Advanced Ageless ELS: liquid gold for your skin (….if gold were actually useful for the skin)
Gold will do nothing for your skin except adorn it. Right now I am wearing a gold chain with a pendant. Why do we use gold for adornment? Because it is practically inert in or on our bodies (gold crowns for teeth used to be common if you were rich). Conversely, silver will react with the skin and the environment and oxidize quickly enough.
To benefit the skin or the body, you need interactions, which gold can’t give you (silver will interact but without benefit or worse, google argyria). Good interactions that is. For example, metals that our enzymes need to help catalyze chemical reactions to keep us alive. Gold does nothing, but look at our new “liquid gold”: every lipid serum Advanced Ageless.
Is AA Every Lipid Serum a panacea? Will it fix all your skin problems?
No, but it will help. Exceptions? Maybe acne and very oily skin don’t need ELS, but don’t be confused: ELS is not “grease” but a complex mix of lipids of varied chemical structures, and it will not be too appetizing to the acne bacteria.
Use AA-ELS for: older skin, wrinkles, thin skin, eczema, lymphoedema, stressed skin, post-radiation (cancer treatment), city pollution, post-sun, food supplement for hungry skin, and remedy for “over cleaned” skin.
The ingredient list
Look at the ingredient list of our new Advanced Ageless ELS (every lipid serum): it’s all good stuff, and your skin will use every bit of it. This is a further improved version of my favorite Skin Actives product. Why is els my favorite (and not, say, the collagen serum)? Because I am getting older, my skin is getting thinner and it needs ELS so often that I keep a bottle on my desk (and another in my bathroom).
Ingredients: Squalane, Glycine Soja Oil, Rosa Canina (Rosehip) Seed Oil, Linum Usitatissimum (Linseed) Seed Oil, Lecithin, Salvia Hispanica (Chia) Seed Oil, Borago Officinalis (Borage) Seed Oil, Vitamin E oil, Mangifera Indica (Mango) Seed Butter, Coffee Arabica Seed Oil, Hippophae Rhamnoides (Seabuckthorn) Fruit Oil, Cetyl-PG Hydroxyethyl Palmitamide (Ceramide E), Phytosterols, Oryzanol, Docosahexaenoic Acid, Astrocaryum (Tucuma) Seed Butter, Cholesteryl Oleyl Carbonate (and) Cholesteryl Nonanoate (and) Cholesteryl Chloride (and )BHT, Punica Granatum (Pomegranate) Seed Oil, Tocotrienols, Tocopherol, Astaxanthin, Thioctic Acid (R-Alpha Lipoic Acid), Lycopene, Xanthophyll, Beta Carotene.
What will the “extras” give you? Soy, Borage, Coffee seed, and Seabuckthorn oils, plus the richness of Mango and Tucuma butters. A wider variety of fatty acids plus the other, non triglycerides lipids that give these oils and butters their special characteristics.
For example:
Soy: the friend of peri- and post-menopausal women with the chemicals that bind to our empty estrogen receptors and make our skin smile again. Soybean oil (British English: soyabean oil) is a vegetable oil extracted from the seeds of the soybean (Glycine max). The major unsaturated fatty acids in soybean oil triglycerides are the polyunsaturates alpha-linolenic acid (C-18:3), and linoleic acid (C-18:2); and monounsaturated oleic acid (C-18:1). It also contains the saturated fatty acids stearic acid (C-18:0), and palmitic acid (C-16:0). for more about soy, read this. For more on phytoestrogens, read this.
Borage seed oil is derived from the seeds of the plant Borago officinalis. Its oil has one of the highest amounts of γ-linolenic acid (GLA) of seed oils. GLA typically comprises about 24% of borage oil, good for inflammatory disorders, arthritis, atopic eczema,
Coffee seed is rich in linoleic acid and palmitic acid, followed by oleic acid and stearic acid.
Mango butter is the oil extracted from the Mangifera indica kernel. Mango kernel oil is solid at room temperature, hence its common name, butter. It contains mostly palmitic acid and stearic acid, plus some oleic acid, linoleic acid, and arachidic acid.
Tucuma butter, from Astrocaryum vulgare is a palm native to the Amazonian rainforest. The butter is extracted from its fruit and is rich in lauric, myristic, and oleic acids, plus some “extras” like vitamin A.
Hippophae rhamnoides L. commonly known as sea buckthorn is a thorny shrub native to Europe and Asia. The plant has been used extensively in oriental traditional systems of medicine for treatment of asthma, skin diseases, gastric ulcers and lung disorders; its oil is rich in omega-7 unsaturated fatty acid, known to promote epithelization of skin and mucosal tissue.
Read more about rosehip seed oil here
Our great every lipid serum
How to choose an oil
In skincare, oils have become an object of advertising hype, just like other ingredients. This would not matter much except that different oils can have different effects on your skin.
How to choose a good oil for your skin?
- Think about nourishing your skin and NOT the acne bacteria.
- Are you looking to alleviate a skin condition like eczema?
- What matters to your skin is the fatty acid composition and NOT how pretty the name of the plant might be.
- An oil may contain some beneficial impurities, but some impurities may impart a strong odor. I prefer to use purified oils and add extras as needed.
- You will be using minute amounts of oil; choose the type according to your skin needs and not the price.
- Some oils, like palm oil, may have a high environmental cost; try to avoid them.
- Some ω-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids, and their incorporation into membrane phospholipids may favor inflammation. Other fatty acids, such as ω-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids, may decrease inflammation. Right now, this is “theory”, more evidence is needed before we take this factor into account for formulation.
Special oils for special jobs
Massage stretch marks with rosehip oil, which by itself will help at prevention and at healing them and has the advantage that you can use it without any worries during pregnancy and lactation.
Taking care of your skin can also help you feel (and get) better sooner. If you take a relaxing bath, apply some rosehip oil afterward so that your skin does not get dry. The skin will feel more comfortable, and you will heal better
It’s a mystery to me why coconut oil became a fad, it contains lots of highly saturated fatty acids, so the acne bacteria love it! Taken orally, it is also very bad for your health; it increases LDL cholesterol, and it’s an established cause of atherosclerosis and cardiovascular events.
Silicones: skincare products containing silicones are often called “oil-free.” They are oil-free in the sense that the skin can’t use silicones, an advantage if you don’t want to feed that acne bacteria but at the same time, these polymers of siloxane will not provide nutrition to the skin or scalp.
Plant names (common and their Latin counterparts), chemicals with fancy names like astaxanthin and others even harder to pronounce like docosahexaenoic acid, and more. Still, ingredient lists are anything BUT boring. Good (always good in Skin Actives products) or bad, they are a chemical catalog of what you are applying to your skin. In this case, the name of the product tells you what it is all about.
Lipids in life
You may think of fats like something to avoid, especially if you are overweight, but lipids are not only unavoidable but also crucial for life. Various lipids are an integral part of cell membranes; they are partly responsible for the permeability properties that make every membrane in our cells able to function properly, allowing some stuff to come in, keeping other stuff out and allowing some chemicals to come in and out as required by the cell to continue to live.
We need lipids, including essential fatty acids, for our cells to function properly. During evolution, we humans (actually, vertebrates in general) lost some enzymes on the way, including some fatty acid desaturases, enzymes that remove two hydrogen atoms from a saturated fatty acid creating a double bond. For example, we can’t convert oleic acid into linoleic acid and α-linolenic acid, both of these polyunsaturated fatty acids that are essential for development. This changes the spatial arrangement of the fatty acid. It also changes its physical properties and the behavior of the membrane where that fatty acid is inserted, including how it responds to temperature changes.
We say that ELS has no “fillers.” There is nothing wrong with fillers, as we call the ingredients that have no obvious biochemical activity on our skin cells. However, we need those ingredients to dissolve actives, protect actives from the action of bacteria and mold, make the product pleasant (you would not use a non-pleasant product), etc. It just happens that ELS does not need any non-active ingredient to be able to do its job. In the absence of water, there will be no bacterial or fungal growth, so you don’t need preservatives. You don’t need a fragrance (if you want a fragrance you can use a perfume you like, assuming you have no allergy problems).
ELS is one of our key products. It is essential for all skin types, especially those with dry skin, to soothe and moisturize. It will also help eliminate rough patches of skin affected by psoriasis. This serum contains the lipids all skin needs to maintain a healthy barrier against the environment. The objective of this every lipid serum (not literally every lipid, but close enough) is to provide an array of nutrients and antioxidants that your skin needs to stay healthy.
What else is in ELS? It contains derivatives of cholesterol, another crucial component of cell membranes; phytosterols (also lipids), phosphatidyl choline (in lecithin) . Tocopherol and other lipophilic antioxidants prevent lipid peroxidation in cellular membranes and peroxidation of other lipids, including those we use as energy for our mitochondria to use to produce ATP and reducing power that will be used in making everything else our cells require.
Other ELS (besides Advanced Ageless) in Skin Actives:
Squalane, Linum Usitatissmum (Flax) Seed Oil, Rosa Canina (Rosehip) Seed Oil, Lecithin, Salvia Hispanica (Chia) Seed Oil, Punica Granatum (Pomegranate) Seed Oil, Argania Spinosa (Argan) Kernel Oil, Tocotrienols, Tocopherol (Vitamin E), Astaxanthin, Lycopene, Xanthophyll, R-Alpha Lipoic Acid, Beta-Carotene, Docosahexanoic Acid, Ceramide-3, Cholesteryl Oleyl Carbonate (and) Cholesteryl Nonanoate (and) Cholesteryl Chloride (and) BHT, Phytosterols, Oryzanol.
Nourishing Skin Serum with hemp extract
Squalane, Linum Usitatissmum (Flax) Seed Oil, Rosa Canina (Rosehip) Seed Oil, Lecithin, Salvia Hispanica (Chia) Seed Oil, Punica Granatum (Pomegranate) Seed Oil, Cannabis Sativa (Hemp) Extract*, Argania Spinosa (Argan) Kernel Oil, Tocotrienols, Tocopherols, Astaxanthin, Lycopene, Xanthophyll, R-Alpha Lipoic Acid, Beta-Carotene, Docosahexanoic Acid, Ceramide-3, Ubiquinone, Phytosterols, Oryzanol.
Note: The US FDA does not approve ingredients for cosmetics. Hemp extracts have not been approved for use in cosmetics by the FDA. We recommend reviewing regulations in your region and not purchasing this product if it is not approved at the shipment destination. Alternatively, we recommend Every Lipid Serum for a similar product without the Hemp Extract.
Raphael, W., & Sordillo, L. M. (2013). Dietary polyunsaturated fatty acids and inflammation: the role of phospholipid biosynthesis. International journal of molecular sciences, 14(10), 21167–21188. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms141021167
Ito, H., Asmussen, S., Traber, D. L., Cox, R. A., Hawkins, H. K., Connelly, R., … Enkhbaatar, P. (2014). Healing efficacy of sea buckthorn (Hippophae rhamnoides L.) seed oil in an ovine burn wound model. Burns, 40(3), 511–519. doi:10.1016/j.burns.2013.08.011
Fritsche KL. The science of fatty acids and inflammation. Adv Nutr. 2015 May 15;6(3):293S-301S. doi: 10.3945/an.114.006940. PMID: 25979502; PMCID: PMC4424767.
DISCLAIMER: These claims have not been evaluated by the FDA and are not intended to diagnose, cure, treat, or prevent any disease.