Cosmetics con?

Anti-wrinkle creams are a con – full of ingredients claiming to make your skin look and feel younger, but none of them really work…do they?

As I begrudgingly prepare to ‘celebrate’ my 30th birthday later this year, I’m conscious that a few ‘laughter lines’ are beginning to appear. I should know better, but I can’t help thinking about reaching for the anti-aging cosmetics.

I know that the marketing agencies ensure that their TV and magazine adverts are full of the right buzz words – anti-wrinkle, firmer skin, youthful complexion – to lure women (and increasingly men) into buying their expensive products in the hope that they might look a little bit younger.

The adverts claim that products have been developed as a result of ‘20 years of gene science’ or ‘scientifically proven to do X, Y and Z’. But how do consumers know these claims are true, and do anti-aging products really work?

Many anti-aging products are jam-packed with ‘skin-enhancing’ ingredients – keratin, vitamins, anti-oxidants and AHAs (alpha hydroxyl acids). It’s the latter of these that has been under the microscope recently as researchers from the University of California Davis (UC Davis) and Peking University studied exactly how AHAs work to improve skin appearance – so there may be some scientific evidence to support cosmetics companies’ claims.

AHAs are weak acids derived from natural sources like sugar cane, citrus and sour milk. They’re used in the cosmetics industry in creams and ointments – and chemical peels by skin specialists – to enhance the appearance and texture of skin by causing the outer layers of skin to flake off and expose fresh underlying skin. It sounds pretty barbaric, but its revealing this fresh skin which makes it looks more youthful.

The researchers uncovered a previously unknown mechanism by which AHAs enter the skin and generate acidic conditions before eventual cell death and skin exfoliation. In a series of experiments that involved recording electrical currents across cultured cells exposed to AHAs, the researchers developed a model that shows how glycolic acid – the smallest and most biologically available AHA – enters keratinocytes, the predominant cell type in the outer skin. The glycolic acid generates free protons and creates acidic conditions in the cell, which activates the transient receptor potential vanilloid 3 (TRPV3) ion channel found in the keratinocyte cell membrane. The channel opens and in flows calcium ions – and more protons – leading to calcium overload and cell death.

“Our experiments are the first to show that the TRPV3 ion channel is likely to be the target of the most effective skin enhancer in the cosmetics industry,” said Jie Zheng, principal investigator from UC Davis. “Although AHAs have been used for years, no one until now understood their likely mechanism of action.” And this isn’t the only research to suggest that some of the claims made by cosmetic companies might have some truth to them.

In 2009, researchers from the University of Manchester discovered that an anti-ageing products sold on the high street could clinically reduce wrinkles and improve skin damage caused by everyday exposure to sunlight. The product – when used daily for 12 months – increased the production of fibrillin-1, a protein that promotes elasticity in the skin. Over 70% of the volunteers had significantly fewer wrinkles after 12 months compared to volunteers using a placebo.

“Our findings demonstrate that a commercially-available cosmetic can produce significant improvement in the appearance of facial wrinkles following long-term use,” said Professor Chris Griffiths, professor of dermatology.

“It’s rare for such benefits to be reported for an over-the-counter anti-aging product and this paves the way for larger studies with more statistical power.”

Griffiths points out that very few over-the-counter medicines have been subjected to such rigorous scientific testing to prove their effectiveness, particularly over such a long period of time. In the same way that dieters look for a quick fix, consumers expect anti-aging products to have an immediate effect – but this isn’t likely to be the case. There might be some truth in the buzz words used and promises made in the adverts, but let’s be honest, most of the claims we see are probably still pseudo-scientific guff and the products no more than an expensive moisturiser that does little to help anti-aging.