Chances are, at some point in your life you decide to start treating signs of aging. Sunspots, facial wrinkles, eye wrinkles, and hyper pigmentation are all concerns of ours as we grow older and start to be concerned about what we can do to treat them. If you watch even a sliver of television or are exposed to the media via the Internet, chances are you are being bombarded with wrinkle cream offers, anti-aging advertisements, and other skin care product ads. With thousands of companies out there claiming that their product is the best, how do you know which one really is effective in fighting the signs of aging?
Many of us look at ingredients first and foremost. For those of you that don’t look at the ingredients in any sort of anti-aging product, shame on you. Ingredient knowledge is very important for a consumer to know. Ingredients such as retinol, hyaluronic acid, and matrixyl are world-class, KNOWN ingredients that will effectively fight and treat wrinkles. You can try searching for any of those in Google and find a wealth of supporting information, but just so you have a cheat sheet, there they are. Before I was a die-hard skin care and cosmetic expert, I used to ask myself, “why don’t these products I buy at the local pharmacy work? The packaging says it has the same ingredients as the expensive eye creams and skin care products I see online.” I now know the answer, and if you continue reading, you will know it too.
Basically, I entered the business of skin care after really having a problem with spending so much money on products that I didn’t see results from. If you visit your local drugstore, you will see that anti-aging products usually priced well under $20 have the same ingredients as the products you see online offered for $89, 99, even $250 on occasion. Why is there such a variance in price, I used to ask myself? Well, the answer is in the concentration levels of each ingredient. It’s safe to assume at least 50% of any anti-aging cream is water, and of course there are ingredients that help to hold them all together. What this means in laymans terms is that the products you see at lower price points are not concentrated at the levels of the expensive creams. Of course, if retinol works as an ingredient, for example, you would think that a trace of retinol would help the formula. But, what if product a had 1% retinol, and product b had 12% retinol. That’s a big difference in concentration levels. So, taking that information, you can see why different products work differently when they are marketed with the same ingredients.
You also will notice that marquee ingredients will draw a much higher price tag in anti-aging products. Recently, I’ve seen eye creams that are made with the acai berry and gaba, two powerful ingredients that can really take an eye cream to the next level. If you have a chance to get your hands on one of these eye creams, in my opinion it’s worth the extra cost.
It can get tricky, as most of the time it’s difficult to find out what levels of concentration of each ingredient are in different products, but when there is a huge difference in price, and subsequently, effectiveness, it’s safe to say the higher ticket anti-aging creams have a much higher concentration of each ingredient when compared to the cheaper product. I am in no way saying that cheaper products don’t work, I don’t want to give that impression. The only comparison I can draw when I review products such as eye creams is that one may be like buying an tylenol to treat pain, when in reality the treatment that will cure the pain the best would be something much stronger, such as hydrocodone or another powerful prescription pain reliever.
Of course, with any anti-aging product, your mileage may vary. Good luck in your product search and remember to read plenty of wrinkle cream reviews before buying.
