Skin Actives – General
February 1st, 2021 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
When you make a coffee extract at home (be an espresso or drip) the extract you get is brown. If you make a tea leaf extract, it will be light brown. When you also make fruit extracts, (called smoothies or fruit juices), their colors are similar to the fruits you are using to make the extract. So how come that when you buy a cream with coffee extract it is as white as snow? These are the possibilities: The fruit (or root) it was extracted from is white like snow The extract was further purified until all colored substances were eliminated (this is OK as long as the active components…
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 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…
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…
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 24th, 2019 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
I wish I could write “proper” cards to everyone of you. Every time a see a good review or I recognize a name on the forum that I have seen for years, it makes me happy. Proud and happy. I am so proud and happy that we have been able to keep our small family company for so long, never “selling out our soul”. We continue to study, read, research, innovate and work hard every day, not just for you but also for us because it makes us happy to contribute to the health and well being of all our customers/members/friends/clients. Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukah, Greetings of the Season, Happy…
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 21st, 2019 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
Skin Actives, our company. When we started Skin Actives, we had the advantage of being outsiders, so everything we did was “thinking outside the box”. For us, there was no box. Our starting point was not an existing cream, but beneficial activity on the skin. The “medium” was there just to provide a carrier that would allow the active/s to exert their activity on the skin, providing, for example, a stabilizing medium for the active protein. If we wanted to use vitamin C, my question was not what was popular or sold well but, rather, which chemical derivative would keep it vitamin C activity longer and without side effects. At…
July 6th, 2019 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
The first thing you need to know: boxes for skin care products cost a lot of money. They are made to order and the minimum is usually in the (many) thousands. Once you print a box with the ingredient list, forget about improving the formula, because you would have to discard so many boxes and throw away good money. This is why we at Skin Actives don’t usually use boxes. Typically, we change ingredient lists as needed, usually to add one or two actives that new scientific research shows to be effective for the problem we are addressing with the product. The same is true for special packaging. From the…
June 14th, 2019 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
How much is too much? The answer to this apparently simple question is very complicated: as complicated as the number of ingredients used in skin care. Also, for a good answer, you may have to go to numbers that are much smaller than a percent (1%) and go to parts per million. In the best of cases more is likely to be a waste of money. You are throwing away the money you spent on the active by trying to add more. For example, if you add more ascorbic acid to a serum than will possibly dissolve (as determined by the laws of nature and how water interacts with ascorbic…
April 28th, 2019 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
In short: A sea kelp bioferment-based serum that includes Skin Actives ROS BIONETTM plus the best low molecular weight antioxidants. Ingredients: Water, Sea Kelp (Lactobacillus/Kelp Ferment Filtrate) Bioferment, Sodium PCA, Magnesium Ascorbyl Phosphate (Vitamin C), Sodium Hyaluronate (Hyaluronic Acid), Ferulic Acid, Aloe Barbadensis (Aloe Vera) Leaf Extract, Camellia Sinensis (Green Tea) Epigallocatechin Gallate, Niacinamide, Carnosine, Hesperidin Methyl Chalcone, Carnitine, Tetrahydrodiferuloylmethane (and) Tetrahydrodemethoxydiferuloylmethane (and) Tetrahydrobisdemethoxydiferuloylmethane, Sorghum Bicolor Leaf/Stem Extract, Lycopene, Astaxanthin, Fucoxanthin, Porphyridium Polysaccharide, Glutathione, sh-Polypeptide-2, sh-Polypeptide-77 (Glutaredoxin (GRX)), Superoxide Dismutase, Citric Acid, Propylene Glycol (and) Diazolidinyl Urea (and) Methylparaben (and) Propylparaben. Actives by property Anti-inflammatory: sea kelp bioferment, Porphyridium polysaccharide, Low molecular weight antioxidants: green tea EGCG, hyaluronic acid, hesperidin…
April 24th, 2019 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
Living in the city can be stressful to the skin: high concentrations of pollutants in the air will stress your skin through the production of free radicals. Free radicals are high energy molecules that are missing an electron and will go about starting chain reactions and destroying molecules in their search for the missing electron. The molecules they stole electrons from will become ROS* themselves and continue a chain reaction. What we see in a polluted city is a “cloud” of very fine particles floating in the air, and the air smells strange. We should be concerned because those fine particles are full of strong oxidants that can increase respiratory…
April 23rd, 2019 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
First, what is a line corrector? It is an emergency/makeup trick to “hide” wrinkles when you are getting ready for a party. It is not a long term anti-aging treatment. What can you do? You have options. “Fill” them. A thick serum that contains some reflecting powder may help. This is the strategy of some products now on the market. This may have a (slightly) artificial look and be visible depending on the type of lighting. Smooth them. Our anti-aging Hydramist contains the mineral strontium and will smooth your fine lines temporarily. Another useful property: it may prevent a rosacea flare when you enter a warm room. The best of…
April 23rd, 2019 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
Once upon a time I was in love with algae (I almost named my daughter after a Diatom, class Bacillariophyceae). Then I fell in love with polysaccharides. In fact, I am still in love with both. So what could be more perfect that to work with algae polysaccharides? Nothing, but, in top of the beauty of algae and the complexity of polysaccharides, there are all the health benefits that these special polysaccharides have for us, humans. What so special about algae? It depends. All the plants we are familiar with, like the palms in my back garden or the roses in the front, evolved from green algae. The basic cell…
April 21st, 2019 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
Skin Actives Anti-aging Hydramist improves the appearance of sun damaged skin and aged skin. But it can also help alleviate the flaring of rosacea when you enter an environment that triggers it. I had applied with Mary Hunter, a skin care specialist, for a patent. It turned out that a patent required the help of lawyers we could not afford at the time, but the information is still very relevant. Some of our forum members who have rosacea found that the then Celestite Spritz alleviated their symptoms. Skin Actives anti-aging HydraMist which temporarily will smooth up wrinkles. Strontium divalent ions in a distillate of orange flower petals (neroli floral water), …
April 20th, 2019 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
Answer: the ingredients What it does Helps reduce the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles because it gives the skin all it needs to repair damage and protect its components. Provides low and high molecular weight antioxidants to reduce oxidative stress caused by free radicals produced by pollution and the skin itself as it respires. It is a source of nutrients that allows your skin to follow the instructions provided by the epidermal growth factor. How? The director of the orchestra: epidermal growth factor (replenishing endogenous EGF that decreases with age) Stem cell stability and anchorage: apocynin. Botanicals with anti-age activity: Centella asiatica. Used in traditional Chinese and Indian medicine.…
April 20th, 2019 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
As always, the secret is in the ingredients. My objective when I designed the alpha/beta was to emulate (improve on an existing product) on a product in the market that worked very well. That product is not sold any longer, so SAS alpha beta exfoliator is probably one of a kind: a mix alpha/beta without water. Alpha hydroxy acids are organic acids with one hydroxyl group attached to the alpha position of the acid. They include glycolic acid, lactic acid, malic acid, tartaric acid, and citric acid are often used extensively in cosmetic formulations. Salicylic acid as a peeling agent has a number of indications, including acne vulgaris, melasma, photodamage,…
February 24th, 2019 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
Well, not literally, but we can help your skin survive that long flight you are dreading (I will have a 20 hour flight in March and a 24 hour flight in April). What you will need: Intense lip repair treatment for your lips and ELS serum for your skin. Intense lip repair treatment: Cholesteryl Oleyl Carbonate (and) Cholesteryl Nonanoate (and) Cholesteryl Chloride (and) BHT, Punica Granatum (Pomegranate) Seed Oil, Tocotrienols, Tocopherol (Vitamin E)s, Astaxanthin, Lycopene, Xanthophyll, R-Alpha Lipoic Acid, Beta-Carotene, Mentha Piperita Oil. ELS: 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…
February 23rd, 2019 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
Skin Actives Scientific Collagen serum, our #1 bestseller, started as a list of actives that DIYers (do it yourself aficionados) could put together to make a great serum. The objective was stimulate synthesis of macromolecules (proteins, carbohydrates, DNA, the whole shebang) in our skin and to protect skin structure and function from aging and deterioration in general (newsletter February 2007). Soon after, we started selling a serum that had all of those components, mixed in our lab and dispensed in small glass bottles with droppers. From our June 2007 (12 years ago!) Newsletter “Let’s Make Collagen” Serum We will be adding a new prototype serum. Our clients asked us to…