Do cosmetic ingredients really penetrate skin? Episode 92

Please support the Beauty Brains by signing up for a free audio book at Audible.com. Click here to get your free audio book. Do cosmetic ingredients penetrate skin? Chris says…Can you guys talk a little bit about ingredient penetration? Why do some ingredients penetrate skin while others won’t? What mechanisms and conditions are involved? Let’s start our discussion about the truth of skin penetration by mentioning a few popular misconceptions on the subject. Misconceptions One of the reasons we wanted to tackle this topic is that there’s so much misinformation out there. I think most consumers of beauty products have seen the fear mongering headlines like the following: Our skin absorbs __X__ number of pounds of cosmetics each year. A “high percentage” of everything we apply to our skin every day penetrates. EVERYTHING that we apply to our skin penetrates into the blood stream. If a chemical is found in human urine, that means the cosmetic it came from is dangerous. 
If skin didn’t absorb everything we apply to it, then why does a medication patch delivery work so well? If these headlines were true we wouldn’t have to eat because we could absorb nutrients just by rubbing food on our skin. That’s obviously not the case, although it’s true that SOME chemicals can penetrate skin. Now, in a single 30 minute show we can’t do a deep dive into the data for every cosmetic ingredient used in every product but we can explain… How skin penetration works The ...
Source: thebeautybrains.com - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Source Type: blogs