I have only briefly tried Creme de la Mer. I remember it as a rich and probably very effective moisturiser. I also know some people who use it who say that it is so effective that they can make a single jar last 18 months. This puts the high price into perspective a bit – and if it really does work that well maybe it is in fact cheap.

This is a product with a mystique around it as well as a high price tag. There is the story about it having been developed by a Nasa scientist to clear up burns he suffered during an accident. So this really is rocket science.

So as a cosmetic scientist, what can I learn about it. I trawled the net and found an ingredient list. It isn’t from their own website so I hope it is reasonably accurate. My first thought was that considering it is supposed to have been formulated by a physicist it is remarkably similar to formulations done by myself and my colleagues.

The basic formulation is that of a water in oil cream. These are the heaviest and most effective creams. Nivea Creme is a classic example. Attrixo is another that has a cult following. These kinds of creams are very good for very dry skin. I could easily imagine that someone who had dry skin who had previously used a standard cream might would find one like Creme de la Mer very effective in comparison.

But the story is not just of a very effective moisturiser. This cream is supposed to be an exceptional one. Is there anything out of the ordinary that might explain its remarkable popularity? The Crème de la Mer website admits: “There is nothing miraculous about its ingredients – sea kelp, calcium, magnesium, potassium, iron, lecithin, Vitamins C, E and B12, plus oils of citrus, eucalyptus, wheat germ, alfalfa, and sunflower.”

I agree. These are all ingredients that other people have used. The sea kelp is the one that attracted my interest.

Is there anything in seaweed that gives benefits to the skin? Yes there is. Plants maintain their shape using long thin but very strong molecules called polymers. These are used to give the plants structure. The best example is cellulose, the main ingredient in wood. Reduce the polymer size a bit by heating wood in alkali and you can make paper. Reduce it still further and it makes a good wallpaper paste. Even smaller cellulose molecules applied to the skin have a tendency to shrink as they dry out. This has a tightening effect which can reduce the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles. This neat trick has been used for years.

Cosmetic scientists have long been seeking the best polymer to combat wrinkles. It seems that polymers derived from seaweed are particularly good. And you can change the behaviour of polymers by the way you treat them. Crème de la Mer has a long treatment process for the seaweed which might well affect the way it works. I don’t have any proof of any of this, but it is believable.

A couple of other comments from the ingredient list. I notice a lot of allergens from fragrances are mentioned. This suggests to me that they are using high levels of an expensive fragrance. Well, the price they are charging I would hope so! There are also a lot of mineral salts: these are the ones called sodium gluconate, potassium gluconate etc. I am not yet sure whether minerals are beneficial to the skin or not. I will keep my opinions to myself on that one until I have done more research. But the minerals are there – if you like the idea then that is another positive.

I was a bit disappointed that the preservative used is a combination of Methylchloroisothiazolinone and Methylisothiazolinone. This is an effective, legal and reasonably safe alternative to parabens. But I would have been happier if they had used something a bit more natural.

All in all – I have to say that Crème de la Mer might well be a very good product and might justify the high price charged for it. What I would really like to see would be a trial comparing it with Nivea Crème over a reasonably long period of time. It would be particularly interesting to see how much you need to use to get a benefit. If it lasts a long time because you don’t have to use so much of it, it might even be a cheaper option than some of the alternatives.

Ingredient List

Seaweed (Algae) Extract[, Mineral oil Glycerin, Isohexadecane, Citrus Aurantifolia (Lime) Extract, Microcrystalline Wax, Lanolin Alcohol, Sesame Seed Oil, Eucalyptus Oil, Magnesium Sulfate, Sesame Seed, Medicago sativa(alfalfa) seed powder, Helianthus Annuus (sunflower) Seedcake ,Prunus amygdulus dulcis(sweet almond) seed meal, Sodium Gluconate, Potassium Gluconate, Copper Gluconate, Calcium Gluconate, Magnesium Gluconate, Zinc Gluconate, Paraffin, Tocopheryl succinate, Niacin, Beta-carotene, Decyl oleate, Aluminium distearate, Octyldodecanol, Citric acid, Cyanocobalamin, Magnesium stearate, Panthenol, Limonene, Geraniol, Linalool, Hydroxycitronellal, Citronellol, Benzyl salicylate, Citral, Methylchloroisothiazolinone, Methylisothiazolinone, Alcohol Denat., Fragrance (Parfum)

summary here

They have been using a computer morphing programme to look at what people find attractive. Here are a couple of morphs. These were produced by continually blending original photographs that were judged either attractive or unattractive.

I have tried these out by asking a range of women their opinions of them. The consensus agreed with Regensbug about which one was more attractive. But interestingly there were some objections. They said that he looked arrogant. They also said that he lacked personality. I put this one down to female intuition. He obviously does lack personality in a very literal sense as he is simply a computer image. Ugly guy was described as looking friendly.

I found this very interesting. Presumably good looking guys can get away with being arrogant. But if you aren’t a natural babe magnet you probably have to work harder at your charm if you want to get some attention?

With teutonic efficiency the Germans have listed the actual attributes that they have identified. So what kind of male face do women find attractive? There is a preference for darker skin, a narrower facial shape, not a plump one. The lips should be full and symmetrical. The upper half of the face should be broader, the cheek bones higher and the lower jaw more prominent. These are all indicators of higher levels of testosterone.

Dark skin

Narrow facial shape

Little fat

Full and symmetrical lips

Dark eye brows and lashes

Upper half of the face broader

High cheek bones

Prominent lower jaw and chin

So now I will be looking at these to see if I can come up with some recommendations for how you can make your face more attractive to women based on these findings.

The idea behind a bath oil is to simply add the oil to your bath. Sit back, relax and enjoy some me time. Take a glass of wine, a candle and some soothing music if you like. You need to have the kind of bath oil that disperses, not the ones that float on the surface. As you get out of the bath and dry yourself the oil is left coating the surface of the skin sealing in the moisture.

There are some therapeutic bath oils intended to treat people with eczema and other clinically dry conditions. I have done research into them and I can confirm that the best oil for a bath oil is mineral oil. Nothing else works as well. The beauty of mineral oil is that it doesn’t sink into the skin so it stays for longer on the skin keeping it moisturised.

That doesn’t mean to say you can’t include essential oils into the bath oil to add to the bathing experience.

This is a problem area for some scientists, and the problem is a real one. The amount of any agent that you can absorb through your nose is very small indeed. There is a similar problem with homeopathy. How can diluting something make its effect stronger?

But it seems that despite the very small number of actual molecules involved, what you smell can have a profound effect on your physiology. We may not understand how it works, but we have to accept the data.

This doesn’t mean that homeopathy has to be accepted. That has not been shown to work yet, and given how long it has been practiced and how much it has been studied the overwhelming probability is it doesn’t work.

I have never been particularly impressed by the professed green credentials of the brand. They aren’t worse than any other mass market personal care operation, but it is hard to put your finger on any way that they are better. Their formulations use the same set of chemicals that everyone else uses. Their rolling programme on animal testing meant that they did not apply any effective pressure on raw material suppliers to stop animal testing. But I always thought that their products were quite good: nice pleasant fragrances and generally quite effective. And of their range of formulations I also reckoned their range of body butters to be the jewel in their range. These were good moisturisers, probably because they had a very high oil content and also they used neat unprocessed lanolin which I think is one of the best moisturisers you can get your hands on. (Note - I don’t actually have a pack so I am writing from memory here.)

I am not short of moisturisers so it has taken a while to get round to looking at it. But I had a bit of dry skin so I picked it up for a bit of quick releif. To my amazement they seem to have changed the formulation. The water content seems to be higher. The lanolin has been replaced with lanolin alcohol. Easier to process no doubt, but not with anything like the same effect. And I don’t know where they found the fragrance, but it wasn’t very nice. In fact it was downright virulent. I have been wondering what effect the takeover of the Body Shop by L’Oreal was going to have. I think I am beginning to see.

Acne is still not very well understood.  It seems to start with an overproduction of sebum and is then made worse when bacteria invade the glands and cause inflammation resulting in the unsightly red spots we have all seen/had/are currently suffering from.

Acne is a miserable condition to suffer from.  It is usually treated by applying an antibacterial to the skin.  The best known brand is Clearasil which simply uses a well known antiseptic called cetrimide.  This works well enough on mild acne, and can be shown to work.  For more serious acne there are brands like Brevoxyl.  These contain benzoyl peroxide which both kills of the bacteria and seems to break down the sebum to some extent clearing up the acne a bit quicker.  Once again, benzoyl peroxide works well and can be shown to work in a clinical trial.

But I am sure that every acne sufferer would agree that prevention is better than cure and a product that offers to prevent the spots forming in the first place sounds too good  to be true.

So what do we make of Praventin?  The claimed mode of action is that drinking it inhibits the growth of bacteria.  Well that is one hell of a claim!  I am a bit above average in size for a human being, weighing in at about 80Kg.  The idea that I can drink enough of an antibacterial agent to have an effective dose level across the whole of my skin sounds very far fetched.  The stuff would have to be very potent to be able to work at such low levels.  And if it is so powerful, I am not at all sure I want to drink it.

I had a look on the internet to see what evidence the manufacturers have to support this product.  There is a positive entry in Wikipedia.  I am assuming that this entry was put up by the people behind the product.  The articles states “44 subjects were asked a set of questions about how they believed Praventin™ had supported skin health. 76% saw visible differences in their complexion, among them were fewer blemishes, a reduction in redness, and less oiliness, consistent with a healthier complexion. • 83% stated they would like to continue taking a supplement that contained Praventin™ ”

Was I impressed?  No I wasn’t.  For a start the study is not published in a peer reviewed journal.  Nobody independent has looked at this data.  But even worse, there is no control.  The placebo effect is a very powerful one.  Tell a group of people that they are getting a special treatment for their skin, and then take a great deal of interest in them and ask them lots of questions about it, and it is quite likely that they will show an improvement in their skin condition.  It is for this reason that all proper clinical trials are done using a placebo.  Without the information on what a simlar group of people NOT treated with Praventin would have behaved, there is simplly no way the study means anything at all.

I suppose I should conclude by saying that in the absence of a placebo controlled trial we can’t be absolutely sure that Praventin doesn’t work.  So I will draw one definite conclusion.  If you buy this product you will definitely have less money afterwards, and the people from whom you buy it will have more.

But I was pleased to read that they have used vanillin, one of my favourites to give it a smell. Read my article on vanillin if you want to know why it makes you smell like ice cream.

Read my original article on Waitrose Baby Bottom Butter

The skincare and beauty industries in Britain have been in a frenzy since the broadcast of a BBC Horizon programme in April. A skin cream was highlighted by Professor Christopher Griffiths, one of the country’s top dermatologists, which actually does what it is claimed to do. The product is both made by and exclusively sold by Boots – and the product has vanished from the shelves of their shops up and down the country.
The media have had a field day with press articles about the cream, interviews with the scientists behind it and even coverage on television and the radio. There have even been some unusual angles. I was amused by one report of the queues outside Boots when the cream was due back in being mainly composed of men. (My personal theory is that they were stocking up to shift the stuff at a profit on Ebay).

So have Boots banished wrinkles forever? Should you track down this cream and pay any amount of money for it?

Well this is my personal view. I think the Boots product is a good product and it will help minimise wrinkles to some extent. I think the price is okay, but I wouldn’t pay a great deal more. You also need to have the right kind of wrinkles. If your skin is already pretty okay, this won’t make it look any better than it already is. And if you have really bad wrinkles I doubt very much that any improvement will be noticeable. You will get a particularly good effect if you skin is on the dry side, is fair and if you have very fine lines – the type you have to get really close to to notice.
Moisturising skin increases the thickness of the upper layer of the skin. This will tend to reduce the size of any wrinkles. Any good moisturiser will have this effect and most people know about this from personal experience. Creams that have a high oil content are the most efficient. Another trick well known to cosmetic formulators is to include a water-soluble polymer. There are hundreds to chose from but carbomer is the most popular. This is also a useful thickener.

The way these polymers seem to work is that they form layers on the skin. As they dry out they contract, and this seems to pull the skin tighter giving it a more elastic and youthful appearance.

The unusual ingredient in the Boots product, and the one that I think explains it surprisingly good effect, is the pentapeptide. Pentapeptides are water-soluble polymers but of a very particular type. These are a fairly recent inovation, only being around for five or six years. They seem to work the way that other water-soluble polymers do, but more efficiently. It is possible that they have other beneficial properties too, but I like to stick to things that can definitely be proved to be effective.

The name of the material to look for on the ingredient list on the packet is Palmatoyl pentapeptide-3. There is another material around that I think should work just as well, which is Acetyl hexapeptide-8. This is made by a different chemical company from the one behind the active in the Boots cream, and they have published their efficacy data in a scientific journal. It looks pretty reasonable, though I can’t stress enough that these things only work to reduce fairly small wrinkles.
The Boots product isn’t the only one on the market containing the ‘magic’ ingredient. You can look on the ingredient listings and find out yourself if you want to give them a try. I notice that spokespeople for Boots have made the point that the way the cream is formulated is important, and this is true. It is possible to formulate a cream that prevents the full benefits of the active ingredients from working, or that doesn’t contain enough. We know that Boots have got it right so maybe that is the one to stick with for now.

Update 26.5.08  Boots are now selling the No 7 range including the Protect and Repair Serum at half price in a promotion.   I think we can now officially declare this manic episode is over.