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Cosmetics: A Long Tradition of Ignoring Common Sense
How old is the complicity between cosmetic companies and the press? Very old. Take a look at an excerpt from this article titled "The Poisonous Beauty Advice Columns of Victorian England."
"Glass and tin bottles hide snug in a case, waiting for a woman’s daily ritual. She reaches for a bottle of ammonia and washes it over her face, careful to replace the delicate glass stopper. Next, she dips her fingertips into the creams and powders of her toilet table, gravitating toward a bright white paint, filled with lead, which she delicately paints over her features. It’s important to avoid smiling; the paint will set, and any emotion will make it unattractively crack."
YIKES! The article goes on to explain how women would nibble on arsenic wafers to get a very pale skin tone and acheive a "near death" look. This may seem crazy to us now, but it was all the rage less than two centuries ago. Don't think for a moment that this type of marketing is isolated to the cosmetics industry. Chocolate lovers were tricked in the same way that many skin care buyers have been again and again. Slick marketing from Mast Brothers Chocolate (see articles HERE) set out to trick consumers into thinking the company was providing something rare and costly. They were simply remelting other companies' chocolate and saying they were "bean-to-bar" chocolatiers. It is true that liars are eventually caught, but in the meantime they make lots of money at the expense of good people, and they leave everyone with the sour taste of feeling cheated.
What to do? How do you protect yourself from these marketing tactics? Simply put, do not trust the magazines or newspapers that depend on advertising for their livelihood! They can’t bite the hand that feeds them...
Who can you trust, then? Skin Actives, for sure.
Beauty brands don’t even bother any more with "genesis stories". Now they just go for a good name and a photogenic owner. The new brand Pestle & Mortar is selling a Pure Hyaluronic Serum for $69 per ounce (30 ml) with a nice free advertisement in New York Times, the same newspaper that brought you Freeze 24/7.
Instead of falling into the trap, get SAS' Dermagen at $30 for 4 fluid ounces and you get peptides included in the deal; and feel free to make fun of the people who bought into the gimmick.
-Dr. Hannah Sivak
FOR MORE ARTICLES BY DR. SIVAK CLICK HERE
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United States Postal Service (USPS)
Raising Rates in 2016
Due to the recent USPS increase of International First Class prices, we will have to increase our international flat rate shipping. Starting March 1st, we will be increasing our prices from $10 to $12.50. This summer we will need to increase from $12.50 to $15.00.
The price increases on the domestic side were less severe. Priority Mail has risen in cost, but First Class Mail weight limits were also extended to include everything under a pound from the previous 13 oz. We feel those two changes might offset each other. We will monitor these changes and when we have more data we will make a decision if a shipping increase is necessary. For now, we are keeping the domestic price at the $6.00 flat rate.
Here's an informative article with all of the details on the USPS rate increases for 2016.
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January/February Bonus: Earl Grey Soft Lip Balm
or Healthy Lip Duo
For our January through February bonus we are featuring a new soft lip balm prototype that we hope to eventually bring on full time.
Orders over $150 - Healthy Lips Duo- 10mL Earl Grey Soft Lip Balm
& 10mL Lip Collagen Serum
Orders over $50 - 10mL Earl Grey Soft Lip Balm
INGREDIENTS: C10-30 Cholesterol/Lanosterol Esters, Prunus Armeniaca (Apricot) Kernel Oil, Polyglycerol – 3 Beeswax, Simmondsia Chinensis (Jojoba) Oil, Cholesteryl Oleyl Carbonate, Cholesteryl Nonanoate, Cholesteryl Chloride, BHT, Lecithin, Euphorbia Cerifera (Candelilla) Wax, Ceramide – 3, Punica Granatum (Pomegranate) Seed Oil, Tocotrienols, Tocopherol (Alpha-D-Tocopherol, Vitamin E), Astaxanthin, Lycopene, Xanthophyll (Lutein), Alpha Lipoic Acid [R-(+)-], Beta Carotene, Petrolatum, Flavor.
Please note: Bonus products are added automatically. No code is required, and they will not show in the shopping cart.
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Check out the Twitter love from @DanielRadiance!
Use #SkinActives in your Facebook, Instagram or Twitter posts for a chance to be featured in the SAS monthly newsletter.
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Nanotechnology in skin care
The year was 2000. They told us that nanotechnology is great and that it is the "decade of nanotechnology". Then they tried to sell us stuff by using the word "nano".
Ten years later, Robin Cook wrote a medical thriller titled "Nano".
Soon after, some people began to say that nanotechnology is bad. They asked for money to fund "non-profits" to put pressure on Congress so that everything nano can be banned.
What is nano? You probably learned about this term in high school, when studying the metric system. The nanometer is one thousandth of a micrometer, which is one thousandth of a millimeter, etc.
How small is a nanometer? It's about the size of an amino acid and our Epidermal Growth Factor is the size of 55 amino acids. Below is a (logarithmic) scale showing where the Hydrogen atom is compared to a Giant sequoia.
Where will you encounter the terms nanotechnology or nanoparticles in skin care? In marketing. These are used as scientific-sounding terms to convey extra penetration of ingredients into the skin. In these cases, just ignore the words completely. This was introduced into the advertising world by marketing departments. You need to check the ingredient list, or ask about the ingredients in the SAS forum.
FOR MORE ARTICLES BY DR. SIVAK CLICK HERE
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Dear Hannah,
I have seen essential oils at very low costs at Target and Walmart, are they effective? More importantly are they safe to use?
Can you trust Target and Walmart to buy your essential oils?
Unless you have a sophisticated analytical chemistry lab at home, your only choice is to buy essential oils from a source you trust. That is what we do at SAS, and we pay a significant premium for that.
Target, Walmart and other big box retailers are selling fragrance oil (synthetic fragrances dissolved in propylene glycol or another solvent) instead of the "essential oil" promised on the label. My theory is that the people in charge of buying don't know any chemistry and they assume that "if it smells like lavender, it must be lavender."
Your nose is not enough, only very well trained people can distinguish by smell. Everybody else needs the help of GS-MS (Gas Chromatography Mass Spectrometry), a technique for the analysis and quantitation of organic volatile and semi-volatile compounds. We at SAS don't have sophisticated analytical equipment, but we have resources such as laboratories that do analyze ingredients and compare them with standards.
Again, price is not an indicator of whether what you are buying is a good quality essential oil or a synthetic fragrance oil, because pricing is used as part of the fraud. If the price is high enough, people will assume that the bottle contains the real thing, i.e. Lavandula angustifolia essential oil.
-Dr. Hannah Sivak
FOR MORE ARTICLES BY DR. SIVAK CLICK HERE
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