OUMERE Skin care
Last week I had to clean my glass knife maker in preparation for testing my samples that I wrote about last week.
It’s an LKB knife maker made in the 1980s, so it’s completely mechanical and computer-free. So when it needs servicing, I do it myself. With any methods in electron microscopy, everything is done at home. So the knives needed to cut the samples are something I buy, they’re just made here in the lab.
Usually, whenever equipment like this needs service, just a cleaning will get it running like new, so I thought this would be an easy fix.
But once I started I realized I needed to change the cutting wheel. Then once I got the cutting wheel out of it’s base then I noticed the backing plate had to be tightened and then one after the other. 5 hours later, just simple cleaning turned into a full machine overhaul and I was doing something completely unrelated to the original job.
This “yak shaving” endeavor is time consuming, but it also lets the mind wander for a while and got me thinking about how skin care can often lead one down the same path. Where you’re trying to fix one thing, like a dark spot, and in doing so you’ve created a series of complex skin problems that are now a complex and possibly impossible solution.
With skin care, there are some good, but mostly bad. Finding a good skin care product that doesn’t cause damage is harder than finding a needle in a haystack because at least when you’re trying to find a needle in a haystack, there aren’t a lot of pseudo-scientists, bloggers, and bogus online articles trying to convince you. misdirects towards a bait needle.
Misinformation spreads like a malignant tumor in the skin care world because it is cloaked in the guise of science. But the emperor wears no clothes when it’s said that hyaluronic acid is a moisturizer, or that it can hold 1000 times its weight in water, or that vitamin C can upregulate collagen. Anyone who says such things is ignorant of how biology works, and all it took for me to learn this was some simple primary research I conducted in my lab, which disproved this long held “knowledge”.
And therein lies the problem: skin care “scientists,” bloggers, YouTubers, Instagrammers, and everyone else don’t actually do their own research. Skin care scientists are simply conducting research on how to make a product more marketable. And the rest are just parroting what they heard from others without any due diligence of their own.
The lack of reliable information is why so many people come to UMERE with damaged skin, often to the point of permanent disfigurement. They wanted to treat something simple like a dark spot, and were told by bloggers, youtubers, and fake studies to use skin care method X, which created problem 1, so then they used skin care method Y, which created problem 2 and so on. So now instead of a little dark spot they have acne, dermatitis, deep scars, inflammation, uncontrollable oiliness and possible blood poisoning.
I hope to be stronger in skin care so we don’t have this budding problem of enhanced skin disease caused by harmful products. If you, as a customer, know that the ingredients are harmful and refuse to use products containing them, then the manufacturers will be forced to stop putting them in their products. And to get started, let’s start with these 3:
1. Hydroquinone
Perhaps the most dangerous on the list is hydroquinone. The most common ingredient in skin “whitening” creams used worldwide can harm the skin, but it can also do much more harm, including:
– Hydroquinone is absorbed by the bone marrow causing the synthesis of benzene which can cause toxicity in the body, mutagenesis (gene mutation) which can cause leukemia among other cancers and induced apoptosis (cell death).
– Ironically, hydroquinone, which is used to lighten skin, can have the opposite effect and cause severe and permanent skin darkening. The skin condition seen with hydroquinone use is called extrinsic chlorosis and is difficult to almost impossible to treat.
Extrinsic chlorosis is considered as darkening of the skin
– Skin lesions
Severe skin lesions and darkening observed in a patient using a topical skin lightening cream containing hydroquinone
– Increased skin sensitivity
The troubling part about hydroquinone is that there is a strong body of research spanning decades on its toxicity, yet major brands in America still carry this ingredient.
2. Vitamin C
It is well known in the scientific community that vitamin C cannot initiate, promote or up-regulate collagen production. Not on the skin, not on the knees, not anywhere on the body. That is not its role in the body, nor has it ever been. Vitamin C is only involved after the collagen is made to change the shape of the protein. Yet despite this very basic fact of biology, we have this unscientific claim that vitamin C in skin care can do magical things that it otherwise can’t do in a biological system.
The other claim is that vitamin C can lighten the skin. Vitamin C can only oxidize the skin, which can result in bleaching of spots, but that’s only because you’re killing your vibrant, healthy skin. And when the skin dies, if it had dark spots, the dark skin dies too. This is why vitamin C serums cause acne, inflammation and increased oiliness of the skin: these are all the results of cell death.
3. Benzoyl peroxide
All peroxides can be harmful to the body. Your body naturally produces peroxides as a byproduct of metabolism and also produces enzymes to break down peroxides because of the toxic effect peroxides have on the body.
Benzoyl peroxide is common for acne and skin lightening, and this ingredient will worsen any existing acne and blackheads due to its destructive and toxic effects. The worst part is because the application is topical, your body can’t initiate the necessary mechanisms to break down the peroxide, so it sits on the skin, goes into the body, and wreaks havoc on both.
When benzoyl peroxide sits on the skin, the damage it causes includes:
– Oncogenesis of the skin (formation of skin cancer)
– Oxidation of skin cells leading to cell death
– Inflammation of the skin that can lead to permanent redness
– Damage, deep fissures and scars
– Thinning of the skin in the applied area which may be permanent
– Worsening of acne due to increased inflammation and weakening of the skin
– Disruption of the skin’s natural biomass which can also lead to increased acne
When benzoyl peroxide enters the skin, it can also enter the bloodstream causing the following internal health effects:
– Metabolic disorder
– Synthesis of benzene (benzoic acid) in the body
– Irreversible cytotoxicity
– Damage to the plasma membrane of cells
Additional points to consider:
Dermal methods such as lasers, scrubs, peelings and dermabrasion to lighten the skin are just as destructive as the above ingredients. And because these are natural methods, the distortion caused can be permanent.
Therefore, a proper whitening product that works without harming is essential in skin care. Many OUMERE customers use the eye serum as a spot treatment for positive results, and I use it myself and see noticeable improvement in dark spots.
However, it may be necessary for those with more significant melasma, hyperpigmentation and age spots to have a stronger product. I am in the process of working on a spot treatment to lighten the skin that is without the carcinogenic ingredients or destructive skin measures listed above.
It will first be included in the Exclusive Offer program and then released for sale in the UMERE store after extensive testing.
bibliographical references
Babich, H., Zuckerbraun, HL, Wurzburger, BJ, Rubin, YL, Borenfreund, E., & Blau, L. (1996). The cytotoxicity of benzoyl peroxide was evaluated in vitro with the human keratinocyte cell line, RHEK-1. Toxicology, 106(1-3), 187-196.
Gerberick, GF, Troutman, JA, Foertsch, LM, Vassallo, JD, Quijano, M., Dobson, RL, … & Lepoittevin, JP (2009). Investigation of peptide reactivity of pro-hapten skin sensitizers using a peroxidase-superoxide oxidation system. Toxicological Sciences, 112(1), 164-174.
Huang, YH, Wu, PY, Wen, KC, Lin, CY and Chiang, HM (2018). Protective effects and mechanisms of Terminalia catappa L. methanolic extract on hydrogen peroxide-induced oxidative stress in human skin fibroblasts. BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine, 18(1), 1-9.
Kooyers, TJ, & Westerhof, W. (2006). Toxicology and Health Hazards of Hydroquinone in Skin Bleaching Formulations. Journal of the European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology, 20(7), 777-780.
Nacht, S., Yeung, D., Beasley Jr, JN, Anjo, MD, & Maibach, HI (1981). Benzoyl peroxide: transdermal penetration and metabolic disposition. Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, 4(1), 31-37.
Ota, Y., Imai, T., Onose, JI, Takami, S., Cho, YM, Hirose, M., & Nishikawa, A. (2009). A 55-week chronic toxicity study of dietary kojic acid (KA) in male F344 rats. The Journal of toxicological Sciences, 34(3), 305-313.
Zhao, J., Lahiri-Chatterjee, M., Sharma, Y., & Agarwal, R. (2000). Inhibitory effect of a flavonoid antioxidant silymarin on benzoyl peroxide-induced tumor promotion, oxidative stress and inflammatory responses in SENCAR mouse skin. Carcinogenesis, 21(4), 811-816.
