Why are mainstream moisturizers for oily skin ineffective, (and bad for your skin)?

If you have oily skin you know all about the difficulty of finding a good moisturizer for oily skin. We’ll explain why today and give you some options for oily skin moisturizers (that aren’t really moisturizers at all) that will work not only to moisturize your skin but also to improve your overall skin health.

There is a problem that is shared between many different moisturizers for oily skin. The problem arises because of the ingredients used in many of these oily skin products and oily skin treatments.

Most mainstream skin care products including moisturizers contain chemical ingredients which have often been developed in a laboratory. They also contain petrochemical ingredients which come from crude oil.

The result is that many of these ingredients found in so many skin care products including moisturizers for oily skin can be damaging to your health and for this reason organizations like the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics have been set up to combat the proliferation of dangerous and chemical ingredients in so many personal products such as skin care products and cosmetics.

However it’s not just the risk to your health from the use of chemical ingredients that is a concern. The other problem is that many of them do not work successfully, particularly for people with oily skin. Let us explain.

Here’s an example of a petrochemical ingredient found in many oily skin creams and oily skin cleansers that is not good for your skin. Mineral oil. If you look on the label of so many mainstream skin care products will see mineral oil listed there as an ingredient. It may not necessarily say mineral oil because mineral oil goes by a whole range of different names including petrolatum, liquid petroleum, petroleum jelly, paraffin wax, liquid paraffin, white oil, baby oil and a whole range of other names.

Mineral oil comes from crude oil and is actually a byproduct of the process of distilling crude oil. Mineral oil is exceedingly cheap and this is the major reason why it is found in so many skin care products and other personal and beauty products. Mineral oil is also commonly found in moisturizers.

If you search at the Cosmetic Safety Database you will find that mineral oil is linked to cancer, allergies and irritation to the skin, eyes and lungs amongst other things. Search out a Material Safety Data Sheet on mineral oil and you will see a range of hazard warnings for health.

Mineral oil, often in conjunction with other petrochemical products, is included in products such as moisturizers for dry skin as well is moisturizers for oily skin because it is so cheap. However mineral oil does not have any moisturizing properties of it’s own. Rather the intention is that the mineral oil will prevent moisture loss from the skin, and that principle is a good one, though mineral oil is not a good way to achieve it.

The way mineral oil is supposed to prevent moisture loss from the skin is by taking the skin with a thin layer of oil. As mineral oil does not readily penetrate the skin it remains on the surface of the skin, thereby helping to stop moisture loss.

However some mineral oil can be absorbed and once absorbed it can interfere with the absorption of vitamins into your system potentially creating vitamin deficiency problems.

Not only that but because mineral oil forms a thin film of oil on your skin it can clog the pores of your skin potentially leading to acne and other skin problems. If you have oily skin the last thing you need to do is to coat your skin with a film of mineral oil. And as well it inhibits the ability of your skin to eliminate toxins through the pores.

Examine the label of the oily skin moisturizers that you may use now to see if mineral oil, under its own name or a related name, appears there.

If mineral oil is not the best oily skin moisturizer then how do you find a good moisturizer if you have oily skin? The answer is not in moisturizing the skin but in creating better skin health that allows the skin to stay moisturized itself.

There are excellent natural skin care products which are very effective at moisturizing the skin but which do not use any chemical or petrochemical ingredients. The company that makes these products does not even make a moisturizer because all of the ingredients that produce a moisturizing effect are found in all their products.

There are many well-known natural ingredients which are known to be excellent at moisturizing the skin. Ingredients such as Shea butter, Babassu oil, avocado extract and the extracts of seaweed and sheeps wool all combine to actively moisturize the skin as well as promote better skin health, which itself in turn creates better skin moisture levels.

However it is rare to find skin care products that use these ingredients because they are much more expensive than ingredients such as mineral oil which costs almost nothing. However one company does produce extremely high quality natural skin care products which relies on these ingredients as well as many others to produce some of the best skin care products the world has known.

These products would be extremely expensive except for one thing. The company that makes them doesn’t advertise on television and so it is not necessary to factor a huge marketing budget into the price of the products and for this reason these excellent natural skin care products are extremely cost competitive with the big name brands of oily skin moisturizers that you see on the shelves. Read the rest of this entry

Why is looking for wrinkle reducing creams tackling the effect rather than the cause?

Wrinkle reducers. Aren’t there so many of them on the market? It can be really difficult trying to work out which is the best wrinkle reducer or whether in fact any of the wrinkle reducing creams on the market actually do much to reverse wrinkles.

Reducing wrinkles is only part of a good skin care routine. If skin is healthy then you should notice an improvement in a range of aspects of how your skin looks. Because as you age the formation of wrinkles is only a part of the skin aging process.

First let’s examine what causes wrinkles, how that is apart of the overall skin ageing process, and how an improvement in your overall skin health can be the best wrinkle reducing strategy.

As you age your skin ages with you. Your skin is an organ on your body and it, like other organs in your body, starts to undergo physical changes with age. One of these is the formation of wrinkles however there are many more.

And it is not just wrinkles that form as you age. Your skin starts to develop lines around the eyes and mouth and to exhibit, for some women, signs of sagging, often under the chin.

That is why there is so many women looking to find the best wrinkle reducer cream. However that is only seeking to treat one of the symptoms, not the cause.

The cause of all the signs of skin aging like wrinkles, lines and sagging is the loss of collagen and elastin in your skin as you get older. Collagen and elastin are 2 essential skin proteins that are primarily responsible for maintaining skin elasticity. When you were younger your skin produced its own collagen and elastin and as you age your skin is less able to produce these 2 proteins.

Skin elasticity is what helps hold your skin in place. If you pull a piece of skin it should spring back into place, however as you age the ability of your skin to spring back into place is slowly reduced. This is because your skin loses it’s elastic properties as it loses supplies of collagen and elastin.

That is why, if you look on the label of so many wrinkle reducing creams, you will see collagen and elastin listed there. It is well known that if you restoring the supply of collagen and elastin in ageing skin will help improve skin elasticity and therefore help tackle reducing wrinkles.

However it has also been known by science for quite some time that collagen and elastin molecules are too large to penetrate the surface of the skin and therefore, no matter how much you apply to the surface of your skin they do not penetrate the skin and so do not help restore the reducing supplies of collagen and elastin already there.

It would seem obvious then that there is no reason to add collagen and elastin to those bottles of wrinkle reducing creams if they don’t actually do anything. However they do do something when added to the bottles.

They allow the company that makes the wrinkle reducer to list collagen and elastin on the label and this has a powerful effect. Because women know that collagen and elastin are important to skin health fact that they are listed on the label helps sell thousands or millions of bottles of wrinkle reducing cream and this is very beneficial to the company that makes them.

Sadly it is not of much use to the women who buy the creams.

And on top of that many of those creams advertised to reduce wrinkles that you see in the stores contain a range of chemical and petrochemical ingredients that are not good for your health or for your skin. For this reason there are entire organizations that campaign against the presence of chemicals in such products as cosmetics, bath and beauty and personal products as well as wrinkle reducing creams.

Science has also discovered that it is entirely possible to stimulate the skin to grow more of it’s own elastin and collagen and this is the perfect solution to improving skin elasticity. If the skin produces more of it’s own collagen and elastin then it is helping restore skin elasticity itself and thereby restoring skin health.

And as skin health improves and as skin elasticity improves with it wrinkles are reduced as a byproduct of an improvement in skin health and elasticity.

There are now excellent natural skin care products available which do exactly that. They contain ingredients which have been shown to stimulate the skin to produce more of it’s own collagen and elastin and studies have shown visible results within a few weeks.

These products do not contain any chemical ingredients but rather contain natural ingredients that are safe to use such as essences from Japanese seaweed and from the wool of sheep as well as a range of natural occurring oils such as Shea butter and Babassu oil, both sourced from fruit.

The best wrinkle reducing cream is in fact a range of products all targeted to improving skin health overall rather than specifically at reducing wrinkles. That is because, as we said previously, wrinkles are an effect of aging and it is necessary to tackle the cause rather than the effect. The cause is lowered skin elasticity resulting from the loss of collagen and elastin with age.

All these natural skin care products, which are the best wrinkle reducer products in the world, contain the ingredients we previously mentioned as well as others. All will help improve general skin health and elasticity and as a result of doing that wrinkles, lines and skin sagging will also reduce.

All made by a small niche natural skin care company that makes some of the finest products on the market today. Read the rest of this entry