Cosmetics that give your face a lift

Press, 1 June 1989, Page 13

Cosmetics that give your face a lift

LIZ HODGKINSON, DUO health reporter, looks at the new anti-ageing preparation.

The new anti-ageing creams of the late eighties don’t just claim to make your skin smoother and softer. They also claim to be able to iron out wrinkles, to plump out cheeks, to diminish double chins and reduce bags under the eyes. In the past, any sensible woman would have regarded such claims with extreme scepticism. Wily get-rich-quick merchants have been trying to bottle instant youth from the beginning of time. They haven’t succeeded so far, so why should these new, and highly expensive, creams be any different? At first, their claims all sound like so much meaningless hype that would, fool nobody. Take one of the latest “miracle creams” — "Future Perfect,” recently launched in New Zealand by Estee Lauder and costing $92 a bottle.

This product, however, doesn’t shout at you. It is aimed at the intelligent woman, somebody who understands biology and chemistry and who will read carefully the claims on the side of the packet. The packet states that the product, contains “targeted microsomes to help fortify the stratum cor-

neum (the skin’s surface membranes) reinforcing the intercellular links.” But everybody knows, don’t they, that it is simply not possible to manufacture a cream which will halt and reverse the ageing process? Certainly, that used to be the case. But there is now increasing evidence that it is, in theory at least, possible to manufacture substances which will actually penetrate below the skin’s surface and alter the cellular structure to some extent. It is known that certain substances can get into the body via the skin and cause changes inside the body. There is now a whole new science of “transdermal” drugs which can release their contents through the skin and get into the bloodstream.

Hormone replacement therapy and travel sickness preparations are just two of the prescription medicines which can now be applied topically. You just put a patch like a sticking plaster on to the skin instead of swallowing a tablet, and the therapeutic effects are as good. Cosmetic firms, never slow to spot a trend or to take advantage of new technology, are now bringing into their ranges products which are in some ways more like drugs than mere cosmetics.

Manufacturers are now employing substances which are used for accident and burns victims in hospitals, and reducing the dosage to a cosmetic one. This means that the chemicals contained in the new skin creams actually do have a therapeutic effect, but they do not have to be classified as drugs.

The latest research indicates that ageing of the skin is not an automatic, irreversible process, but is something which is caused by exposure to sun and weather, by diet, smoking, environmental pollution and stress. It is wrong to imagine that we can do nothing

about the wrinkles and lines which appear as the years go by. Just as we can keep leather and wood smooth and polished by applying the right creams, so we can keep age lines at bay for a very long time. All we have to do is make sure that the cream we put on actually does have the power to penetrate below the skin’s surface. The latest range of skin creams claim to be able to get right through the top layer of the skin — the epidermis — to the dermis, the lower layer where things actually happen. The dermis is a thick layer, between two and four millimetres, and is made of connective tissue where collagen fibres and elastic tissue intermingle. The dermis contains hair follicles, sweat glands

and the sebaceous glands, which release sebum, an oily lubricant that causes acne when over-produced. The dermis also contains blood and lymphatic vessels and nerves, so is a highly active part of the body.

In order to penetrate through to the dermis, any effective cream has to pass the barrier of the epidermis. This is not always easy, because as time goes by, the outer layer of skin gets horny and hard. Also, the job of the epidermis is to ensure that foreign matter does not get through. Then, even if certain substances do manage to penetrate, the immune system will, as often as not, try to inactivate them. Effective skin creams have to be entirely compatible with the skin, so that they are not rejected by the body’s defence system. The surface of the epidermis, called the stratum corneum, is made up of dead cells which lock together and do their best to stop substances either entering or leaving the body. Anti-ageing skin creams have to break down this outer layer, which hardens as we age, but in such a way that the delicate underneath layer is not destroyed. They become crosslined instead of being neatly arranged in a trellis pattern. The more cross-linkage there is, the more wrinkles and lines will appear. So the main function of an anti-ageing cream is to restore the lattice work and halt the process of cross-linkage. As the years go by, the epidermis becomes much thinner, causing the skin to take on the transparent appearance noticed in so many old people. The lower layer, the dermis, also becomes thinner and may allow veins to show through. By some unfair freak of nature, men have much thicker dermises than women, so female skin tends to age far more quickly than male skin. At the same time, the area underneath the dermis, the hypodermis, loses its fat. The skin sags, and becomes ever more wrinkled. This loss means that a dry, cracked appearance can result, and

the skin can be more readily attacked by bacteria and viruses. Although this ageing process is to some extent natural, research has dis-

covered that people who are largely protected from the outside environment — such as nuns in enclosed orders — have far younger-looking skins than their contemporaries in the outside world. Cosmetic manufacturers worked out that if they could formulate a product which would stop crosslinking of collagen, and prevent the corneum stratum from becoming horny and impenetrable, they would have something which really would halt signs of ageing.

The first real breakthrough in anti-ageing skin care came from the knowledge that by far the most damage was caused to our skins by exposure to sunlight. Ultraviolet rays can be ultraviolent to the skin.

Many current skin creams now automatically incorporate a sunscreen to stop wrinkles and lines developing. Some of the newest products can also help repair skin damaged by exposure to the sun.

Retin-A, a derivative of vitamin A used in hospital acne treatments, is now about to come onto the British market as an antiageing product. It has the power to reverse, to some extent at least, the leathery, weatherbeaten look produced by overexposure to the sun and give instead a rosy, more elastic and unwrinkled look.

The active ingredient, tretinoin, can stimulate the skin to increase its

cell production, and promote the development of the underlying layers of skin. It smooths down the stratum corneum and encourages skin cells to grow and form properly. Over-exposure to sun can result in irregular cell growth which causes blotchiness and age spots. Tretinoin, a genuine breakthrough, has been tested in the United States and is now undergoing trials at the University of Wales Hospitals before being granted a product licence in Britain.

A cosmetic version of this substance, Vitamin A Palmitate, is already used in Estee Lauder’s Future Perfect. It is supposed to “restructure the deepest epidermal protein layer known as the basement membrane.” Retinoic acid is a real find for the cosmetics industry as it is one of the few chemicals that can safely pass through the horny stratum corneum. One substance which has already been isolated and is now used in a number of expensive skin creams is hyaluronic acid, which largely composes the gel surrounding the collagen and elastin in the dermis. Hyaluronic acid has the ability to hold large amounts of water and in addition, is completely compatible with the skin’s structure. This acid is used medically to protect the eye during eye operations, and is also used in injection form for arthritis, as the gel can protect and lubricate painful joints. The problem has been in the past to make the cosmetic substance stay on the skin for long enough to work its magic: this problem has now largely been overcome with the latest creams, which operate on a “sustained release” basis. There are also chemi-

cals incorporated in the latest skin-care products which stimulate cell manufacture in the dermis, and also the fibroblast cells which make new connective tissue. It

is not easy to find chemicals which will safely penetrate, as the skin does its best to keep foreign matter out.

Most of the newest antiageing creams contain in addition free radical scavengers and anti-oxi-dants. Free radicals are substances found in the body which attack the immune system, and lead to ageing, illness and breakdown of the body’s defences. Free radicals do damage in much the same way as rust on a car, eating into vital cells and destroying them. Vitamin E, vitamin C and beta carotene — which had a very high profile last year — are all powerful anti-oxidants, and are now incorporated into many cosmetics. Most of the anti-ageing treatments of the past were ineffective or downright dangerous. Injections of animal tissue and collagen to beat the ageing process have also not lived up to their early claims, and seem to have no permanent effect on the ageing process.

But there seems little doubt that these new cosmetics do work.

Catherine Calevras,- of Estee Lauder, says: “In France and America, women are far more aware than we are of the need to give attention to the skin. French women are always eager to try new products, and for this reason, many high-tech preparations are available there. France now leads the world in skin care products. All the big French companies — Chanel, Lancome, Guerlain, Clarins — are producing skin- , care ranges which contain ; potent anti-wrinkling and anti-ageing ingredients. In the United States the market is slower, even though American women are enthusiastic, because the laws governing what can be marketed as a cosmetic are extremely strict.

“In America, you can’t even talk about the dermis,” says Ms Calevras. “You are not meant to say what a cosmetic can do under the epidermis, unless you can justify the claims by independent scientific papers. “The Food and Drug Administration maintains that if products are effective, they should be sold as drugs and not on beauty counters. The argument is that anything which fights against ageing and repairs cell struc-

ture is a medical treatment.” “Nowadays at Estee Lauder we buy most of our raw ingredients from medical schools to turn them into cosmetic form. The products are very popular in France and America, but British women react very slowly indeed,” says Catherine Calevras. If your great-granny had a perfect skin without ever using anything but soap and water, this was because her face was not exposed to the amount of sun, radiation and indoor and outdoor pollution that today’s skins have to put up with every day. Smoking, alcohol and highly processed foods can also damage the skin’s cells and mean that they renew themselves at an even slower rate.

Any anti-nutrient, such as lead, mercury or cadmium — all poisonous substances which are increasingly released into the atmosphere — will cause the skin to shrivel and age. Although tanned skins look healthy, the sun causes immense and often irreversible damage to fair skins. The fairer the skin, the greater the damage.

It is very noticeable that French women over a certain age have very much better skins than ‘their Anglo-Saxon contemporaries. This is not due to luck, or genetic inheritance, but because they believe in the skin-care products that experience proves work. —Copyright, Duo.