Beginners skin science
January 18th, 2020 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
Dear Reader, This is the introduction to my new book “Four degrees of Do It Yourself skin care”. I am assembling the chapters that will deal with botanical ingredients. I welcome suggestions on the ingredients you wish me to discuss in the book. Hannah We get attracted to plant extracts for many reasons. Besides advertising, there are cultural influences (what did your grandmother use when you were sick?), the attraction of the exotic (if it is Korean, it must be better), and even the common name of the plant (dragon’s blood, anybody?). As a scientist, I have to be more careful with how I choose plant extracts as…
January 11th, 2020 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
What do you mean by “sulfate-free”? Of course, you don’t know. But many people still try to get skin care products that are sulfate-free, even when they have no idea what it means. And that matters. Are we, humans, sulfate-free? Of course not. Sulfur is such an important element, we could not live without it. No living being can live without sulfur and sulfate is just one of the forms that sulfur will take as it cycles through nature. Where does this “sulfate-free” thing come from, then? The usual way: people who know too little but think they know a lot. It happens that a detergent used for dishwashing and…
January 9th, 2020 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
Makeup can hide, cosmetic surgery can cut, but neck and hands will show the real age of your skin. What can you do about it? You can write a great book as Nora Efron did (“I feel bad about my neck”) or you can wear fancy silk scarves. If you don’t feel like writing a book or don’t like the idea of wearing a scarf in Summer, you have an alternative. Don’t just privilege your face over your neck and hands; they are all part of your body. Use the same products you use on your face, preferably Skin Actives products, to take care of your skin wherever it needs…
January 8th, 2020 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
Stuff happens. The longer you live, the more likely that bad stuff will happen to different parts of your body. And yet, sun damage can be healed to some extent: people wearing sunscreen for a year found that their skin has improved. It was not the sunscreen per se that did the trick, but it allowed the skin to heal while the sunscreen protected from further damage. Your brain can stay younger longer if you exercise. Exercise can help with muscle and arthritis pain. Exercise can even help with chronic pain caused by unknown factors. Even damaged nerves may heal after damage. But what you can’t do with impunity is…
January 7th, 2020 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
This always reminds me of an old Isaac Asimov novel, The End of Eternity. Fashion changes, hair removal can be forever. When it comes to changing your appearance forever, make sure you take into account that fashion changes, a lot. So don’t modify forever you lovely eyebrows, because thick eyebrows will always be more popular than thin (or non existent eye brows). Done with whatever method, be sure that whatever you do to your eyebrows maybe forever even if that is not your intention. Ask those women who as teenagers played with tweezers and ended up killing their eyebrows for eternal regret. You can always try Skin Actives Brow and…
January 6th, 2020 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
Say an enthusiastic “yes!” to these: Vitamin A (like retinyl acetate) Epidermal growth factor (to replenish your own declining EGF) Apocynin (give your own stem cells a chance!) ROS BioNet (disarm reactive oxygen species, ROS*) Vitamin E (it is a vitamin because, without it, ROS* destroy your membrane lipids) Say no to: Abrasives (because your skin is not a wall) Benzoyl peroxide (because the whole point is to DISARM ROS*, not to add to them!) Concentrated essential oils (because most of them are strong solvents) Fragrances (you don’t need them and they can bring trouble) Alcohol (like in ethanol, denatured alcohol) because they dry your skin DISCLAIMER: These claims…
January 1st, 2020 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
The pressure on us, women, has been there forever (think of what women have been doing, and still are, to their feet). The pressure on women to have a mask-like skin has been here for centuries. We may think that it is us who make the decision, but do we? The answer to this question is within ourselves, we call it “common sense”. Dos your skin look like “glass”? No. So don’t push it to make it so. Think of your skin as a live organ that protects you from a hostile environment (UV, reactive oxygen species, pollutants) and keep treating it nicely so that it can keep doing…
January 1st, 2020 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
What are ceramides? To learn more about them, see this post. Here are the essentials. Ceramides, chemically, are a very distinct type of lipid (fat). They fulfill different functions. The easy one: they work as “cement” as part of the epidermal barrier. You need these ceramides. They are made by your own skin, using lipids already present in the cells. One way of preventing their loss is to provide lipids tyo your skin so that it can keep making them. Another is not to eliminate by eroding your epidermis with acid peels and abrasion. The other aspect of the question. Do you need ceramides in your skin care products? No.…
December 26th, 2019 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
These will not help you 1) Price. There is no correlation between price and quality because prices are greatly inflated to give the illusion of a luxury good or because the company’s structure requires huge mark-ups 2) Texture and smell. You may want these characteristics but these alone will say nothing about how effective the product will be 3) Use of “science” in advertising. Skin care companies have became very good at using scientific sounding language to give an impression of seriousness. 4) Where is it made? Korean, Japanese, French companies use the same ingredients to manufacture skin care products. Skin care is a global market. At most, there may…
December 25th, 2019 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
After bariatric surgery you will lose some and win some, and some of it will be great and others not that much. Here are some examples of what you will/may lose, depending on how you take care of yourself after the surgery. There is only that much magic the surgeon can do for you, the rest if up to you. You will lose: Weight Diabetes (yay!) this will help your skin because there will be less protein glycosylation, and that is good for the proteins (skin included) and for you. Muscle mass (you will need to exercise a lot, and eat protein, ask your doctor) Capacity to absorb vitamins (you…
December 25th, 2019 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
Applying a skin care product that is good for you or pleasant is good for you just. I doubt that anybody has measured the health effects of a massage, a bath, a kiss of a grandchild or applying a cream to your face, but all of these give you a feeling of well being that should make us feel better and function better. But for skin care, the ingredients and formulation will make the big difference, especially as we age and our body neglects our skin because it is less important than your heart. But, as you heart keeps beating, tight, thin skin will make life difficult in many ways.…
December 25th, 2019 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
Do men need skin care at all? YES. We “accept” men’s aged skin not because it looks or works better (than that of a woman) but because we (society) judge men by other standards than how smooth their skin is (money and power come to mind). If men do need skin care, do they need skin care especially designed for them? NO. Why do men need skin care? Because skin care is not just a matter of beauty but also health. You can’t wait until things get bad to go to a dermatologist for a lesion that may be skin cancer. You need to prevent damage and reverse skin aging…
December 24th, 2019 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
This is a good example of skin care ingredients that are adopted too quickly. The silly argument: it is natural (so is vitamin A!) as if natural chemicals couldn’t hurt us. Nature is not out there for our skin benefit, and the sooner you learn this lesson, the sooner you will stop hurting your skin with irritating and allergenic natural chemicals (balsam of Peru anybody?). The equivalent in synthetic drugs is thalidomide. And I don’t want to accuse bakuchiol of being a tragic ingredient because there is no indication that it is. But look at what bakuchiol is said to be: a replacement for retinoids without side effects. Somehow, it…
December 23rd, 2019 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
There are explanations, some scientific and some anthropological to why we crave lying in the sun and some of us crave a tan. Resist the temptation. Nowadays the long term the costs of a suntan are well known: skin aging, including ugly elastosis, age spots. fine lines etc, plus lethal melanoma. Can you prevent skin damage? Unfortunately, the only way to prevent skin damage by the sun is to avoid the sun (and UV in general, UV lamps are evil!). Sunscreens will only extend the time it takes for UV to cause visible damage, but inflammation, reactive oxygen species (ROS*) damage and mutations will happen eventually, and the damage will…
December 23rd, 2019 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
This is a tough question. In the internet (and at the hair salon) you will hear everybody giving advice about what to eat and what not. Gluten? Milk? Chocolate? And yet, there isn’t a lot of clear information. It is much easier to tell you what is bad for your skin. Alcohol will lead to temporary or high blood pressure that will burst capillaries in your skin, it will also affect the capacity of your liver to deal with toxins. Cigarette smoking will increase enormously the amount of reactive oxygen species (ROS*) that will damage and age you skin and your lips (but try our lip repair and our antioxidant…
December 23rd, 2019 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
For damage (yes, skin “care” can damage your skin) minutes or hours. A bad experiment in exfoliation, an allergic reaction to a fragrance, will show up within minutes and take days or weeks to repair. An ingredient that starts an autoimmune disease will affect your skin forever. How about good ingredients? I used to say a couple of months, because good skin care has to modify the biochemistry and physiology of your skin before it can improve its appearance., but using our good ol’ collagen serum can actually lift my upper eyelid in days (faster and cheaper than cosmetic surgery). A fast, light exfoliation will improve the look of your…
December 23rd, 2019 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
Myths that relate to your body can be misleading or plain dangerous. How about colonic cleansing? Ouch! What about that magic Egyptian cream? And the NASA scientists who created a magic broth? The industry is full of myths and “origin stories” because we, humans, crave a good story. Nowadays, every brand of skin care has a story to go with it. Just ignore them and look at what matters: the ingredient list. What about the other myths, those that tell you what is good (or bad) for you? Who told you that adult skin should be smooth and glowing? No, it shouldn’t, not after puberty. Trying to smooth it out…
December 22nd, 2019 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
My favorite plants have little to do with skin care. Carnations, gladioli, jasmine (the one in Argentina is actually Gardenia jasminoides) because they remind me of my mother. From my later life, the orange flower (neroli) is my favorite because it remind me of Andalusia and good times spent with my dear friends. When it comes to active ingredients that are great for the skin, there are so many! I will give you a few examples. EGCG from tea (Camellia sinensis), antioxidant and chemopreventive, fucoidan from brown algae, antiviral, antioxidants and promotes collagen synthesis. I could go on for hours (or days). Plants don’t make these chemicals for our benefit…
December 21st, 2019 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
One thing I know is that people are silly when it comes to assess their bodies. This often works against us, like with young people being misled about being fat. It is called body dismorphic disorder and it can become a major problem lead to death like with Karen Carpenter, the great singer. It also happens with our faces. We may think that everybody is looking at that big zit when actually it is so minor that only us notice them. The same happens with wrinkles. So, what “deserves” plastic surgery? We need to be careful here, because the “after” may be worse than the “before”. Look on the internet…
December 13th, 2019 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
The answer to the question: not really. What matters is the ingredient list and the formulator may have to change the consistency of the product to make sure that the actives are dissolved completely. From my book Types of skin care products Cream: an emulsion of oil and water in approximately equal proportions that penetrates well the outer layer of skin. Both oil soluble and water soluble actives can be used. Creams have a higher viscosity (thickness) than lotions. Lotion: a low viscosity topical preparation. Gel: a jelly-like material that can have properties ranging from soft and weak to hard and tough. By weight, gels are mostly liquid, yet they…