Petrolatum is Vaseline, and is found in hundreds of antiaging moisturizers and antiaging creams.

In keeping with our philosophy of telling our readers about dangerous ingredients in antiaging products we want to talk about Petrolatum today.

Petrolatum is found in a wide range of antiaging treatments such as antiaging creams and moisturizers. If you search the Cosmetic Safety Database you’ll find it identified in 472 moisturizers, 124 antiaging products and 193 other facial moisturizer treatments. Lets examine exactly what petrolatum is and why you should avoid anti aging products that contain petrolatum.

Petrolatum is Vaseline. It can be defined as a colloidal system of semisolid hydrocarbons obtained from petroleum. In other words it is a petroleum product. It can go by a range of names including hydrophilic petrolatum, white petrolatum, parraffin wax, parraffin jelly and petroleum jelly.

Petrolatum, or petroleum jelly, was first described when found on oil rigs. Workers found this thick gelatinous substance on the rigs and first reported that it was good for healing burns, which it isn’t.

It is included in skin care products such as antiaging creams and antiaging moisturizers because of its alleged moisturizing properties. The ability of petrolatum or white petroleum to moisturize though, is extremely limited. The major advantage of white petroleum in skin care products is that it is extremely cheap. That’s an advantage to the companies that make the products, not to  you.

You can tell that petrolatum doesn’t moisturize because it doesn’t penetrate the skin. To moisturize successfully any ingredient in antiaging products needs to penetrate the skin, if it doesn’t it cannot add moisture.

Rather what it does is to coat the skin with an oily film which may help protect against some moisture loss.

Petrolatum is extremely common in all sorts of personal and beauty products that just about all of us use every day. In fact the environmental working group that does studies on the safety of many products estimates that somewhere around one out of every 14 personal products includes petrolatum.

If you search petrolatum at the Cosmetic Safety Database will find that it is listed as a low to moderate hazard being linked to cancer, contamination, non reproductive organ toxicity and more.

One of the serious worries about petrolatum in anti aging products is the problem of contamination. Concerns about petrolatum are that it can become contaminated in the manufacturing process with substances called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. (PAHs). PAHs are given a score of 10 out of 10 as a high hazard by the Cosmetic Safety Database and have been linked to a wide range of health concerns including cancer, immunotoxicity, reproductive and developmental toxicity, bioaccumulation, endocrine disruption and much more.

So whilst petrolatum itself is listed as a hazard but not a high hazard, PAHs are certainly more worrying.

Anti aging and skin care companies are not required to demonstrate to the FDA that the ingredients used in their product lines are safe and in most cases these companies do not even test to detect the existence of contaminants in their products such as PAHs.

In the US it seems that the laws regarding the safety of ingredients used in cosmetics, skin care and anti aging products are quite lax. In the European Union there are numerous grades of petrolatum which are listed as dangerous substances and it is only a limited range of white petroleum products that can be used in products in Europe.

Most consumers would be completely unaware that there was Vaseline in their anti aging products and that they were applying Vaseline to their face every day.

It seems incredible that antiaging products and cosmetics can contain ingredients with so many suspicions. Whether or not the risk to our health is real the truth is that there are many natural and safe alternatives but they are more expensive than ingredients such as Vaseline.

It all comes down to cost as well as the fact that so many of our personal products can be sold with ingredients in them that are suspect to our health and the FDA is not even required to test these products to establish their safety, or even that they work. Here in the US the anti aging and skin care industry know this very well and are prepared to put ingredients in their products with possible health outcomes because they can, and because they are cheap.

There is nothing stopping the big name anti-aging companies from using effective and safe natural ingredients, however these ingredients are more expensive and if they raised the price of their products, thereby reducing sales, they would suffer a reduction in profits.

However this offers an opportunity to some small companies to venture into the market and gain a toehold in an extremely competitive market by manufacturing products using high quality ingredients that are safe and effective. However the reality is that if these companies who spend much more on product quality then the big companies were to compete with the big companies on marketing budget and in particular on television advertising they would have to price their products so high that virtually no one would buy them.

So they compete differently. They don’t advertise because their money goes into product quality rather than advertising. They rely on slow organic growth of a loyal customer base which over time will grow the business to the point where word-of-mouth will start to increase sales dramatically. Happy customers keep buying the products and tell their friends, but it’s a slow path compared to saturation television advertising.

One of these in particular make what we consider to be the worlds best antaging products, and very few people have ever heard of them because they don’t advertise.

The best anti aging products, which are far more effective than the big brand names, do not contain any chemical ingredients such as petrolatum. Rather they contain natural ingredients like oils from plants and fruits and seaweed. These are all much more expensive but are safe and highly effective at producing optimum skin health. Read the rest of this entry

What is the precautionary principle and why are the best anti aging products paraben free?

It’s a bit of a controversy. Parabens in anti aging products and cosmetics. Parabens are found in a wide range of cosmetics and anti aging products such as moisturizers, so if you’re looking for the best anti aging moisturizer, should you avoid parabens and search for paraben free alternatives?

If you’re new to the debate about parabens here’s the rub. They are a class of chemical that are used in many products, including some foods, cosmetics and skin care products such as anti aging creams and moisturizers and some consider them to be dangerous.

They work very efficiently as preservatives however there is a raging debate about their safety.

As we said parabens are a class of chemical, there is actually quite a few that are used in these products. If you see these names or similar names listed on the label of any of your personal products then they are parabens. Methylparaben, Ethylparaben and Propylparaben are just some of the more commonly used parabens in our personal products.

The big question is are they safe for people to use? It is well known that once a product containing one of the parabens commonly used is applied to the skin then that particular chemical is absorbed through the skin very fast and can be detected in the blood stream within a relatively short period of time, hours in fact. They don’t just remain on the surface of the skin, they penetrate your body and are found in your blood.

One of the major reasons that they are found in so many personal products is that they are extremely cheap. There are other preservatives available which are effective as preservatives but are much more expensive, in many cases these more expensive alternatives are safe to use but are not used because of the price.

So where does the controversy come from? Why is it that so many people searching for the best anti aging products avoid any skin care products that have parabens listed on the label? It’s because there are serious concerns over the safety of parabens in our anti aging and skin care products and cosmetics. Whilst there is no clear proof one way or the other about whether these chemicals are safe to use there is certainly some questions raised.

For example there are studies that link parabens to breast cancer.

One such study found parabens in 18 out of 20 breast cancer tissue samples tested. Whilst of course this doesn’t actually prove that these chemicals cause breast cancer it is certainly something that causes you to sit up and take notice.

Secondly it is also generally accepted that parabens can mimic the actions of the female hormone called estrogen. This too has not been fully proven to be dangerous however is also worrying.

If you visit the Cosmetic Safety Database you will see that Butyl Paraben, for example, is linked, according to them, to cancer, allergies and immunotoxicity, neurotoxicity and endocrine disruption and biochemical and cellular level changes.

Of course being linked to these things doesn’t actually prove the the link, it just means that there are links, such as the study that found parabens in 18 our of 20 breast cancer samples.

There is something called the precautionary principle. This basically says that, in situations like these, where there is a risk to public health, there should be a presumption that the risk exists and those seeking to use the chemicals should prove that there is no risk before the chemical is used, rather than those who are at risk being forced to disprove the risk before use of the chemical is discontinued.

There are many calls for the discontinuance of parabens in all our personal products until they are proven to be safe. If they are continued to be used until proven unsafe it may be too late for some.

If you’re looking for the best anti aging moisturizers or other anti aging creams and products the decision about whether or not they should contain parabens is yours. There is no clear proof either way, however we personally prefer to avoid anything that is linked to health risks until it is clearly proven safe. Paraben free anti aging products, including the best anti aging products in the world, don’t have any risks of chemical preservatives because those chemical preservatives aren’t used at all.

The best anti aging products are all paraben free and also free from a wide range of other chemical and petrochemical ingredients, many of which are commonly found in so many of our personal products such as cosmetics and skin care products.

The company that makes the worlds best anti aging products has a total philosophy about the use of chemicals in it’s products. It refuses to use any chemical ingredients that have question marks over their safety and formulates products using natural ingredients that are known to be safe and are actually more effective than the chemical alternatives as well.

This company told it’s researchers to formulate its anti aging products using ingredients that were all known to be safe enough to eat. This is a total philosophy about product safety and they have the same commitment to product quality. Read the rest of this entry

Why should you avoid anti aging products that make you smell nice?

People of any age like to smell good. However there is a few things that you need to know about smelling good, including about fragrances in your anti aging products. Aging isn’t something that many of us look forward to and so many women use anti aging skin care products to limit the effects of ageing on their skin. However some of the ingredients, like fragrances, are not quite as good for you as you may think.

Here at Restore My Skin we like to tell you about the risks as well as the benefits of so many modern anti aging skin products. And one of the most common ingredients in anti aging products as well as a host of other products is fragrance.

Fragrances have no anti aging properties. They are merely there because people like to smell nice and so if the products contain fragrances that make them smell nice they are more likely to buy the product. However fragrances are not an inert ingredient.

Of course fragrances are not limited to skin care products, they are found in a massive range of other personal products including, of course, perfumes.

There are thousands of different fragrances, some estimates are that there are over 4000. Virtually all of them are synthetic chemicals designed in a laboratory. Many of these have been shown to cause cancer or are toxic in other ways including toxic to the central nervous system.

Not all fragrances are dangerous, for example many essential oils are not, however chemical fragrances are usually used in such products as anti aging skin care products because they are much cheaper than safer alternatives such as essential oils.

The risks to our health are real from the ingredients found in so many anti aging products. Aging afflicts everyone and so the market for antiaging products is massive and billions of dollars are spent every year on lotions and potions to make us look younger. So many people are now using products on their skin that contain potentially dangerous ingredients like fragrance.

Some organizations are battling against this is. For instant the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics (see link at right) is one such organization that attempts to publicize the risks inherent in so many modern skin products.

And it is even possible to search the ingredients found in so many products at the Cosmetic Safety Database (right) to see what the suspected risks are from those ingredients.

If you go to the Cosmetic Safety Database and search “fragrance” you will find some disturbing results. Various fragrances that are used in commercial products that anyone can buy are listed as being linked to cancer, allergies and immunotoxicity and neurotoxicity, disruption of the endocrine system and lastly, irritation to the skin, eyes and lungs (and more).

But the reality is for most people that is extremely hard to know whether the ingredients in the anti aging products that you may use now include fragrances like these.

So if you’re ageing and are interested in finding effective anti aging skin care products that don’t contain dangerous ingredients such as fragrance, what do you do?

At least one small company has made the decision to eliminate all potentially dangerous ingredients from their anti aging products. This company is called Xtend Life and they have decided not to use any fragrances in their products at all because firstly there is a risk attached to them and secondly that it is not essential to add a fragrance to any ageing products.

Their recommendation is not to use fragrances at all, or if you really wish to do so then use a perfume instead of buying anti aging products with fragrance added.

Why would you use a perfume? Surely perfumes are just a fragrance? Surely perfume too, if it’s a fragrance which it is, is equally risky?

That is in fact true, however when using skin care products you usually cover a reasonably large area of your skin with the product, and therefore the chemical ingredient that creates the fragrance covers a large area of your skin. The chemical can be absorbed into your skin and is therefore absorbed in a larger quantity.

Generally speaking when you use a perfume a couple of dabs on the neck is sufficient which greatly minimizes the surface area of the skin which can take up the fragrance into your system.

And if you’re buying perfumes you should also choose them very carefully for obvious reasons.

Xtend Life have a total commitment to making anti aging products that are not only safe to use but are also highly effective. At the commencement of their research into anti aging products the chairman of the company tasked their technical staff with developing a range of anti aging products that were “safe enough to eat“.

In other words all of the ingredients used in these products would be safe for your body even if you ate them. And in effect that’s what happens when you put them on your skin because they are absorbed into your system just as if you ate them.

The result is a safe and highly effective range of skin care and anti ageing products.

If you’re starting to realize the risks involved in modern personal products such as skin care products you may be moved to spend more time finding out about the ingredients that go into these products. Read the rest of this entry