And why would you want to find paraben free skin care products?

Look on the label of so many personal, beauty and skin care products and you’ll see a particular ingredient listed. It’s called Parabens. And there is now a big movement to finding paraben free skin care products and paraben free cosmetics and personal and beauty products.

So lets have a look at what parabens is, or are. And lets see if there are some paraben free skin care products.

Parabens are a class of chemicals used as preservatives. There are many individual parabens and different ones are used for somewhat different purposes, but primarily as preservatives.

They are efficient as bacteriological agents and as fungicidal agents. As preservatives they work against bacteria and fungi.

Parabens are found in a wide range of different personal care products like shampoos, shaving gels, cosmetics, skin care products, toothpastes, pharmaceuticals and much more. Have a look at the label of some of the personal products you’re using now and see if you can see the word parabens listed.

So why do people search for paraben free products including paraben free skin care products? Because parabens are considered by many to be a dangerous chemical, and any product that uses parabens as a preservative should be avoided.

Of course like all these things the big skin care companies and cosmetics and personal and beauty companies tell us that parabens are quite safe, and that they have been used for years. But many are starting to dispute this.

And there are studies suggesting that parabens can indeed be toxic to some people. But always the problem with studies is establishing when something is proven. At what point is it “proven” that parabens are harmful. To what proportion of the population must they be shown to be harmful before they should be removed from products?

One of these studies, for example, found parabens in the breast tissue of 18 out of 20 breast cancer patients studied. It’s only a small sample, and not statistically significant, and doesn’t prove that parabens cause breast cancer. But it’s of concern.

Other studies have suggested that parabens cause allergic skin reactions, interfere with the body’s endocrine system and may cause skin rashes.

Another study suggested that they may have a weak hormonal effect on the body.

One of the problems of using parabens on our skin is that they are readily absorbed into our skin and blood, and can be detected in our blood shortly after use. This is a little scary but again is not definitive proof that they are dangerous to our health. But it’s something to think about.

Clearly there are questions to answer about the role of parabens, there are no definitive answers yet. But the question ought also be asked, why use them if they are under a cloud?

Because there are other alternatives to using parabens as preservatives. The problem is that parabens are cheap, and so the big companies are addicted to their use because of this. It comes down to profit.

There are excellent natural preservatives available, which could replace parabens, but at a higher cost.

That’s why so many people are now searching for paraben free skin care products and paraben free products in general. The can’t be certain that the parabens are dangerous, but would prefer not to find out.

There are excellent paraben free skin care products and paraben free cosmetics available. These products work as well, usually better, than their mainstream counterparts that cling onto the use of parabens.

Until there are large scale definitive studies on the safety or otherwise of the use of parabens in our cosmetics and skin care products the question will remain unanswered. But plenty of people prefer not to take the risk, given that there are excellent parabens free skin care products and parabens free cosmetics available. Read the rest of this entry

As you age your thoughts turn to skin care. Wrinkles and skin sagging starts, and you need to treat your skin better.

Aging. It’s something none of us like and none of us can do much about. But we certainly can do something about treating our skin better with better skin care. Wrinkles and skin sagging can be minimized if you know how.

Firstly lets look at what causes wrinkles and skin sagging, and then see what can be done about it.

As you age your skin starts to lose some of it’s stores of essential skin proteins. Your skin thins and it loses skin elasticity. This is due to the loss of both collagen and elastin.

Your skin produces it’s own collagen and elastin. These are responsible for holding your skin firmly in place, by means of what is known as “skin elasticity”. Elasticity if the ability of the skin to hold itself in place.

If your skin loses it’s elasticity it starts to sag and form lines and wrinkles. You might get bags under the eyes, the skin under your chin might start to droop and sag and you might start to see lines around your mouth and eyes.

A good way to actually demonstrate skin sagging is to pinch a piece of skin and pull. If you’re middle aged or older then you’ll find that, when you let it go, it slowly pulls back into place. But try that on a young person and it will snap back into place.

It’s skin elasticity that produces that snap, and the loss of elasticity that reduces the snap to a slow return into place.

And these are caused by, amongst other things, the loss of both elastin and collagen, 2 essential skin proteins. And the replacement of these 2 proteins is one of the primary goals of good skin care. Wrinkles will be reduced when the skin’s stores of elastin and collagen are increased.

So if the goal of anti wrinkle creams and skin care and anti aging products is to improve the skin’s stores of collagen and elastin, how do you do that?

Well it seems obvious that the best anti wrinkle creams must have collagen and elastin in them. And if you look on the shelves you’ll find that many, if not most, wrinkle treatments and creams come with collagen and elastin in the bottles.

But sadly, this doesn’t work. Why? Because it’s been known for some time that collagen and elastin have a molecule size too large to enter the skin. It just doesn’t go into the skin.

So the obvious question is, why are they in those bottles of anti wrinkle creams when they don’t actually do much at all? To sell bottles of anti wrinkle cream, because if consumers see them listed on the label they buy the bottles.

So what’s the answer to increasing skin elasticity to combat wrinkles? Well it still involves increasing the stores of collagen and elastin in the skin, you can’t do very much to improve skin elasticity without doing that.

One innovative skin care company, that makes the best anti wrinkle cream available, recognizes the limitations of putting collagen and elastin in the bottles, and doesn’t do it. Instead it has found a way to stimulate the skin to produce more of it’s own collagen and elastin.

It does this by a cunning mix of different ingredients in their products that combine to create more of these 2 skin proteins by making them itself. 2 of the most important are called Phytessence Wakame, a Japanese seaweed known for it’s properties of promoting skin health, and Cynergy TK, a patented product made from the wool of sheep that also helps increase collagen and elastin.

So if you’re looking for the best wrinkle cream try the natural skin care products of Xtend Life. They make the worlds best wrinkle cream, and it doesn’t have any collagen and elastin in the bottle. But it works better than those that do. Read the rest of this entry