Most Skincare Are Toxic, Anti-aging Is a Lie

I used to sleep with my mum almost every night when I was a kid, especially during winter. It just felt nice and warm in bed when you had somebody next to you. However, sometimes I had to get in bed first when it was still cold because my mum was sitting in front of the mirror doing her ordinary night routine with her beloved anti-aging cream.

I remembered those nights when the recent “Sephora kids” went viral, with some TikTok videos showing young teenagers busy buying anti-aging skincare products for a daily routine that they believe will keep them forever young.

Newsflash: it won’t.

The ancient quest for the fountain of youth

“There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of the people you love.” — Sophia Loren (1934-present)

Humans have long wanted to stay forever young. In the 16th century, Spanish voyagers sought a rumored elixir of youth in the Americas. The first anti-aging recipe involving diet and lifestyle advice was given by German physician Christopher Hufeland in 1797.

This hunt for rejuvenation later turned into charlatanism, as a concoction mixed with mashed dog testicles that claimed to restore youth was commonly sold in Western countries in 1889.

Enter the cosmeceuticals

In the mid-20th century, the cosmetics industry was searching for a way to capitalize on anxiety about aging. According to Laura Hurd, a sociologist professor from British Columbia University “We’re selling the idea that we are all against aging because we should be afraid of it — and better yet, battle it.”

Companies worked with scientists to define a new category of anti-aging products, which accomplish more than color the skin but less than medicinal drugs so that they could evade strict regulation. A new term, “cosmeceutical,” was formed by dermatologist Dr. Albert Kligman in 1984.

Since then, anti-aging quickly became the fastest-growing category of the beauty industry. More than 90% of skincare products sold in the market are considered cosmeceuticals, which claim to protect the skin, reduce wrinkles, or even reverse aging by changing our skin biologically.

Here are a few different kinds you can find on the shelves.

“Burning” acids aren’t actually good for your skin

Back in Cleopatra's time, sour milk was widely used for bathing by Egyptian women due to the chemical “peeling” effect from acid, which gave the benefit of the improvement of skin texture.

This effect was later identified as due to the natural acids that occur in citrus fruits and fermented foods known as Alpha-hydroxy-acids (AHAs), often seen as citric or lactic acid. However, despite being naturally occurring in food, these acids are far from being harmless to our skin.

The Cosmetics Ingredient Review Compendium suggests skincare with skin “smoothing” effects from acids like AHAs would destroy the upper layer of skin and increase the damage caused by sunlight; this would cause severe burns and swelling, increasing the risk of certain skin cancers like malignant melanoma.

Yet most companies would still use these acids to amplify the skin “smoothing” effect in their products so they can make claims like “91% of our consumers say their skin feels smoother.”

Regulatory agencies still allow the use of hydroxy acids at a high concentration of up to 10% in skincare products or even 30% in salon products without the need for disclosure on labels, which makes it nearly impossible to avoid them.

Retinol is snake oil

Human body tissues are primarily built with the protein named collagen. Ejiao was a common medicine from ancient China made from gelatine in donkey hides, which was consumed as collagen supplementation for improving health.

But the benefits of collagen have been gradually distorted over the last few decades, as the cosmeceutical industry started to promote their collagen “rich” anti-aging products by spoon-feeding consumers the concept that wrinkles were the result of collagen loss during the aging process.

Retinol was the late 20th century’s offering, which brought the initial “hype” around collagen boosting. However, its efficacy remains questionable since its initial discovery, as most companies quietly disregarded the fact that retinol is naturally unstable.

It instantly degrades into an inactive form when exposed to air and light, which makes retinol-based skincare claims to reduce wrinkles suspect.

Nowadays, retinol is often advertised as a form of “Vitamin A” to trick consumers into considering it “safe” when it’s certainly not.

A report from the US National Toxicology Program in 2012 suggests that people are exposed to a greater risk of skin cancer when using skincare containing retinol or derivatives (like retinyl palmitate) combined with sunlight, as they break down into harmful byproducts that damage our cellular DNA and cause cell death.

Youth is supposed to be temporary

Collagen research stayed dormant without critical breakthroughs after the retinol “hype” until biologically active collagen peptides, so-called “botox in a bottle,” were discovered in the 1980s.

Certain peptides called “Neurotransmitter Inhibitors” (like Acetyl Hexapeptide) quickly became the industry's new honey pot; unlike retinol, these were stable and reduced age-induced wrinkles by blocking neurotransmitters.

However, these collagen peptides were only capable of delivering a temporary improvement; yet as the industry desired, it was more than enough to squeeze the money out of consumers' pockets.

This often explains why companies make product disclaimers like “Consumer testing on 139 women after using the product for 4 weeks,” as they mostly conduct short-term product trials with small groups of women without any follow-ups. This guarantees test results lie in their favor, which ends up with their product claims being hardly reliable.

Corrupted collagen

The leather industry, one of the most polluting industries, is surprisingly a great cost-effective source of “raw” collagen. More than 80% of the raw materials during leather production are turned into toxic waste by-products due to the buffing process that gives the un-uniform leather an even texture, which generated lots of buffing dust waste.

The cosmeceutical industry found these toxic wastes to be valuable, as they often contain up to 50% economically reusable protein like collagen, which can be repurposed and used in cosmeceuticals. And more importantly, it’s a “win-win”, where industries got to fulfill their ethical responsibilities by casually “helping” the environment at the cost of consumer’s health, how convenient was that!

Defective regulatory system

Most people can hardly imagine the hidden dangers behind peptides-based skincare, in which they are often contaminated by the toxic solvent called N, N-Dimethylformamide (DMF), which is the same solvent used for both leather treatments and cosmeceutical peptide synthesis. This solvent is highly permeable through the skin and can cause severe liver damage.

Just like the contaminated lipstick controversy, anti-aging skincare also comes with safety flaws, because toxic contaminants are legally permitted to occur in considerable amounts. Since legally, they aren’t considered “ingredients,” they are not subjected to any safety regulations at all!

When risks outweigh benefits

“Youth is not entirely a time of life; it is a state of mind. Nobody grows old by merely living a numbers of years. People grow old by deserting their ideals. You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt; as young as your self-confidence, as old as your fear; as young as your hope, as old as your despair.” — Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964)

My verdict was while the effectiveness of cosmeceuticals still remains highly uncertain, one thing we can all be certain of is that they pose serious risks to our health. I wouldn’t even be surprised if someone found out these products actually make them age even faster.

Industries certainly know how to sell products, but no matter how promising their product claims look, or how many so-called “reliable” tests they have conducted, they are not truly safe. Their benefits certainly don’t justify their risks.

Would you rather believe companies' wishful claims or your own instincts about these uncertainties? Unfortunately, most of us still dare to trust the industry blindly, as we keep pursuing the mythical fountain of youth.