Skincare Myths

Feels soft, but how are the ingredients actually affecting my skin? Photo by Anwar Khan

More and more products seem to be enriched with additional ingredients like vitamins and boswelox that are supposed to be absorbed through your skin. It’s well-established that a lack of vitamins in your diet can be bad for your skin, but there is little evidence to suggest that applying vitamins directly to the skin is useful, even though some substances can be absorbed through the skin, like nicotine in nicotine patches. Ben Goldacre, a medical doctor who also writes the Bad Science column in The Guardian newspaper says that skincare companies are really good at making pseudo-scientific claims. They’ll say, in technical terms, that vitamin E and collagen are essential for the cross-molecular structure of whatever without making any claim that the specific ingredient will have any effect on your skin. While the added ingredients may be useless, simple moisturisers are useful because they do what they say on the tin: they add moisture to the skin. Basically, all of these creams add water to the cells in the outer layer of your skin which plumps them up and makes the skin look and feel smoother. This is a temporary effect, so you have to keep applying it.

In addition to marketing the ingredients in skin creams, major designer brands also market ranges for men. According to the L’Oréal website, men’s skin is significantly different from women’s, and thus needs to be treated and cared for in a significantly different way. Prof. Finlay disagrees, telling me that there is not a big difference between male and female skin and that in his opinion, moisturisers are only labelled as male or female for marketing reasons. Prof. Williams says that there are subtle biological differences in male and female skin, for example, blood vessel responses in the skin, susceptibility to irritants and possible ultraviolet burning, but not big differences that would require a different type of moisturiser. Of course, there is one big difference: men tend to have more facial hair than women and shaving can cause irritation and dryness. But according to Nina Goad, a moisturiser that is designed for women will still be effective for men with dry skin.