Question:

Every time I open a magazine there seem to be new skin care products with some really bizarre ingredients. 

What gives?

Skin care and cosmetics are a multi-billion dollar business and, just when you think it can not get any more competitive, it somehow manages to.  Skin care companies are therefore constantly striving to find some edge that they can use to differentiate themselves from their competitors and in this quest things have quite frankly gone from the sublime to the ridiculous.  I have written about a number of the more “interesting” ingredients in the past and for the purpose of this month’s column will look at a few bizarre ingredients of note.

I would like to start by saying that just because an ingredient seems bizarre, exotic or extremely rare/expensive; there is no reason to believe that it is effective, ineffective or even dangerous when formulated in a skin care product.  For example, as exotic as such things as caviar, snail slime or the enzymes secreted by salmon fry may seem; at heart they are all marine-based ingredients that are high in some similar beneficial essential fatty acids.  Are they any more effective than any other sources of the same active ingredients?  The answer to this question is generally no.   Such exotic ingredients do, however, make a product appear unique which, in today’s marketing-driven world is, unfortunately, generally seen as more important than a products efficacy by the companies producing them.

The reality is that there are really vey few breakthroughs in skin care and that the overwhelming majority of even the most exotic-appearing new ingredients are, at best, merely a different source of some tried and true chemicals that have been in use for years.  Moreover, as a rule of thumb, the more exotic an ingredient is, the less chance it has of living up to its hype.

Please submit your questions by email to Ms. Zaborski at [email protected]

In 1978 Ms. Zaborski founded the Corrective Skin Care Institute Inc, a pioneering medical spa, and for over 15 years has worked with an international team of cosmetic chemists and medical professionals to develop the System for Optimal Skin™ (SOS™) skin correction system.