Ingredients
January 25th, 2020 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
Figure: Portulaca oleracea, common name purslane. I don’t know much about Pliny the Elder, but he said something to the effects that :Nature distributed medicine everywhere”. This is true, but what it means is that many plants contain chemicals that have medicinal effects on humans. This does not mean that every plant contains chemicals that are beneficial chemicals, in fact many have poisonous chemicals and others have no medical effects at all. And certainly, some plants may have beneficial effects for one or another human organ, but not for our skin. Pliny the Elder said that purslane, Portulaca oleraceae, could be used as an amulet to expel all evil. This…
January 25th, 2020 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
First, as always, INCI, the list of ingredients that tells you what’s in there. Progeline is a trade name for an ingredient that contains glycerin, water, dextran (a polysaccharide used in artificial tears) plus an undefined peptide, trifluoroacetyl-tripeptide-2. And then, as usual, “claims”. The people who sell it say that it “modulates progerin, a marker of senescence”. First, I will tell you what I know about progerin (you can find more in Wikipedia). And then, you can tell me whether would you trust a mystery synthetic peptide to “fix” it for you? Before progerin, there is Lamin-A, a nuclear fibrillar protein. Lamin A is a major structural component of the…
January 19th, 2020 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
I am here, writing this post while drinking my morning coffee, so I can’t pretend to be impartial. How safe is it? Very: it is used to stimulate breathing in premature babies. What can it do for your skin? Figure. Caffeine. The dry data The purine alkaloid caffeine is a major component of many beverages such as coffee and tea. Caffeine and its metabolites theobromine and xanthine have been shown to have antioxidant properties. Benefits Caffeine decreases the risk of skin cancer promoted by UV irradiation, apparently by slowing down repair of DNA mutations caused by UV making it more precise and preventing mutations that may lead to cancer.…
January 18th, 2020 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
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 an ingredient for our Skin Actives products. Yes, I look at plants that were used for centuries by different peoples. I read the publications that deal with the ethnological use of the plant extracts, but that is only the beginning. Maybe the ancient people who used…
January 18th, 2020 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
The flowers of Helichrysum italicum are so tempting for marketing. Immortelle (in French), everlasting (in English), siempreviva (in Spanish). Words are powerful, and together with our brains, always looking for magic in a world that does not offer it, is a great combination that can be used to sell you, the potential customer, anything. It seems obvious that the essential oil of this flower has nothing to do with extending human life, it is just that the clusters of yellow flowers retain their color after picking and are used in dry flower arrangements. Another name for this pant is “curry plant” but you could not sell a product with that…
January 1st, 2020 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
Answer: We understand the seriousness of the problem and we face it differently. The key concept is that the skin is alive and quite capable of doing its job, until it isn’t. What has changed? The skin ages, or is damaged, or the environment changes and overwhelms the defenses. Our answer: we replenish the skin’s natural defenses, by carefully following the established antioxidant system already at work in our skin. We don’t innovate in the sense that we don’t build from scratch, we only refresh, “top-up” the natural order. We can achieve this because we understand how the skin functions: its anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, and molecular biology. Amazing scientific advances…
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 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 22nd, 2019 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
Nobody likes to talk about money (“it is so crass!”) but the question arises once and again. What are the relative contributions to the price of a skin care product? There can be a huge difference in the price of ingredients, even when the INCI name is the same or very similar. For example, a tea extract can be just what you make when you have a cup of tea, a tea bag left in very hot water for a few minutes. But this term can also refer to an extract that has been repeatedly purified to enrich it in epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG), a polyphenol responsible for many of the…
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 19th, 2019 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
The scalp, usually hidden behind one of our precious possessions, our hair, is exposed to the same stressors than the rest of our skin, like UV radiation, reactive oxygen species (ROS*), heat, physical stress and more. On top of the usual suspects, add the long list of chemicals, usually unwanted, that are present in the hair “care” products we use. Hair coloring, perms, straighteners, plus hair dryers, chemical and physical stress endured by those wearing “extensions”, and who knows what else. It is not surprising that most people, starting at a relatively young age, have hair problems which are actually scalp problems, because hair is dead protein and all the…
December 17th, 2019 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
The plant: Vitis vinifera Suggestions: You can listen to Libiamo ne’ lieti calici (La traviata) while reading this post. I say grape and you think wine. But you should also remember grape seed oil. And grape seed pronathocyanidins. And resveratrol! Besides the chemicals involved in basic everyday life, like chlorophyll, Rubisco, cellulose, etc., Vitis is full of “secondary metabolites”. The chemicals Vitis vinifera red cultivars are rich in anthocyanins that impart their color to the berries (generally in the skin). Anthocyanins can be found in the skin of the berries, hydroxycinnamic acids in the pulp and condensed tannins of the proanthocyanidins type in the seeds. Stilbenoids can be found in…
December 15th, 2019 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
Important: don’t thank plants (or Mother Nature, or Gaia) for the fantastic chemicals that benefit you. They are not made for your benefit. Conversely, those lethal poisons that may be hiding in the pretty fruits are probably meant for you or other predators. Chemical ecology studies the interactions between organisms and their environment that are mediated by naturally occurring chemicals. Many of us wake up in the morning looking forward to a hot water extract of the roasted seeds from Coffea arabica L., a.k.a. coffee. I like to drink my capuccino in the morning. It stimulates me (caffeine!) and it is a lovely way to start my day. Let’s look…
December 13th, 2019 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
Let’s start at the begiining. What is bearberry? A plant. What is arbutin? A chemical. Now that we sorted that out, let’s look at the details. Figure. Thomé Flora von Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz 1885. This is a plant that has been used in folk medicine to alleviate an assortment of ailments. It contains many phytochemicals, some of them good for you, others not so much. Among those chemicals is arbutin. Arbutin is a derivative of hydroquine present in many plants. Other names are arbutoside and hydroquinone β-D-glucopyranoside. This means that there is a glucose attached to the hydroquinone part of the molecule in a “beta” link. The glucose…
November 10th, 2019 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
If the wall in your home has a crack in it, you call a painter. He will patch up the wall, prime it and paint over. The wall will look like new. If your left eyelid is a bit “droopy”, and your first instinct is to see a plastic surgeon, think again. Because your skin is alive and it is silly to think of surgery as the only option. Your skin is not like a wall: your skin is alive and capable of changing for the better. %0, 60 or even 70 does not mean that you have yo give up on skin care, on the contrary. Almost anything good…
October 24th, 2019 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
Warning: this is a “heavy” post that may feel to you like you are back in school and not in a good way (like for prom). You don’t have to read it but the objective is to convey to you the complexity of skin metabolism and molecular biology and why you should never look for a “magic” ingredient when it comes to skin youth and health. In short, life (LIFE) is complicated. Your skin is alive. Below the few layers of dead cells in the epidermis, perfectly designed for the tough job of protecting your body from pollution and damage, is the basal cell layer. Here is your stem cells…
October 20th, 2019 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
As a skin care company, do we need to be cute to be successful? It is too late to change our name, Skin Actives Scientific to something cute like “troll skin” or “sweet minuet”. Philosophy is already taken. What should matter to our customers is whether there are ingredients in other brands that we should envy. Trust me: this does not happen often because we are so cutting edge.We know what works, we are up-to-date with scientific literature and we can find or make anything that is worth gaving. Specifically, do I envy any ingredient in Drunk Elephant? Because if I envied a cute little fridge or a fancy container,…
October 19th, 2019 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
Preservatives are essential to the health of the consumer; they prevent the growth of bacteria and mold on the products that you apply to your skin. But the pressure to hide the preservatives from the ingredient lists is very strong, with some people who don’t know about bacteria and mold insisting that preservatives are not necessary. The answer of honest companies is to explain the need for preservatives and to remind the consumer that a piece of bread, even when kept in the fridge, will eventually be covered in mold and bacteria. Dishonest manufacturers, on the other hand, hide the preservatives in a variety of manners. How can a Lactobacillus…
September 19th, 2019 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
Remember: All protective mechanisms in the skin are interconnected and regulated by redox-dependent processes. What is glutathione? Figure: glutathione (a.k.a. γ-L-Glutamyl-L-cysteinylglycine), with that all-important SH group. When oxidized, two glutathione molecules are joined together to make a S-S bridge. L-Glutathione (gamma-L-Glutamyl-L-cysteinyl-glycine) is a tripeptide composed of the amino acids L-glutamine, L-cysteine, and glycine. Glutathione is part of the antioxidant defense system of the cell, together with superoxide dismutase, catalase, glutharedoxin, thioredoxin, alpha-D-tocopherol (vitamin E), ascorbic acid (vitamin C), and others. GSH protects cells by neutralizing (i.e., reducing) Reactive Oxygen Radicals (ROS*). This conversion is illustrated by the reduction of peroxides: 2 GSH + R2O2 → GSSG + 2 ROH (R…
September 14th, 2019 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
What makes an oil “special”? Its fatty acid composition. Why? Because we, humans, can’t make every fatty acid we need, so we must obtain what we can’t make from the outside world, as food or topically (for our skin). What are the so called essential fatty acids, i.e. those we can’t make by ourselves? They are two: alpha-linolenic acid (an omega-3 fatty acid) and linoleic acid (an omega-6 fatty acid). Other fatty acids are considered “conditionally essential”, in the sense that they can become essential under some developmental or disease conditions; they include docosahexaenoic acid (an omega-3 fatty acid) and gamma-linolenic acid (an omega-6 fatty acid). How do you make…