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Out Mythed & Out Buzzed

In today's marketplace, the majority of all the over the counter commercial skin and personal care product lines are owned by a thimbleful of huge conglomerates, and produced by a similarly sized group of manufacturers. Hence the term: common vat cosmetics. It is the norm, and not the exception, for competing cosmetic giants to have their products made at the same plant.

More often than not, their competition is themselves! For example, Estée Lauder umbrellas several competing brands which include: Aramis, Clinique, Prescriptives, Origins, M·A·C, Bobbi Brown essentials, Tommy Hilfiger, jane, Donna Karan, Aveda, La Mer, Stila, and Jo Malone.

Label Claim: The Key Element of the Marketing Strategy

No matter who owns a specific cosmetics or skin care line, each brand
attempts through mystique oriented media campaigns to . . .

"out-myth" and "out buzzword" the other

all in an attempt to garner greater market-share of a gullible audience!

Perpetuating the Allure

Unfortunately, the laws that prevail over skin care and personal care manufacturing are to a great extent helping to perpetuate the allure, the mystique and the salability of many thousands of products. Imagine . . . a product with approximately 5% natural ingredients can legally use the term "natural" on the label. To use the word "organic", simply requires that the molecular makeup of a specific ingredient contain carbon. If a product has been labeled with the term "Hyper-Allergenic", it gives the consumer a sense of confidence in terms of the products gentleness.

Rather, the use of the term "Hyper-Allergenic" on a product label means: That the product has been tested and been found to be no more irritating than any other similar product.

Furthermore, in the United States, skin care/personal care products are not legally required to list specific ingredients on the label.

pH balanced" is another common label claim and is used with great success to market shampoos and facial cleansers in particular. pH is a scale of measure from 0 to 14 that is used to define the level of alkalinity or acidity of a substance. A pH of 7 is neutral; 7 and below is on the acidic side of the scale; and 7 and above, is on the alkaline side. Shampoos that claim they are pH balanced are playing with vocabulary semantics as the final influence on shampooed hair is tap water, and the pH of tap water varies greatly from region to region and city to city. Moreover, the pH of a product will alter during its shelf life as well as when applied to hair or skin.

Heat-Activated facial cleansers that supposedly deep-clean pores in 60 seconds and Heat-Activated hair conditioners that keep on working when you apply heat to the hair, are just more examples of marketing garbledey-gook The pores of the skin and the cuticle of the hair do not open and close like windows! If that were the case, our skin and hair would be severely compromised and afford absolutely no protection whatsoever from extreme thermal fluctuations or exterior contamination.

Active Ingredients & Label Claim

Being able to legally claim that a product contains "active" ingredients such as amino acids, collagen, elastin, retinol, liposomes, alpha hydroxy acid/complex (AHA), or hyaluronic acid requires only that a minute trace amount of the "active" ingredient be used. Secondly, the molecular size of the ingredient is in most cases, too large to penetrate the skin and reach the subcutaneous layers where it might possibly make a difference.

Yet, even more importantly, these organic compounds are stereo molecules which have not been optically-corrected. Meaning they have not been resolved as to which side of the molecule works and which side does nothing, or causes harm. The body does not recognize or utilize optically incorrect (non-chiral) compounds. Optically incorrect AHA for example, is extremely dangerous!

In nature, organic structures possess two-faces or sides at a molecular level, and as has been recently discovered, the body will more often than not, only recognize and use one side of the molecule or the other. When the body does not recognize a molecule structure, it will either do nothing and get discarded as waste, or it may cause long-term harm or even damage, as was the case with Thalidomide in the 60's and 70's!