Health News / January 2007
The Scoop on Skin Creams
Americans spend over a billion dollars a year on wrinkle potions to erase or reduce the telltale signs of aging. The quixotic faith reflected by women’s eternal investment in various creamy applications is supported by relentless high-gloss marketing and the highest, if not the most realistic, hopes.
There is good news and bad news, according to Consumer Reports who decided to put product manufacturers claims to the test for the very first time in the magazine’s history.
The bad news, they found, in tests performed in partnership with the French, was that, on average, these products made little difference in the skin’s appearance.
Each cream was tested by 17-23 women between the ages of 30 and 70, recruited by a European laboratory specializing in cosmetic evaluation. Their skin was examined at the beginning, middle and end of the twelve week test with a high-tech optical device that detects changes in wrinkle dept and skin roughness of as little as 1/6000th of an inch.
Back in the US, sensory panelists examined photos of the crow’s feet areas to score effectiveness. Panelists were not even advised if the pictures were before, after or during the study.
Consumer Reports found that after 12 weeks, long enough according to the French consultants to make a difference if they were going to, the top-rated products did smooth out some fine lines and wrinkles. But even the best performers reduced the average depth of wrinkles by less than 10 percent, a magnitude of change that was barely visible to the naked eye.
But, there was good news, considering the universal, nagging intuition that surely this is one area a woman will get what she pays for and the best wrinkle cream must cost a bundle. Consumer Reports found no correlation between price and effectiveness in their results.
By a small margin, in products that cost from $38 to $335 an ounce, Olay Regenerist, readily available in most drugstores, was the top performer. One of the least costly products tested, the “enhancing lotion,” “perfecting cream,” and “regenerating serum” combination recommended by the company sells for about $19 a piece.
Lancôme Paris Renergie, for $176, performed nearly as well.
But, the most costly product tested, La Prairie Cellular, $335 for an ounce of day cream and 1.7 ounces of night cream, was among the least effective.
CR also found that luxury-priced skin-care offerings didn’t work any better than drugstore brands and that there was no relationship between the types of active ingredients in the products and their overall performance.
According to their report, reactions to individual products varied significantly. Every cream helped at least some of testers, including the ordinary moisturizer they used as a control. Higher-rated products performed slightly better on average for the women who tested them. But, with effects so variable and so slight, it was hard for women to judge the performance of the wrinkle creams they tested. And, their opinions bore no relation to how well the products performed based on objective measures.
For the test, Consumer Reports chose a sample of top-selling mass market lines including Olay, L’Oréal, Lancôme and Avon and more costly lines like La Prairie and StriVectin. Some brands, like Olay, worked better than others. But wrinkle creams on average made little difference in the skin’s appearance.
According to Consumer Reports, by age 40, most people’s skin shows some wear and tear. As skin becomes thinner and less resilient, people develop wrinkly eyes, frowny foreheads, and crease lines from the sides of the nose to the corners of the lips, a process exacerbated by sunlight. Every ultraviolet ray that penetrates the skin acts like a molecular bullet, setting off a biochemical chain reaction that damages collagen, the main component of skin, and creates fine lines and wrinkles. UV light also disturbs the skin’s pigment cells, creating age spots and freckles in light skinned people, and uneven distribution of pigmentation in darker-skinned people. Though pigment changes, age spots, and fine wrinkles are not themselves a health problem, the sun overexposure that causes them is the principal risk factor for skin cancer.
To slow down the clock, CR’s editors say, “Wear sunscreen, shade your face, wear a hat and sunglasses, avoid tanning parlors and stop smoking. Tobacco ranks second only to sunlight in its dire effects on skin.”
No matter which cream a woman chooses, her best treatment for wrinkles is prevention.
Copyright © 2007 A Woman's View. All rights reserved.
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