Look sweeter: Could sugar be the new key to keeping those wrinkles at bay?

When it comes to advances in skincare, there’s always some magic new ingredient or revolutionary approach that promises to turn anti-ageing on its head and give you back the flawless skin of your youth. 

Most of us are sceptical about such claims, and with good reason. But every once in a while, a concept comes along that makes you take a second look. Yves Saint Laurent’s new range Forever Youth Liberator might just be one of those.

It’s based on a science known as glycomics, or glycobiology, an area of biochemistry that, in 2003, the prestigious journal Technology Review cited as one of ten emerging technologies that would change the world.

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SOURCE Daily Mail

New anti-wrinkle cream will trick human cells into regenerating themselves

A new range of anti-ageing creams which ‘trick’ human skin cells into regenerating themselves is expected this year.

The products, designed to smooth out wrinkles and repair damaged skin, have been designed by experts in ‘glycobiology’, the science of using naturally occurring sugars to improve health.

L’Oreal hopes its attempt to harness the technology, registered as Glycanactif, will prove a popular addition to the £2billion British cosmetics market.

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SOURCE Daily Mail

Light fantastic: Could a new home laser really take the place of a £4,000 skin treatment?

The Fraxel laser treatment, offered by dermatologists, has been lauded as one of the most effective non-surgical anti-ageing therapies of recent years.

Used on the face, decollete and backs of the hands, it delivers pinpricks of laser energy into the skin, but leaves a network of undamaged skin in between, and is credited with doing everything from zapping pigmentation to boosting collagen and plumping skin. But with a cost of up to £4,000 for a full-face treatment, it’s prohibitively expensive for most of us.

This is part of the reason why Solta Medical, the company behind Fraxel, has teamed up with electronics giant Philips to create a laser device for home use. Called ReAura, it has just launched in Space NK and, while less expensive than a clinic treatment, still costs a whopping £799.

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SOURCE Daily Mail

Signs of ageing halted in the lab

The onset of wrinkles, muscle wasting and cataracts has been delayed and even eliminated in mice, say researchers in the US.

It was done by "flushing out" retired cells that had stopped dividing. They accumulate naturally with age.
The scientists believe their findings could eventually "really have an impact" in the care of the elderly.
Experts said the results were "fascinating", but should be taken with a bit of caution.

The study, published in Nature, focused on what are known as "senescent cells". They stop dividing into new cells and have an important role in preventing tumours from progressing.

These cells are cleared out by the immune system, but their numbers build up with time. The researchers estimated that around 10% of cells are senescent in very old people.

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SOURCE : James Gallagher Health reporter, BBC News

The £8.49 jar of honey that can be used as a face mask and 'reverses signs of ageing by 10 years'

A new 'sticky' face pack made from honey which claims to reverse the ageing process by up to 10 years goes on sale today.

Active Chilean Rainforest Honey is said to smooth fine lines on the face, neck and hands while tightening the skin.

Used twice a day for 20 minutes, it is also said to be twice as good as normal moisturisers at reducing stretch marks, and for preventing sunburnt skin from peeling.

Bee's knees: Active Chilean Rainforest Honey, which costs £8.49 a jar - is derived from the nectar of the Quillay, Tineo and Ulmo trees, native to the Valdivian rainforest of southern Chile

Studies show the honey - which is also edible - is significantly more potent than Manuka, the much-hyped 'superfood' from New Zealand.

Active Chilean Rainforest Honey is already a phenomenon in America - the obesity and sunbed capital of the world - where sales have grown by 400 per cent since April.

Boots and High Street health food stores say they are expecting an 'unprecedented rush' in the coming weeks.

Jamie Christie, of British manufacturer The Active Honey Company, said the anti-ageing properties came as a surprise.

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Skin cream 'that can reverse effect of the menopause'

When a woman reaches a certain age, she has a lot of changes to contend with.

So an inexpensive skincare regime to make her feel more like her former self would probably be welcome.

Makers of a range of anti-ageing creams – believed to be the first mass market menopause cosmetics – claim they can help.

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$500 Home Laser Takes Aim at Wrinkles

Cosmetic doctors pay as much as $100,000 for lasers that help combat wrinkles, and now patients can buy a low-powered version for about $500 to use as a wrinkle-smoother at home.

The PaloVia laser has found a champion in Dr. Christopher Zachary, chairman of the UCI Department of Dermatology, though many other cosmetic specialists are skeptical or dismissive.

"This sophisticated and rather handsome compact home-use device works,” Zachary says. “This laser can be safely used by individuals in the comfort of their own homes to rejuvenate their skin, albeit over an extended time. "

The 1420nm-frequency wavelength of the laser penetrates deeply enough to create some heat injury to the skin, he said, which stimulates safe growth of new skin cells.

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Do you Need 'Blackberry Botox'? How squinting at smartphones causes premature wrinkles

Women heading into middle-age may find themselves self-consciously checking their faces for signs of frown lines and crows feet.

But now younger women may have reason to worry according to one top cosmetic doctor, who found many are developing premature wrinkles from staring at their smartphones.

Dr Jean-Louis Sebagh said peering at a small screen causes your face to scrunch up, creating an area of tension around and between the brows. The London-based anti-ageing expert said women were then resorting to Botox to smooth out the fine facial lines.

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Have scientists finally found the facelift in a jar? Cream claims to get to the root of wrinkles

It's hailed as the magic beauty ingredient that can take years off your face.

And collagen, the skin-plumping protein said to smooth out laugh lines and crow’s feet, seems to be in most anti-wrinkle creams on the market these days.

But what if it were possible to target your skin’s own ‘collagen factory’ and coax it to pump out more of its own?

That’s the claim, at least, of a cream which is being touted as the first to get to the root of wrinkles.

Its makers say it will be the first anti-ageing cream to pinpoint the collagen-making cells which are vital to youthful skin.

Rubbed into the skin once a day for eight weeks, it tricks ageing skin cells into pumping out levels of collagen normally seen in a much younger body. This plumps up the skin, reducing the depth of wrinkles, according to its makers L’Oreal.

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Try a super serum: Don't scoff - the powerful doses of anti-ageing ingredients in these potions work wonders

By Alice Hart-davis

When I first heard about beauty serums a few years ago, my reaction was cynical. A whole new step in skincare, between cleansing and moisturising? Yeah, right.

How come we had all been fine for decades using just moisturiser? Had skincare companies - or perhaps their marketing departments - come up with this brilliant money-making wheeze to persuade us to add yet another product to our daily regimes?

But now I couldn’t live without my serums. Like many others, I have come to see them as a vital ingredient in any skincare regime. Have I just been suckered by the hype? Goodness, no. Here’s why.

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Cream of the crop: Want to be sure your anti-ageing cream isn't just snake oil? Look for the ingredients that really work

We are obsessed with looking younger. We spend £600 million a year on anti-ageing face creams and this figure is set to rise as yet more products enter the market.

But with a vast array of lotions and potions competing for our cash, how can you be sure the cream you are buying is not just a gimmick? The answer is to look out for the proven ingredients that can really halt skin ageing.

Here are the ‘super-ingredients’ that you should be scanning for ...

RETINOL

A form of vitamin A, retinol is a tried and tested wrinkle reducer. This powerful ingredient exfoliates the top layer of the complexion and stimulates the production of skin-firming collagen.
With consistent use, sun-damaged or slack skin can gradually become smoother and tauter —– six months is the norm.

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Botox or no-tox... How high-maintenance is YOUR beauty regime

By Elsa Mcalonan

The Big British Beauty Poll, commissioned by Olay, is one of the biggest beauty surveys ever conducted in the UK  -  20,000 women, aged 18-65, were asked about their beauty habits, covering everything from how much they spend to how they feel about Botox.

The results are in, and here we can exclusively reveal what British women really think about beauty.

BOTOX VERSUS NO-TOX?

Botox is out! Now it’s official — women prefer ‘Super Facials’ as the top anti-ageing treatment. The ‘frozen look’ has been given the cold shoulder as women opt for the needle-free method of turning back the years.

When asked ‘Would you consider having, or have you had, any of the following anti-ageing treatments?’, 67 per cent chose anti-ageing facials, 43 per cent micro-dermabrasion, 27 per cent facial peels, 25 per cent laser re-surfacing and 24 per cent cosmetic surgery.

Botox was least popular, scoring only 21 per cent. As high-profile celebrities such as Dannii Minogue say ‘no more’ to Botox, women are following the trend and turning to super-charged facials as alternatives to firmer, younger-looking skin.

A-list facialist Anastasia Achilleos says: ‘I’ve noticed more and more women switching from Botox to high-performance facials.

'They’ve heard about the rejuvenating effects you can achieve from new facial techniques and are looking for a softer, more individual approach to anti-ageing. Now that celebrities are ­coming out against Botox, there’s a growing trend for a more natural look.’

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After 18 years of Botox, how I finally unfroze my smile...

Was it the day I looked in the mirror and saw an unfamiliarly, glassy face staring back at me? Or was it the humiliating moment in A&E when the young doctor treating me for a cut on my forehead asked me to raise my eyebrows and I simply couldn’t do it?

Either way, after nearly two decades of having Botox, I’ve decided to quit. And as I hit send on the email cancelling my latest appointment — saying that I wouldn’t be rearranging it — I felt wonderfully liberated. Hell, I even raised an eyebrow in celebration.

My Botox days started 18 years ago, when, at the age of 29 I was asked by a magazine to test this radical new treatment. It really did seem to work magic, and although I wasn’t plagued with wrinkles, I had injections sporadically over the years, when I started to look tired.

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Fighting Wrinkles With Lasers Scientifically Unraveled

Laser pulses enable skin rejuvenation, as research at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) has shown. Laser treatment introduces heat into the skin. Under the influence of heat shocks of 45°C, skin cells produce more collagen. This is the protein that gives the skin its firmness and elasticity. Susanne Dams describes this process in the dissertation for which she gained her PhD degree from the Biomedical Engineering Department at TU/e.

Laser treatment is quite common in the practices of beauticians and dermatologists. Although the technique has been widely used for many years, its impact and the underlying processes are still to be unraveled.

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Is having cosmetic work done the new normal?

As more ordinary women opt to undergo cosmetic work, Justine Picardie argues they are losing more than just a few wrinkles in their quest for ageless perfection.

Earlier this month I found myself sitting next to Courtney Love during Paris Fashion Week. At 47, she looked astonishingly smooth of complexion - her skin unwrinkled, her cheeks and lips as plump as a Renaissance cherub. But beneath her dewy foundation, there were faint signs of yellow bruises, as if this fresh face had blossomed out of a fight.

It's never easy to untangle hard facts from candy-floss gossip in the reporting of celebrity cosmetic procedures; but several newspapers have commented approvingly on Love's new look, and attributed it to Dr Sam Rizk, a New York surgeon who performs a 'stem-cell facelift', whereby the patient's own fat and adult stem cells are extracted, separated and then injected back into the face. This is, apparently, the latest breakthrough in the quest for youthfulness - with more desirable results than the obvious facelifts of the past, which gave everyone the same scarily tautened skin and identikit noses.


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Healthy Choices: Go Wrinkle free

Until now, anti-ageing laser light therapy was only available in beauty salons and private cosmetic clinics. However, the personal Wellay Cosmetic Skin Laser has made that a thing of the past, allowing you to use patented multi-wavelength laser technology in your own home.

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Let there be light! LED treatments claiming to cure acne are now available as home kits - but are they safe?

When you’ve got acne or wrinkles, the last thing you want is for someone to come along and shine a light on your imperfections.

But an innovative home-use device requires you to do exactly that — with the promise of results that match up to professional-strength machines.

Treatments using the skin-repairing power of LED (light-emitting diode) light therapy are firm favourites with dermatologists and facialists.

Carla Bruni, Natalie Imbruglia and Sienna Miller are all said to be disciples.

But typical salon or clinic-based LED light treatment can cost more than £100 a go, and require six to 12 sessions.

Enter the Tanda Light Therapy Skincare System, a hand-held gizmo that mimics the light frequency used in clinic-based treatments, with the added bonus that you can use it in your own home, in your own time and at a fraction of the cost.

Developed in Canada, the mini-machines work by exposing the skin to different wavelengths of coloured light to gently and painlessly treat blemished complexions.

There are two devices, available only in Harvey Nichols.

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Bankrupted by Beauty?

£595 face cream, £53 lipstick and £100 foundation - why have cosmetics prices gone mad?
By Alice Hart-Davis

When the missive arrived from the representatives of Dr Nicholas Perricone, I read it with close interest.

Perricone is one of the world's most highly regarded dermatologists and I learned that in London, in October, he will be making available, for a few weeks only, a small amount of his 'Private Reserve' serum.

I had heard rumours of this fabled stuff, but wasn't sure it actually existed; a serum so special, so high-tech and crammed with patented neuropeptides (tiny molecules that help renew the skin) that it is mixed by hand, once a year, for his highest-profile clients; a skincare holy Grail, if you like . . . and then my reverie was interrupted. I saw the price.

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Cosmetic facial filler suspended

Novabel is marketed as "the gentle, powerful, versatile dermal shaper" by its manufacturer, Merz.

Since its introduction in January the algae-based product has been used by cosmetic surgeons to fill out lines, reduce hollowness below the eyes and plump out cheeks.

According to Merz, 17 clinics use the substance and about 1,700 people across Britain have been treated with it.

But on Thursday the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Authority (MHRA) issued an alert that it should be withdrawn immediately from use.

It stated that Merz had "received reports of adverse reactions to the filler including redness, bruising, pain, swelling and histologically confirmed granuloma". The last is an immune system response that results in small raised nodules under the skin.

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