Why should you care?
January 17th, 2024 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
I learned a lot. Here it goes. 1) The skincare industry is slooooooooow to learn. 2) The double whammy: Wasted opportunities (to do good) and primum non nocere (first do no harm) go unheard 3) The taxpayer pays for basic scientific research but doesn’t get to enjoy its fruits. 4) Skincare is not a priority for scientists and doctors unless it’s cancer. 5) Not all advances in basic knowledge will translate into advances in skincare 6) What can we expect from the future? 7) You need practice reading word salads to discover what’s inside a skincare product 1. The skincare industry is slow to learn. Why? In 2024, a premium…
April 13th, 2023 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
We look in horror at old photos of women in corsets, or the women’s feet deformed by years of binding. And yet, we are repeating the old mistakes with the help of science, pharmacology, and plastic surgery. The corsets have been replaced with more comfortable Spanx. People use injectable synthetic chemicals to lose 30 pounds in a couple of weeks. Women get plastic surgeons who forgot their Hippocratic oath to remove fat from their faces. Other women get the same plastic surgeons to inject fat or chemically modified hyaluronic acid into their faces. Can you play with the body in that way and stay healthy? Maybe, but you will pay…
January 4th, 2022 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
What is sustainability? It is a relatively new word, plus its meaning has been changing with time. Originally, “sustainability” meant making such use of natural, renewable resources like a forest so that people could continue to rely on their yields in the long term. In other words, using a resource in such a way that it never runs out. Nowadays it means keeping the balance between environment, equity, and economy. In any of its uses, it’s an admirable aim and looks great in advertising. Because the meaning of the word changes with the source, it’s a good idea to ask what the person (or the advertiser) means by it. How…
December 6th, 2021 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
We know that air pollution accelerates skin aging and leads to problems like hyper-pigmentation and inflammation. How? Cells all over the body are constantly adapting and responding to changes in their micro-environment: diet, bacterial flora and whole body metabolism. Then, they make the proteins that are required to do well in the new circumstances. It’s important to know that although our DNA codes for proteins, which proteins are made at each moment is a process tightly regulated. DNA–>RNA–> Proteins is a pathway that took many decades to elucidate. But how does the cell “decide” which DNA will be transcribed to RNA and which RNA will be translated into proteins? Figure:…
January 12th, 2020 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
What is the precautionary principle? Here it is, in Wikipedia. “The precautionary principle (or precautionary approach) is a strategy for approaching issues of potential harm when extensive scientific knowledge on the matter is lacking. It emphasizes caution, pausing and review before leaping into new innovations that may prove disastrous. ” Although this sounds so much like philosophy (it is), it can be applied to daily life. In the skin care industry, novelty is sold as a virtue, when in reality, it is anything but. Older ingredients have accumulated more information about possible side effects and decades of use show that they are safe’ if they are not, they are banned…
October 27th, 2019 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
Because it contains essential fatty acids. But, you may ask, what is an essential fatty acid? Essential fatty acids are, like essential amino acids and vitamins, chemicals we need for life but do not have the ability to make ourselves. For this reason, they must be in our diet and, for the skin they must be applied topically. Why can’t we make those very important fatty acids ourselves? During evolution we lost the enzymes required to make them. Just like we can’t make vitamin C (L-ascorbic acid). Unless you ingest ascorbic acid (in a vitamin pill or orange juice), you get very sick!. Why do we need essential fatty acids?…
October 24th, 2019 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
Because you don’t want to have the very thin skin that “old” old people have. Healthy skin protects our bodies from water loss, oxidants in the air and infection, and it feels better and more comfortable! Figure. The Madonna dell’Impanatta by Raphael shows you the difference in appearance between young and old skin. Old skin will be unable to protect your body as well as young skin does. There is stuff we cannot change and stuff we can change, so it is important that we learn what good skin care products can do for us. For that, please have a look at Skin Actives. Using run-of-the-mill skin care, even if…
October 22nd, 2019 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
Why do you need healthy skin? Why do you need young skin? For many people, their face and the age their face projects to the world, will determine whether they get a particular job or whether they get to the second date. We may not like it, but it’s a fact. How we look is important. Even for those of us who don’t go out much, our skin is incredibly important. If your life is good and you want to keep living it into your 90’s, healthy skin will make an enormous difference. The paper-thin skin of the very old cannot do its job properly – keeping infectious agents out, keeping water in, etc., and it feels uncomfortable. There’s no…
October 22nd, 2019 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
Because glutathione protects your skin from strong oxidants! Glutathione is one of the peptides that matter, and a lot. Glutathione is present in us and in most living beings for good reasons. Glutathione helps us cope with life at 21% oxygen (what we do have in the atmosphere). Respiring oxygen allows us get the most energy out of our food but it carries a price: Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS*), What are ROS*? Reactive oxygen containing molecules that are so desperate for electrons that will take them from anything and everything. There goes your DNA, your proteins, your lipids (vital for cell life) etc. In top of the ROS* we produce…