Do anti-aging cremes really work?

In this podcast, the SMNTY crew explores what's in anti-aging cremes marketed to women -- and whether any of them actually work -- in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff mom never told you?
From House Towards dot com. Hey there, and welcome to
the podcast. This is Kristen and this is Molly. So Molly.

(00:20):
If there's one thing that my mom taught me pounded
into my head, well more than one. Mom, if you're listening,
I know there's more than one. But for the sake
of this episode, she taught me a lot about the
importance of skincare. She was always very adamant about me
wearing sunscreen, about starting up a skincare regimen of you know,

(00:44):
cleansing and refreshing and then moisturizing. Uh. And I gotta
say I should have listened to her, probably even better
than I did, because she has fantastic skin now she
is she's an older woman. I will not divulge your
age because she might not like that. But let's just
say that she does not look as old as she is.

(01:05):
She has very few wrinkles in the face. And Uh,
as far as I know, her skincare regimen was pretty simple.
I mean it consisted of, you know, the general cleansing
toning and things like that. But you know, you have
all these creams and tonics and all sorts of things
these days, and she just used a pretty simple just
kind of vassoline type night cream that's where only seekers vassline. Yeah,

(01:29):
asslet sunscreen. Yeah. Wow, it's very impressive because when you
go to the store today, that is so far from
all the options that you have. Yeah, it's dizzy ng.
I have sat in a grocery store aisle well stood
not but get you get the point for I don't
know how long Molly tip fifteen twenty minutes looking at

(01:49):
all of these different skincare things, looking at which one
is cheaper, which one has the eye anti wrinkle lifting,
rejuvenation send that I need. And you know what, at
the end of the day, I usually just leave with
like some generic cocoa butter or something like that. So
that's the question is do these things work? I mean,

(02:10):
like you say, you grow these aisles. There's all these
different creams all promising you different stuff. They have these
really scientific sounding ingredients. They sound like they should work.
If I can't pronounce it, it's got to work right exactly,
Like it's got all sorts of like scientific sounding pronouns
like bio anti and that's not really but you know
that's true. They have a lot of like words kind

(02:32):
of meant to trick you. And then you've got to
balance the price. Oh yeah, some of the first thing.
Does not want to shell out fifty dollars for point
five ounces of rejuvenation cream. That's even pretty low on
the spectrum. There are some of these creams not in target,
but I hear that are hundreds and hundreds of dollars. Well,
let's take a look at what is actually inside these

(02:55):
mystical anti agrian creams and get to the bottom of
this mystery of what they're not. Maybe maybe thrifty Nickel
needs to start spending some more cash on Okay, let's
find out cream. First up, let's talk about antioxidants. Pretty
standard facial ingredient. You might see it as green tea,
vitamin E. All sorts of antioxidents are in there. And

(03:16):
what these are gonna do are halt the sun damage
that is coming into your face. They're gonna fight free
radicals and prevent new wrinkles from forming because by protecting
all your existing collagen, they prevent wrinkles. Okay, and next,
up on common ingredients. We have high a lauronic acid,
and that sounds scary. Yeah, it sounds really scary, but

(03:37):
it actually soaks in moisture to plump up your facial tissue,
so it makes you just I guess it makes your
skin appears smoother. Yeah, like if you've got a wrinkle,
it just kind of pops tobacco. Yeah, like a sponge. Yeah. Um.
Also on sort of the scary sounding side, we have
hydroxy acids and I can't remember when they started puting
hydroxy acids and everything. Alco hydroxy it's a big buzz

(03:59):
where no, yeah, you always hear about it in the
in the skincare commercials. All this is, though, is an expoliant. Basically,
it's just going to wipe off the dead skin and
you hope that there's some beautiful skin underneath, all right.
And continuing on, we have peptides. Peptides are thought to
heal wounds by producing more collagen and molly. As we'll

(04:20):
talk about in a minute. Collagen is the thing that
we need to be targeting with this anti aging creams
because collagen is what makes our skin look useful and glorious,
and there's a lot of different peptides. Pena peptides and
copper peptides are two that are pretty commonly thrown around
these days, but you might see all sorts of peptides
out there. And like Kristen said, we first learned about

(04:41):
them because they heal wounds, and the thinking was, well,
if they heal wounds, they must heal other kinds of
skin damage, and then coming in last, but certainly not least. Oh, no,
save the best for last exactly. Retinal. Yes, retinal is
the over the counter version of retina and basically anything
with rettin in the word is going to be a

(05:03):
plus for your skin. It's a dermatologist number one recommendation
because it does several things. First of all, it's going
to prevent the things that are already in your skin
that are breaking down your collagen. It's going to block
those things so they can't break down your existing collagen.
But staies of demonstrate that they can also create new collagen.
And as Kristen promised, we should probably talk about now
why collagen is just so important to target. Yeah, the

(05:26):
reason why we get wrinkles in the first place as
we age is because our bodies will gradually stop producing collagen.
And this is a protein that keeps our skin firm
and taught. And so when it breaks down, then you know,
you get the sagging. And yeah, you get the sag.
And two major things that are going to accelerate the

(05:48):
that slow production of collagen is sun exposure, thanks mom,
and smoking. You make it sound like your mom exposed
to know. I mean sunscreen, told you were sunscreen. Yes,
if you're young and you don't think you're ready for
an anti wrinkle cream, the two things you should do
our sunscreen and no smoking. Cut out the cigarettes should
do that anyway. True. So now we know all of

(06:12):
the ingredients, let's talk about Let's talk about retinal because
only from your research that you did for an article
on how stuff works called surprisingly do anti aging creams work?
What a coincidence? How funny? Um, you found out that
retinal is there's some good stuff behind retinal. Yeah, there
was a recent study at the University of Michigan that

(06:32):
listed the only three things that can have an effect
on the actual architecture structure of your skin, um carbon
dioxide laser treatments, which sounds kind of scary, and higher
lauronic acid injections, not to be confused with the higheralonic
asset you can just find in a cream. It needs
to be injected into your face. But the only thing
you can put on your face to get an effect

(06:54):
is this topical application of retinal. And if retinal sounds
familiar to you, uh, if it's ringing a bell, it
might be because it's been It was used as far
back as twenty years ago as an acne treatment. Yeah.
I think I was on some sort of retinee formula
for at some point. And uh, when people started going
on the retinal they realized that not only was it

(07:17):
helping with the acne, but it was also helping the
overall condition of the skin. So in nineteen eight, a
group of scientists at in Michigan published the first double
blind study of retine's effect on damaged skin and found
that all of the thirty patients who completed the sixteen
weeks study showed statistically significant improvement, including improvements in skin texture,

(07:41):
diminished wrinkles, and brown spots. All of them, all the
patients miracle care. Yeah, and you know this is something
you can buy without a prescription retinal. I would say,
if you're looking for an ingredient and a skin cream,
this would be the one to look for. Peptides don't
have the same research to back them up, but that
sweems to be the new hot thing. But let's say

(08:03):
you're in the store you find a cream with retinal.
I don't think all your problems are solved quite yet, no,
because you have to be careful about how much you use,
how often you're using it, and there are some there
are some side effects that can go along with it
that might make you toss the retina before it's even
had a chance to start working. Yeah, here's the problem

(08:25):
is when you're looking at these labels, they will tell
you they're active ingredient, but they likely won't tell you
how much of the active ingredient there is. And especially
with retina, is Christenas saying, the more you pump it up,
the more you're at risk for side effects like rashes, irritation, uh,
sunburn because become very sensitive to the sun. So usually
cosmetics makers will sort of dial it down so you

(08:47):
don't have those side effects and you keep buying their product,
but it may not be enough to actually do anything
right because they wouldn't want you to buy sholl the
on their product. You bring it home, it makes you
break out, you toss it away, and you're not going
to buy it. And again they want to build brand
loyalty exactly. UM. So, if you do find a product
that is pretty concentrated, as you should, sort of use

(09:07):
it very sparingly at first, give your skin time to
adjust and whatever cream you buy, if I need about
eight weeks before you see results. And speaking of the
skin adjusting to the retinal, let's talk about what's going
on beneath the surface, what we can't see. If maybe
we were putting on this retinal on and it's causing
our skin to break out, Let's talk about what's going
on in the actual skin cells. Because our skin cells

(09:30):
contain retinoid receptors that help regulate how these cells function.
And then as we get older, the cells start to
function a little more erratically, and the retinoid or retinal
excuse me helps balance out that cell function, and it
also causes skin cells to turn over more rapidly, shrinking

(09:50):
dilated pores, and so we have fewer black heads and
tighter skin and fewer wrinkles. But did you know that
anything that at does as much to your face as
that if it really makes a change in your biology,
it can't be classified as a cosmetic. And that is
why anti asian creams are so interesting in terms of

(10:12):
their labels, because if they actually did really do something
to your skin, they'd have to be classified as a drug. Yeah.
So that's why you might not be able to put,
you know, that much faith in these anti anti wrinkle
creams because in order for it to be classified as
a druggle you said that, the FDA would actually have
to go through and test all of these claims, and

(10:32):
they haven't done it because it's not a drug, yeah,
and it's very expensive. Cosmetics companies are going to want
to avoid these this years of testing and involvement with
the f d A. And so as a result, when
you read these promises on the label, they're very carefully
worded to sound just enticing enough without actually guaranteeing you anything,
because if they guaranteed something, then the FDA is going

(10:54):
to get involved. Right. So, next time we are in
the grocery store aisle, we are looking at those rows
and rows and rows of skin care products. What should
we do, Molly? You know, I think that first of all,
hopefully we already have some sunscreen in our cart because
we all learned from Christian's mom that sunscreen is one

(11:15):
of the most important things you can do to preserve
your skin. But after that, I think that any moisturizer
is pretty much gonna do the job because a lot
of these expensive moisturizers, when you boil them right down,
it's just oil and water. It's the exact same thing
in every single moisturizer. So you shouldn't feel bad about
not shelling out the fifty bucks when any moisturizer is
going to plump up your skin temporarily, right. I think

(11:37):
it was a dermatologist in one of these articles that
said that, uh, you could get you know, an eight
to twelve hour just boost just from a simple moisturizer.
What you really need to do is pay attention to
the ingredients exactly. Yeah, and you know because as the
thrifty Nickel knows, well, if you know you have to
pay twenty more dollars with same ingredients, that's just that

(11:58):
just doesn't make sense, does not make sense. And if
you do feel that you have a very expensive cream
that is somehow working miracles, a lot of it might
be psychological. You're paying a lot just to be told like, oh,
the skin is being plumped up by something that ten
dollar cream could do. Um, and as soon as you
stop using those products, your skin will likely return to
how it was before. Right, it's not easy, simple fix.

(12:21):
It's gonna last forever and ever because it has to
be a drug. Right. And of course, if anyone has
any questions about skincare and all that, you know, go
to the dermatologists to people are so I think that
wraps it up. So anti aging creams, you've got written
all pretty good stuff. Peptides, anti aging potential. Yes, only

(12:43):
time will tell. And at the end of the day, moisturize, moisturize,
protect yourself from the sun, and stop smoking. Advice that's
good for any time. All right, well now now, all
right now, my shopping trip will maybe be cut from
twenty minutes in the beauty aisle too, maybe maybe five.

(13:04):
That is some time saving. We'll see how it goes
well if you prefer to read your information as opposed
to listen to us tell it, which hopefully you don't
because you listen to this far. Uh. There is an
article on the site do anti Aging Cream's Work. It's
written by Molly. It is um I I stand hind it.
So There's also a ton of other information about skincare, sunscreen, etcetera.

(13:25):
And you can also check out our blog it's called
how to stuff at how stuff works dot com. If
you have a question, you can email Kristen Emmy at
mom stuff at costaff works dot com. For more on
this and thousands of other topics. Is that how stuff
works dot com. Want more how stuff works, check out

(13:47):
our blogs on the how stuff works dot com home page.
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