
1. The actions of free radicals
2. Reducing levels of hyaluronic acid
3. Loss of collagen and elastin
These are the culprits that cause your wrinkles, blemishes, saggy dull skin, and all the other superficial signs of aging! The key to understand here is that these three causes are interrelated and unless you address all of them at the same time you will not be successful with your anti aging program. That’s why an effective anti aging skin care cream MUST have an ingredient base which can tackle all three!
In this article I will address the first cause in the list above – Free Radicals. No doubt you’ve heard the term “free radicals”! Understanding and combating the action of free radicals is a vital step in avoiding premature aging, premature death from major degenerative disease and for maintaining healthy, clear and firm skin as you age.
Despite the fact that they age us, free radicals are natural and play an essential role in a healthy human body ! If you’ve every cut open an apple and left it exposed to the air then you’ve seen free radicals at work. They attack the apple and the skinless parts quickly turn brown as they decompose. This is a process called oxidation – the very same process that’s going on inside you with every breath you take.
Free radicals are a class of molecules in your body. Unfortunately, as far as aging is concerned, they are unstable. So, your body makes an effort to balance the problem. To do this, the unstable molecule swipes a part (an electron) from a neighboring stable molecule and so becomes stable. But in a catch 22 situation the healthy molecule which lost an electron now in turn becomes a free radical. Free Radicals can attack DNA, leading to dysfunction, mutation, cancer and create the conditions for the onset of debilitating degenerative diseases including heart disease.
Since many chemical reactions in your body inevitably produce free radicals, their production is continuous and inescapable. They’re not only inside you but outside as well. Twenty first century living means your health is impacted by environmental and dietary toxins and stressors every single day. Free radicals are one such example!
Now, let’s look at the impact of free radicals on your skin. If you’re well read you will no doubt be aware of the critical importance of maintaining high levels of HEALTHY collagen in your skin. But free-radical attacks on your collagen cause cross-linking of protein molecules which leads to stiffness in your tissue. As a result your skin begins to lose it’s suppleness and tautness. Since collagen stays in your skin for many years these free radical attacks continue and the damage is cumulative- it builds up, up, up and your skin deteriorates and ages more, more, more!
Since we can’t stop free radicals completely, that leaves us with the option of managing their numbers so as to reduce the destructive impact from oxidative stress on your health. That’s where anti-oxidants come in. We all know that anti-oxidants are the good guys because they ‘give up’ a spare electron to the free radical thereby eliminating it! So, it seems obvious then that we need to take lots of antioxidants into our bodies!
But anti-oxidants are not all equal. Some are really powerful while others are far weaker. And it’s important to understand that there are different types of free radicals in different parts of your body which can only be neutralized by different antioxidants. So, it makes sense to take in a wide range of antioxidants so you have the dynamic synergistic effects of a large network of antioxidants working throughout your body.
To be significantly more successful with your anti aging efforts you should make sure to prioritize the most powerful antioxidants into your daily nutritional intake. So, which are which? The well known vitamin antioxidants, like Vitamin C and A, are fairly weak (and cheap). Vitamin E is a well established exception – it’s a potent antioxidant and crucial to skin health. There are numerous antioxidants but the following 8 have been established as the MOST POWERFUL:
L-Glutathione
CoQ10
Grape Seed
Green Tea
Gingko Biloba
Alpha Lipoic Acid
Lutein
Bilberry
The problem here however is that most of these are either not present or exist only in insufficient quantities in our diets. That’s why 21st century nutritional intakes must be supported with a multi nutrient nutritional health supplement.
The market’s most effective health supplement formulas contain ALL of these powerful antioxidants. But commonly you’ll be lucky to find just two or three of them in most multi vitamin or nutritional vitamin supplement formulas. The type of nutritional supplements you use ultimately makes a huge difference in the results you’ll get. If your budget allows you should use science-based, premium grade health nutritional supplements
Now, let’s relate this to your skin. As you have probably figured out, what we are looking for is the inclusion of these strong antioxidants in skin care formulas. This is a key point of difference between the most effective anti aging skin care treatments and the less effective ones. The antioxidants from our list above which are used in anti aging skin care products are:
CoQ10
Grape Seed
Green Tea
Alpha Lipoic Acid
Lutein
THREE KEY CRITERIA TO CONSIDER BEFORE YOU PART WITH YOUR CASH
When comparing brands before buying you need to consider three crucial factors:
Safety
Effectiveness
Price
There’s many nasty industry secrets that you absolutely need to know when it comes to skin care product safety! Use this link to read my earlier post about skin care products and dangerous ingredients
When looking at the ‘effectiveness’ angle of anti aging skin care treatments, your most important task is to make sure a product contains ingredients to address all three fundamental causes of skin aging.
For starters you now know the most effective ingredients for treating one of these causes – free radicals. In my next two posts I’ll discuss what to look for in respect of the other two causes.
Finally, you have to consider the PRICE and VALUE FOR MONEY.
Are you a savvy shopper who none-the-less has spent a small fortune over the years yet failed to see any tangible and SIGNIFICANT anti aging benefits in your skin.
All elite anti aging skin care creams are ridiculously over-priced. That’s because they are not priced according to the cost of producing them but rather at the highest level the market will bear! It’s all too common for them to build in a ‘hype premium’ for supposed new breakthrough ingredients (for example Idebenone – a synthetic analog of CoQ10 – for which no comparative studies exist!)
There’s simply no need to pay $70, $80, $100 or more for an anti aging skin care treatment. Sadly, what is usually the case is that the more expensive a product is, the really effective ingredients are included in way smaller (ineffective) doses. You see, the elite brands are manufactured to a set price. When you add in the tremendous costs associated with the marketing and distribution methods used, as well as the greed of shareholders, these companies simply cannot afford to formulate highly effective formulas. (Just imagine if they had to print the dose amounts for all ingredients on the bottle!)
Over the years these giant multi nationals have skillfully educated consumers into believing that the more pricey a skin care product is, the more effective it must be. This is simply NOT TRUE !
Thankfully, there are some reputable skin care manufacturers out there, (they’re always smaller companies) who greatly reduce fixed expenses by selling direct to the consumer and price their products according to the cost of manufacturing them while also settling for a fair profit. This is a smart strategy – produce the most effective anti aging skin care formulas possible, give great value for money and keep profit margins low! This way there is no incentive for other companies to copy.
The Anti Aging Skin Care Treatments Which Get My Vote And Make Up The Core Of My Own Anti Aging Skin Care System
To finish up I’d like to tell you about the highly effective anti aging skin care treatments I personally use. These formulas are currently unmatched in the market. It’s important to keep in mind that I worked for a skin care product manufacturer. I learned a great deal of the science behind anti aging skin care products – from the chemists and scientists who formulate them. I’ve reviewed hundreds of anti aging skin care treatments.
Oh, and I got to know all the industry secrets and shortcuts as well – the things skin care manufacturers definitely don’t want you to know! They’re sprinkled throughout my posts on this website.
The manufacturer is ‘Xtend-Life.’ A medium sized family owned company based in New Zealand. All their flagship products contain the ‘BIG THREE’. These are the in demand, cutting edge anti aging ingredients right now for skin care formulas.
My friends (and spies) in the skin care industry tell me that most of the elite skin care companies are currently gearing up to incorporate these three ingredients into their products. (But they have long lead in times when creating and launching a new product so it will be about 1- 2 years before the ‘BIG THREE’ start appearing in the elite brands.)
THE BIG THREE:
** CYNERGY TK™
** Nanobelle CoenzymeQ10
** Phytessence Wakame
Read about the skin care benefits of these super ingredients
Here’s the exact reasons why I chose the anti aging skin care treatments from Xtend-Life as the core of my own personal anti aging system.
1. MOST EFFECTIVE INGREDIENTS. The ‘Big Three’ and other highly effective support ingredients.
2. 2-3 TIMES MORE OF THE ACTIVE INGREDIENTS than most other brands.
3. NO CHEMICALS WHATSOEVER! All ingredients are natural and the products are PURE ENOUGH TO EAT!
4. COST ABOUT A HALF TO A THIRD of the (moderately priced) elite brands.
I’ve yet to find any other anti aging skin care products which come even close to matching these four factors.
So, if you have the time and don’t mind doing research please use the information from this article to do your own analysis of anti aging skin care treatments. If you would like to research the Xtend-Life range of anti aging skincare products I’ve included a link below which will take you straight to the product range page on the Xtend-Life website.
Xtend-life cell rejuvenation technology
Look Younger! Feel Younger!
Comments
5 Responses to “Anti Aging Skin Care Treatments – Do They Work?”
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Thanks for the information on Xtend-life cell rejuvenation products. I had never heard of this brand before. It was nice to see they had products for men also. Now if I could only get my guy to try them!! Any advice? He thinks he’s a manly man! Also, how would you compare Xtend-life to Olay’s Regenerist, which gets very good ratings too.
Thanks
This is really great information. I don’t think a lot of people realize the anti aging properties of powerful anti-oxidants.
This is some really well-written and researched information. Many products both skincare and nutrition are notorious for not putting enough of main ingredients in the formula to be truly effective. It is also hard to argue with those 8 antioxidant, they are very powerful.
To attract customers, a lot of skin care company keeps launching new concepts, new products and new commercials although what they claim actually is not so new. So when it comes to choose an anti aging skin care product, I am very cautious. Xtend-Life sounds not bad.Thanks for your post.
Acne is a medical problem which causes a lot of red spots o your face and neck and mainly affect young people , most of these infections are cause by the food we consume that leaves dangerous viruses and bacterial that can causes wrinkles eyes wrinkle skin and pimples on the body,so reduce your fat intake and other food that can cause excess calories in the body, don’t really base yourself on cream because the side effect is not known.