The efficacy of anti-aging skin care products

Anti-aging skin care products are neither magical medicines that can make people "rejuvenate", nor are they purely useless for charging IQ taxes - their core function is to specifically intervene in the intervenable causes of skin aging such as photoaging, oxidative damage, collagen loss, etc., effectively delay the aging process, improve mild to moderate signs of aging, and have extremely limited effect on severe aging problems such as deep static lines and severe sagging.

I have been researching and developing skin care formulas for almost 8 years, and have helped thousands of users adjust their skin care plans offline. To be honest, I feel very deeply about this problem. Many people either boast that anti-aging skin care products can change their face, or they say they are useless, because they have not understood the limits of their capabilities.

A 32-year-old Internet product manager came to me to complain. He said that he had gritted his teeth and bought an anti-aging set from a big-name brand that cost several thousand. After using it for three months, his nasolabial lines were not gone at all. He felt that it was all an IQ tax from brand marketing. I pulled her under the skin tester to look at the comparison chart, and she was stunned: the collagen density in the dermis was 12% higher than three months ago, and the dry lines under her eyes had basically disappeared, and most of the yellowishness caused by staying up late had also receded. However, she stared at her nasolabial folds that had been growing for 5 years every day, and of course she felt it was useless. Think about it, those lines are caused by skin laxity and the downward movement of the fat layer. It is already a technical ceiling that the active ingredients of skin care products can penetrate into the dermis. How can we leverage deeper fat tissue?

It’s also interesting to say that people of different age groups can experience completely different effects when using anti-aging skin care products. As a girl in her early 20s, there is really no need to save money to buy expensive anti-aging creams. If you apply SPF50+ sunscreen every day and add a 180 yuan VC essence antioxidant, you can block 80% of photoaging. This is the most cost-effective anti-aging. My sister just graduated last year and works as an outdoor choreographer. She carries a machine and runs in the sun every day. She used to find it boring to wear sunscreen and didn't even wear a hat. Within six months, she got a lot of small sun spots on her face and the corners of her mouth became very dark. She looked three or four years older than her actual age. I put sunscreen on her head and wear a hat every day when going out, and applied 10% prototype VC at night. In just over three months, the sun spots have basically faded away, her face is no longer as red and hot as before, and her complexion has improved instantly. This is the core function of anti-aging skin care products: to nip the damage before it becomes an irreversible problem.

As for the question "whether A-alcohol is the gold standard for anti-aging" that is currently very hotly debated in the industry, the opinions are really different and the conclusions are completely different. Academic researchers definitely agree with it. After all, it is one of the few ingredients that has been certified by the FDA and has a large amount of clinical data to support the ability to promote collagen production in the dermis. The effect is indeed strong. But those of us who do offline operations will be careful. I have met too many people who cannot tolerate A-alcohol. In order to pursue quick results, they use 0.5% high-concentration advanced version. As a result, the skin barrier is damaged, inflammation repeats, but it triggers inflammatory aging and the face collapses faster. Last month, a 27-year-old girl came to see me. She had followed the trend of using high-concentration A-alcohol, and her face had been rotten for more than two months. Her face was red and acne broke out, and she also had a lot of inflammation and pigmentation. She looked more than two years older than before. Later, I switched her to a combination of Bosein and phytosterols, which first repaired the barrier and then gently promoted collagen. It took her half a year to return to her previous condition. So what ingredients are best really depends on each person, and there is no standard answer that is universally applicable.

Oh, by the way, there are also the "stem cell anti-aging" and "plant placenta anti-aging" that were previously touted on the market. To be honest, active stem cells are not allowed to be added to domestically regulated skin care products. Those products that claim to add stem cells either add some cell lysate or culture medium, and the concentration of active ingredients is so low that they can be ignored, or it is a pure IQ tax. Don't pay this unjust money.

Many people ask me, are anti-aging skin care products worth buying? I think it depends on what your expectations are. We’re not saying it’s unfair. If you want to improve dullness and dry lines after staying up late, make your skin feel firmer and firmer, and maintain its current good condition, then choosing anti-aging skin care products with the right ingredients is absolutely useful and cost-effective. But if you expect that the Sichuan lines and nasolabial folds that have been growing for ten years can be painted away in half a year, and that the sagging jawline can be painted as tight as a thread carving, then I advise you to just save the money and save it for medical aesthetics.

To put it bluntly, anti-aging skin care products are like regular maintenance of a car. If you change the oil and maintain the paint on time, the car can be driven like new for ten or eight years. But if you expect that just a maintenance can transform the old car into the latest sports car, isn’t that funny? Once you understand the boundaries of its capabilities, you will no longer worry about whether it is an IQ tax.