”Everything you put on your skin….
…is readily absorbed into your bloodstream”
This is a kind of statement that you hear now and then. Doesn’t it sound just awful? But is it really so, is it true? Well, if that were perfectly true, then it would be really easy for us to develop products. And skincare in general wouldn’t have the reputation that it has today, that nothing really works.
If it were true, any woman using a nail enamel remover would have blood- poisoning. Dish washing products and soaps would get into your body and cause the same kind of toxic effects as if you had ingested it.
The superb skin barrier
The thing is, the skin is a superb barrier. The first layer consists of dead flattened skin cells that are hold together by a very special layer of fatty acids and water binding substances. To reach down deeper into the skin, a substance has to be able to penetrate both watery and fatty layers. In general substances are either fat soluble or water soluble, so it will either be stopped by the watery layers or the fatty layers. There is a better chance of success with fat soluble substances but it is tricky anyhow. You can use specific substances that increase the absorption. They are called penetration enhancers. Piperine, a pepper extract, is such a substance. There is also lots of research into different delivery systems within skincare, that is, technologies that make it possible to get stuff beneath the uppermost skin surface. One example is encapsulation where active substances, such as a-vitamin, are encapsulated into miniscule small bubbles of lecithin and other substances that protect the actives and enables the absorption.
Preserving moisture
But it is really tricky anyhow. To penetrate the skin surface, the substances must be small enough. Most substances are actually far too big. Sometimes I hear people arguing that they need moisturizing products to provide the skin with moisture. That won’t happen. It’s a misunderstanding. Our body consists of 70% of water and the most important task for all skin companies is to develop products that help the skin preserving that moisture inside the body so that we don’t dry out. So moisture cannot come from outside, in that case you would drown every time you take a shower. Some substances, called humectants, bind water on the skin surface, but they don’t make water enter the skin.
Thus, the skin barrier is amazing. However, due to showers, soaps, cleansers, dry indoor climate, poor diets and pollution, the skin barrier is harmed repeatedly. This is very obvious for hairdressers who often have problems with skin allergies due to all products they expose their hands to. With a destroyed skin barrier there is a greater chance that substances will be absorbed into the skin and eventually reach the bloodstream.
Damaged barrier – increased penetration
In our clinical tests on anti-ageing products we use lots of instrumental measurements to detect changes in skin structure and pigmentation. It is very hard to know if the active substances really do any good at all or if they just stay on the skin surface that consists of dead skin cells. The changes take a long time, more or less the time it takes for the all skin cells in the upper skin layer to be exchanged. When we test products for eczema, none of these measurements are necessary. This is because eczema is so much easier to test. It is clearly visible, the active substances will be able to penetrate and influence the affected area and the change, if any, is also just as visible.
Consequently, when your skin barrier is destroyed, it is (sadly enough) very easy to influence your skin. If there is anything you should focus on when it comes to skincare it is to preserve and strengthen your skin barrier. An unfortunate development in skincare is that many products that are used daily actually focus on destroying the skin barriers. Such as cleansers, soaps and exfoliators. My advice is that you use these products with care, or as little as possible, and make sure to restore the natural oils and humectants of your skin, that you wash away in your daily routine, with a skincare product that works for you.
By the way, we are as we speak developing our own cleanser, more about it in next coming posts.
