Skin Actives – General
November 17th, 2023 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
SOD is a very special enzyme, starting with its name. What is “dismutase”? An enzyme that catalyzes (accelerates) a reaction where two equal but opposite reactions occur on two separate molecules. Superoxide dismutase “dismutes” peroxide; it takes two molecules of superoxide, strips the extra electron off one, and places it on the other. So, one molecule ends up with one less electron, forming normal oxygen, and the other ends up with an extra electron. The one with the extra electron rapidly picks up two hydrogen ions to form hydrogen peroxide. In this way, O−2 is converted into two less damaging species. 2H++ 2O−2 → O2 + H2O2 Why is Superoxide…
July 15th, 2023 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
I would like to start a program within Skin Actives to send care packages to friends or family members needing one. You would provide us with the mailing address and details of the recipient, and we would invoice you for the products I think would be best. The products would be shipped to your recipient with a card with your name and wishes. I could also include a letter with details about the ingredients in the product. A very individualized experience. What do you think? Email me at hannah at skinactives with your comments. Thank you
December 13th, 2022 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
I, Hannah, had a very good year. Skin Actives had a very good year. I wish to thank all our customers and fans, and to the people at Skin Actives, for making this very good year possible. We are stronger than before and brought new products to the market. That’s remarkable, and I will not mention all the obstacles we had to surmount because I’d rather focus on the good stuff. New proteins. Check. New products. Check. Kept focusing on effectiveness and skin health. Check. Respect our customers. Check. Be nice to each other. Check! My New Year messages to you, our customer Primum, non nocere (in Latin, first, do…
November 18th, 2022 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
My granddaughter (8 years old and a third grader) got a special assignment at school. She had to interview her grandparents. One question for me was:” what would you tell yourself when you were my age?” I came up with some words, not my own. “Caminante no hay camino, se hace camino al andar.” This line is from Antonio Machado’s poem. It means that there is no established path; you have to make your own. When I was young, I assumed there was a path to follow, and I tried (too hard) to discern it. I would have been happier knowing that each of us must find his/her own way…
October 13th, 2022 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
We at Skin Actives understand the interactions between the skin and the environment better than any other skincare company. We are scientists familiar with chemistry, skin biology, and the environment and have the diplomas to prove it. You need Science to formulate the best skincare products to defend the skin from the Thailand trifecta: sun, ROS* (reactive oxygen species), and humidity. We have the right actives to protect the skin from the Thailand trifecta, and we also have the expertise to formulate them in a base that will not exacerbate other skin problems. In short, we offer the best “turn-back the clock” actives like ROS BioNet, epidermal growth factor, apocynin,…
July 3rd, 2022 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
Why are Skin Actives ingredient lists so long? It’s not because of “label value”, the skincare industry practice that uses plant Latin names to hide the “baddies” and make you think you are getting value for money. Not at all. Each ingredient in our list has a good reason to be there. We at Skin Actives understand how complex the skin is. To address a skin problem, or to improve skin health, or reverse skin aging, we need to address that complexity, and this is how our ingredient lists become so long. Look, for example, at how eczema develops (for a more detailed explanation, please see this post). You have…
May 18th, 2022 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
I am worried about all that talk about “plant-based” you see in skincare advertising. Why? Because it seems that in pursuit of anything and everything “plant”, we are going in the wrong direction. Example: alkanes. I love alkanes: linear carbon and hydrogen chains, make up waxes that will protect leaves and fruits from losing water. They also work great at preventing water loss from our skin, and the most expensive skincare products use inexpensive petrolatum and mineral oil to make a cream that will prevent water loss and accelerate healing. Most of the petrolatum and mineral oil we use comes from ancient organic matter, the same source of the gas/petrol…
May 16th, 2022 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
This sounds big, but that’s because we are! Synergy is an interaction or cooperation giving rise to a whole that is greater than the simple sum of its parts. Our products contain amino acids and other nutrients that will be better used by your skin because there are growth factors and antioxidants. Your hair will be stronger because apocynin will support your stem cells while ROS* BioNet prevents damage to the cell membranes. Skin Actives has never been about the one “magic ingredient” because we understand how a living system works. We see the skin as it interacts with the rest of the body and we look at the epidermis…
April 22nd, 2022 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
Decrease in testosterone levels in males?Increase in breast cancer in women?Bad hair or loss of hair? Stop and think. Where is the information coming from? From a company trying to sell you something without ‘X’ or “Z”? From a “non-profit” that sells “certificates of safety”? From a television personality who wants to increase his visibility? Follow the money. If a problem exists, we need to find out what’s causing it, not start blaming everything invented since 1950. And what about remedies? Will red light increase testosterone? We are not plants (they have receptors for red light). Where on earth did they get the evidence that proves that red light increases…
April 16th, 2022 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
Those “miracle” natural substances that people have been using for centuries or even millennia are useful because of the chemicals they contain. Sometimes, the stories are not true and there is nothing beneficial in those false miracle products. But when they effectively treat a human (or animal) condition, biochemists and phytochemists will work hard to identify the chemicals that confer the natural substance its power. The process is hard and time-consuming, but eventually, we find the key chemical. Sometimes, there is more than just one active chemical, like it’s the case of tea leaves (EGCG, caffeine). It gets even more interesting when the biochemist finds the mechanism of action. Finding…
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…