Do anti-aging skin care products really work?

It's useful, but its effects have clear boundaries, and it's by no means as amazing as the "face-changing" and "reversing age" stories spread online.

I have a best friend who works as a planner. She suddenly realized the importance of anti-aging when she was 30 years old. After that, she applied 0.2% A-alcohol facial cream every night and always wore sunscreen and carried an umbrella when going out. She is 35 this year, and she stands with a girl in the same group who is one year younger than her, who usually only wears basic lotion and always forgets to use sunscreen. The dry lines around the eyes and the firmness of the apples of the skin are very different. Last time the department took a group photo, the retoucher worked on the little girl for almost three minutes to tighten the apples of the skin and fill in the nasolabial folds. When she came here, she barely touched the facial lines and just adjusted the skin color. This difference accumulated over a long period of time is really visible to the naked eye.

But don’t overestimate anti-aging skin care products, thinking that expensive ones can definitely “change your face.” A while ago, I met a fan who complained that he spent more than 3,000 yuan to buy a bottle of lady anti-aging cream. After using it for two months, the static nasolabial folds on the face have not disappeared at all, and the jawline is still slumped. It is called IQ tax. In fact, it's not that the product is useless, it's that her expectations were on the wrong track - the penetration of skin care products is limited, and most of them can only affect the epidermis and superficial dermis. At most, they can help you slow down the loss of collagen and stimulate a small amount of collagen regeneration in the dermis. It really has no ability to pull back the deep static lines that have been formed and the soft tissue that has seriously drooped. This level of anti-aging needs has to be solved by medical beauty projects. It is a bit unreasonable to rely on useless skin care products.

There are also many girls in their early 20s who say they feel nothing after using anti-aging essence. This is actually normal. At this age, the skin itself has sufficient collagen, and the anti-aging effect is "preventive" rather than "replenishing". It is difficult to see the changes with the naked eye. It will take five to ten years to compare with people of the same age who have never done anti-aging before the difference will show up. I heard an old friend from the dermatology department say that if you have poor living habits, stay up until three or four o'clock every day, never leave your hands with milk tea and cakes, and don't even apply sunscreen when you go out, then applying expensive anti-aging products will be useless. You consume more collagen every day than skin care products can help you replenish it. It's strange that it can have any effect.

To put it bluntly, anti-aging skin care products are actually more like "pension insurance" for your skin. The sooner you start using them regularly and with a good daily routine and sun protection, the higher the "income" you will get as you get older. You can't expect to directly receive a pension of millions after paying the premium for half a year, right? Of course, you have to choose the right product. Nowadays, many products are under the banner of anti-aging, and the active ingredients are less than the essence. For example, A-alcohol is less than 0.1%, and Bose is only a conceptual addition. It is inevitable that it will not be effective after using it. Do more research on the ingredients before buying, and don’t buy blindly based on marketing rhetoric.

Anyway, I have been using anti-aging products for almost eight years. Now I am 32 years old. I have no obvious dry lines on my face, and my skin is much firmer than my friends of the same age. It is definitely wrong to say that it is useless, but if you expect it to replace medical beauty, you should give up this idea as soon as possible, find the right positioning, and set your expectations correctly. Anti-aging skin care products are actually much more effective than you think.