Antiaging products: What really works

Maddeningly, much of that money is being spent on products that have little effect on skin’s aging process, because to halt the march of fine lines, sag, and pigmentation changes, you have to change skin’s deeper layers. And if any of the bazillion department and drugstore products that claim to erase age’s treadmarks could actually do that — say, by increasing cell turnover in the dermis — the FDA would classify them as drugs. A few do exist, but you can only buy them with a doctor’s prescription (see the section on retinoids).

Why are so many cosmetic claims so convincing? Five reasons:
1. Clever writing.
Read the claims carefully and you’ll realize they’re full of qualifying words like “aim to” and “designed to diminish” and “reduce the appearance of” and, well, you get the idea. These promises are etched in anything but stone.

2.Scientific trappings.
Even if a product says, “clinically shown to ... " remember that it’s one thing to research how a component of coffee, such as caffeine, say, affects mouse skin, and quite another to claim that adding coffee to a lotion will perk up human skin. Also, little cosmetic research meets the scientific gold standard — that is, a randomized, double-blind crossover study, performed by a qualified researcher (who is usually affiliated with a university or teaching hospital) with no financial stake in the outcome. The studies are usually very small, typically lack a control for comparison, and are paid for by cosmetics companies, which have a vested interest in the results.

3. The placebo effect.
If you’ve just plunked down $27.50, or $275, for a moisturizer, you want it to make your skin look younger, smoother, firmer, so it’s easy to see changes for the better. And let’s not forget the psychological aspect of buying something luxuriously packaged. The packaging alone can lead to you believe it will work! Savvy beauty companies don’t skimp on presentation, especially when they command mucho dinero for their goods.

4. No cops.
Cosmetics aren’t regulated by the FDA, so if a product doesn’t diminish fine lines, well, nothing really happens. And if you’re not sure it did anything unusual, but it smelled wonderful and felt terrific, you might buy it again anyway.

5. Vague promises.
How many times have you seen a product marketed with the phrase “Clinically proven to reduce the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles by up to 33 percent,” or some such? Have you ever asked yourself, 'What does that mean, exactly'? You don’t live in a clinical setting, so does that percentage work in the real world? The term clinically proven sounds persuasive, but as we just saw under “scientific trappings,” it’s often more marketing than science. Generally, the phrase means that at least one component of the product has been shown, in one study or another, to have had some biological action, such as helping wounds heal faster by stimulating cell division. But it’s not necessarily true that it has been demonstrated by a well-controlled, independent clinical study to have significant effects in skin.

Paying for pearls, but seeing the same old skin
When Forbes magazine reviewed the world’s most expensive age-defying facial products, they found that the average price of the top ten products on their list cost $402 per ounce. That’s 7,500 percent more than the price of products sold at most drug and grocery stores. What makes these products so expensive? Other than hype and heavy marketing (that you pay for!), many include exotic (read: expensive) ingredients like caviar, crushed pearls, and extracts from rare plants from remote terrain. Antioxidants like grape-seed extract, chamomile oils, and alpha lipoic acid — all of which are touted to fight the free radicals that ravage skin tissue — also drive up the price. Add to that the customized cell messenger proteins, which allegedly stimulate cell growth and which I think are bogus, and you’ve got yourself a spendy package.

That said, earlier this year scientists put a price on happiness. You know what I mean — how much we enjoy paying for something really really expensive once in a while. I personally think it goes a little deeper than retail therapy. Who doesn’t get a tad more satisfaction from designer brands, be it a purse or a lotion, than from cheaper versions, even if they are exactly the same? Sounds ridiculous, but I think every woman can agree. And now, it has been proven: The more we believe an item is worth, the happier we are with our purchase (at least for a short time). In a study that I wish I had participated in because it sounds like so much fun, participants were hooked up to brain-scan machines and told to take a sip from five glasses of wine, which ranged from five dollars to ninety dollars per bottle. When they were told they were drinking a glass of wine from a ninety-dollar bottle, brain scans showed increased activity in the medial orbital frontal cortex, the area of the brain that registers pleasure. The hilarious part is that these people’s pleasure spots activated in the brain even when they were fooled to think they were drinking a $90 bottle when, in fact, they were swilling cheap vino that retails for around five dollars!

It’s practically instinctual to believe that when you pay more, you get more — that a higher price commands a higher quality. The kicker here is that if you believe something better is happening to you (like you’re getting to drink fine wine, or, in the case of cosmetics, indulge yourself with uberluxurious product lines sworn by by the celebrities in haute-couture fashion magazines), you essentially affect the way your brain handles the experience. By the way, the researchers in this latest study discovered that this effect happens across all types of purchases, and is not isolated to wine-tasting circles. Granted, some people can confuse an item’s worth with their own self-worth (as in, “Will this make me happy?”), but that’s another can of worms. Suffice it to say that I give you permission to splurge when you feel it’s appropriate ... and really want to. The occasional splurge can knock your stress down a notch or two. Just don’t start thinking that happiness is only a purchase away. You know the old cliché: You can’t buy happiness.

Excerpted from “The Mind-Beauty Connection” by Amy Wechsler, MD. Copyright © 2008 by RealAge Corporation. Reprinted by permission of Free Press, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.