I am a self-confessed skin nerd, I love it and my passion is for helping people regain their skin confidence, feel great about themselves and watch that inner glow shine through as their skin goal is achieved.
When our new clients come to us, often they have tried every single lotion and potion out there, they have tried every latest miracle cream, they have tried it all and nothing has worked. They have spent a small fortune and are no further on in their quest for the skin they want. The story is all too common.
I only have to look on Instagram at the latest ‘celeb’ promoting sponsored products or ‘influencer’ who know absolutely nothing about skin, talking about their must haves. Then I look on my local Facebook group pages to see various claims from ‘brand ambassadors’ from various MLM (multi level marketing) that their creams have ‘no nasties’ or chemicals and no ‘parabens’ or nasty preservatives and it does make me chuckle.
Every single substance on this earth is a chemical, even water and anything that contains water must have a preservative added. Therefore when I hear people insisting they only use ‘natural’ products, unless they are scooping it out of the ground and slapping it directly on to their faces then I absolutely assure you that their skincare is synthetic and does contain preservatives. The actual definition of synthetic is ‘place together’ or to ‘mix in’ a manufacturing process. Do not buy into the hype, there is no natural is ‘good‘ and man-made is ‘bad’, it simply is not a thing. It is often our interference with substances that makes these things safer and in the case of clinical grade products, cleaner and more potent.
A great example of this is parabens and the controversy over a decade ago that they cause cancer. There has never been any evidence to support this (it was based on findings from a breast cancer study where parabens were found in lymph nodes of patients with breast cancer, which is where they would be). The truth is that Parabens are found in lots of things in nature, a great example is in cucumber. It contains very high quantities, yet people are happy to put these on to their eyes, directly on to skin and indeed eat them! Also strawberries, carrots, broccoli, grapes, olives and blueberries all contain parabens. The result of this overblown paranoia was that parabens were demonised and removed from all products. However the new preservatives that were developed to replace them are much less effective and far less safe.
Two critical factors in skincare is 1) Active ingredients – a drug or substance that is biologically active and 2) Bioavailability, the popular, medical definition is ‘the degree to which a drug or other substance becomes available to the target (usually lower epidermis in the case of skincare) tissue after administration’. This is what makes a great clinical brand or cosmeceutical grade as it is commonly known as these days. In order to get real results in my clinic, Ihave always included the correct products and yet another reason I have developed SkinGoal so that we can support the skin in it’s recovery, ensuring optimum healing and regeneration.
Love
Penny Davis