Total Skin Solution - Skin Care Home

Healthy and Beautiful Skin

Welcome to my site.

By the time you finish reading this page, I guarantee you will be a much more educated consumer on how to choose a quality skin care product that gives you the results you earnestly desire.

Even though I don't know you, I'll bet that if you're like me, you're sick and tired of skin care products that don't do what they claim to.

The worst part is that it is ironically often the most expensive skin care products that are the most ineffective.

Now, of course, there are some good products on the market that can genuinely help make your skin look smoother, more radiant, and youthful. Not only should a quality skin product help reduce bags under, and fine lines around, the eyes, but it should even out coloration inconsistencies caused by age spots and other unwanted pigment concentrations.

Now the problem is that there are literally thousands of products to choose from and unless you become a well-informed consumer, it's hard to find one of the few that actually produces real results and eliminates years of aging from your face and body.

Let's face it, people will understandably spend any amount of money to make themselves look better or younger. Cosmetic surgery is a multi-billion dollar industry and so is the topical skin care industry.

It's simply a law of economics that the more the demand for such products skyrockets, the more product that manufacturers will flood onto the marketplace to capitalize on this demand.

A lot of these products are rushed to market to meet this demand without any real consideration to research and development. All of the money goes into the marketing of the product. On the surface everything looks great. The bottles and jars that the creams come in look appealing. The magazine advertisements are glossy, complete with a youthful looking model or a well known celebrity who doesn't even really use the products.

You can't really blame these companies. When you are spending a fortune paying for marketing, whether it be on the product containers, magazine, radio, and TV ads, royalties paid to celebrities and models, you have to charge a lot of money for your products or you're going to lose money.

On the other hand, this doesn't mean you and I have to fall for these types of marketing schemes. After all, these companies aren't going to encounter any shortage of people who will open their wallets and purses to purchase their products anytime soon. The reality is most people simply won't take any time to research products and understand what ingredients work and what ingredients are actually bad for your skin!

That's why I created this website. So, let's get right into.

Ingredients to Avoid

It seems incredible, but many skin care products are loaded with ingredients that actually harm your skin over time. In this section, we will talk about some of these.

First, mineral oil. I have seen this oil used in literally hundreds of products I've look at. Mineral oil may also go by the names liquid paraffin, paraffin wax, and petrolatum on the product label. Mineral oil is used so pervasively in skin care products for one reason: it's cheap!

However, mineral oil, once applied, prevents the skin from "breathing." As such, it clogs pores, interferes with your skin's natural ability to eliminate toxins, and can lead to acne flare ups. Also, it is irritating to the skin and if used for any length of time, your skin can become dependent on it, causing chapping and dryness. Lastly, it can lead to premature aging of the skin. It's amazing this substance is even allowed in so-called "skin care" products at all.

Dioxane: (a synthetic derivative of coconut). This substance is widely used in skincare products. It often contains high concentrations of 1,4-dioxane, which is readily absorbed through the skin. I know this sounds crazy, but 1,4-dioxane is considered a chemical "known to the State of California to cause cancer". To think people pay money to put this stuff on their skin unknowingly is downright scary.

Fragrances: Who doesn't like to smell nice? Well, I'm here to tell you that if you want to smell nice, use a little bit of perfume or cologne....or some bodyspray. Your skin care products should not contain fragrances. Many fragrances are produced from ingredients that are known to be toxic or carcinogenic.

You must remember that your skin is the largest organ of the body. Anything you put on it can be easily absorbed through the pores. Now, why would I recommend you use perfume or cologne as a fragrance but to choose a skin care product without them?

The reason is simple. When you use skin care products, they are applied all over the face, neck, and body. This covers a lot of surface area and, therefore, a great deal of chemical absorption occurs.

Now, I'm sure that many colognes and perfumes contain less than desirable substances too, but I'm enough of a realist to know that people aren't going to stop using these products to smell nice. However, with perfumes and colognes, you can achieve what you want by a small dab here and there.

So, in my opinion, this is a much better route to go than to use skin care products that also contain potentially dangerous fragrance chemicals that are directly applied and massaged into the skin all over your body.

Parabens: methyl, propyl, butyl, and ethyl paraben. Many skin care products (and moisturizing products) will use parabens as a preservative so their products have a long shelf life. The reason is purely economical. However, studies suggest that they may cause cancer and interfere with the bodys endocrine system, as well as causing allergic reactions and skin rashes.

Alcohols: ethanol, ethyl alcohol, methanol, benzyl alcohol, isopropyl alcohol and SD alcohol. Not all alcohols have the same properties, but these, which are commonly found in skin care products, are very drying and irritating for the skin. Alcohols such as these strip away the skin's natural acid mantle, making you more vulnerable to bacteria, moulds and viruses.

Now that we've looked at some of the bad, let's examine some of the good ingredients and some ingredients that sound good but in fact aren't.

Ingredients to Look For

Before we have a discussion of specific ingredients, it's important to educate ourselves a little bit more on skin itself and what makes a product good or poor.

The biggest reason our skin, whether on the face or the rest of the body, develops lines and/or starts to sag, is that the collagen and elastin in our skin begins to break down. This is the most technical this page is going to get, so bear with me for just a sentence or two.

Collagen is a protein that is fibrous in nature. What makes collagen different from other kinds of protein is that it possesses great tensile strength, which means, among other things, it provides firmness to the skin.

You don't need to be a scientist, therefore, to understand that as collagen breaks down due to aging, the firmness of our skin becomes...well, less firm. Wrinkles appear and skin starts to sag.

Elastin, too, is a protein that helps skin stay "flexible" and firm. If your skin is stretched, elastin is the protein that helps it return to its original position.

What all of this means for you is that you do not want to purchase a skin care product that is nothing more than a cream that fills in fine lines and wrinkles, giving the appearance of temporarily nicer skin when it's on...but the illusion shattered when you wash it off. You want a product that contains ingredients that actually stimulates new collagen and elastin production in your skin. If you achieve this, you will, in reality, begin to turn back the clock.

Now, pay attention here because I'm going to share with you something extremely important. Some of the manufacturers of more pricy products will try to dupe the public by including some really good active ingredients. What's wrong with that you say?

Well, here's the tactic they use. Because these active ingredients are beneficial for the skin, they include some just so that they can legally list them on the product label. This way, the typical consumer thinks they are getting a great product. But, because these ingredients are expensive, and because, as discussed before, a lot of well known companies are already spending much of their budget on marketing, they don't put in enough of these 'active ingredients' to have any real benefit for your skin.

So, when choosing a skin care product, it's not just about selecting one with good ingredients; it's also about choosing one with a high concentration of these good ingredients.

Collagen