What ingredients should I avoid in skin care products?

Ingredients to AVOID in your skin care products:

Mineral Oil or Petrolatum
Commonly used in moisturizers and cleansers. Suffocates the skin contributing to a dull, tired and sluggish complexion. Can clog the pores which can contribute to excess breakout.

Sodium Laureth Sulfate or Ammonium Laureth Sulfate
Commonly used in foaming and gel cleansers. Is extremely drying and irritating and encourages dead skin cell buildup.

SD Alcohol 40
Commonly used in astringents/toners. Will cause dead skin cell buildup on the skin, which can trap oil and contribute to breakout. Will strip water out of the skin deleting moisture which is essential for anti-aging.

Fragrance
Commonly used in skin care products. The #1 cause of allergic reactions to products. The word “fragrance” or “perfume” will be listed near the bottom of the ingredient list.

Isopropyl Myristate/Isopropyl Palmitate
Commonly used in cleansers and moisturizers. Will clog the pores leading to excessive blackheads and break outs.

I'll break it up by skin type.

If you have a tendency to acne or breakouts avoid:

• D&C colors
• Lanolin, lanolin derivatives
• Isopropyl myristate
• Mineral oils
• Sesame oil
• Petrolatum
• Isoparaffin C9-11
• Cocoa butter
• Oleic acid
• Decyl oleate
• Butyl stearate
• Isostearic acid

Sensitive and rosacea-prone skin avoid:

• Alcohol
• Witch hazel
• Fragrance 
• Menthol
• Peppermint
• Eucalyptus oil
• Citrus essential oils
• Parabens
• Chemical sunscreens

In general, a good idea to avoid:

• Mineral oil - a petroleum by-product considered mildly comedogenic
• Lanolin - often contains pesticide residues and is considered allergenic
• Alcohol - is drying, may cause hyperpigmentation, premature aging
• D&C colors - many are comedogenic, others may contain heavy metals. recommend using mineral make-ups which use iron oxides and other natural pigments
• Fragrance--fragrance is the number one cause of allergic dermatitis.  Look for "fragrance-free" rather than "unscented" in your labels--unscented may have a "masking" scent. "Fragrance-free" means free of fragrances, which is what you want.

Anything that has Alcohol is usually a product that you should avoid. Alcohol is great in removing excess sebum (oil) and general dirt from the skin. However, it is also great at removing the protective layer of our skins, leaving it sensitive, dry or dehydrated.

There are some ingredients commonly found in skin care products that are
damaging to the skin, toxic, or neutral in terms of skin benefits.

• Benzoyl peroxide: I find this popular anti-acne ingredient to be very damaging to the skin. While it may help control (not heal) acne, it peels off the top layer of the skin and removes the skin’s natural protective barrier against environmental factors such as sun, wind, and pollution.

  o   The skin loses the natural glow (appears very matte), loses its natural SPF (making it more susceptible to damage from sun rays and more likely to develop brown sun spots), and over time, the skin of even young people develops wrinkles, stubborn brown acne scars, and appears older, less supple, and dehydrated.

• Tetracycline: this anti-acne antibiotic often causes permanent yellowing of teeth, especially near the gums. These stains cannot be completely or permanently removed, not even by the new state-of-the art teeth whitening systems (according to my research to date).

• Synthetic fragrances in skin care products, perfumes, room fragrances, and makeup: the FDA does not require companies to disclose scent ingredients on product labels and instead the labels just say “fragrance.” In most cases, the fragrance is 100% synthetic and composed of hundreds different chemical compounds.

  More than one-third of chemicals used in the fragrance industry are recognized as toxic (toluene, ethanol, etc.), carcinogenic, disruptive to the nervous system, or can cause birth defects. Because of the labeling loophole, the only way to avoid these toxic substances is to buy skin care products that are scented solely with essential oils.

  Also watch out for soaps that don’t contain ingredients labels at all (the FDA doesn’t require them on soaps) because they very likely contain synthetic fragrances, even soaps that are called “unscented.” In the cosmetic industry, “unscented” means having inherent ingredient scents removed chemically and a new synthetic scent added in that customers will think of as neutral.

• Jojoba beads: this by-product of jojoba oil (which is really a wax) can be found in face scrubs, as the beads act as gentle exfoliants. Jojoba beads are not harmful, but keep in mind that they are a highly-refined product that doesn’t have the nourishing properties of the jojoba plant.

   

Mature skin that is thin should avoid having too much acid applied to it (e.g. glycolic acids).

As long as the skin is not overly sensitive or thin, there is no intrinsic reason that mature skin needs to avoid any specific ingredient.

Granted, it may be necessary for mature skin to gradually get accustomed to some ingredients and this may necessitate application of product every third night instead of every night but in most instances, mature skin will tolerate most ingredients if they are introduced in the right manner.

Any cream that says it has anti-aging properties without any proven ingredients should be avoided. You see, the regulatory agencies have very little control over claims in cosmetics, even when they are outrageous.

For example, neuropeptides are way overrated. Sure, the skin needs them as they decrease with age. But there is very little evidence in any scientific literature that topically-applied (applied to the skin) neuropeptides actually get into the skin, and there are no studies to show that they even work.

Stick to the science and to verified and proven results.

Synthetic antioxidants are among the most hyped up ingredients that consumers should avoid. These are found in many over-the-counter products.

Revaleskin is a product you can purchase through your physician that contains all natural botanicals and antioxidants, making it suitable for all skin types, as it is non-irritating, hypoallergenic, and noncomedogenic.

The science behind cosmetics is exciting and innovating at a faster pace than ever before. Unfortunately, our regulatory agencies, like the FDA, are not testing the new ingredients for safety. They are released to the public without a non-biased safety review. According to ‘The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics’, “Major loopholes in federal law allow the $35 billion cosmetics industry to put unlimited amounts of chemicals into personal care products with no required testing, no monitoring of health effects, and inadequate labeling requirements.”

This means that of the 10,500 ingredients currently used in cosmetics, only 11% have ever been tested for safety. Of these ingredients, the European Union has outright banned the use of 1,100 of them. Do you know how many the US has banned? Only 9.

Hyped up ingredients like ‘anti-aging’ concoctions which include ‘penetrating enhancers’ that push the ingredients further into the skin and lip plumbers that include ingredients which aggravate the skin so much it swells.

Unfortunately, at first sight these products may look exciting, but we are absorbing and ingesting many of these unstudied and unregulated ingredients which may have long term effects on our health. Reports have also shown than some of these absorbed ‘new’ ingredients are passed in-utero and are also showing up in breast milk.

Since everyone’s skin varies, I would say stay away from whatever ingredients that they personally are sensitive to.

• If your skin tends to be oily, try to use oil-free products.
• If your skin is sensitive, use products that are fragrance free.
• I try to stick to the basics and avoid synthetic fragrances and products that over-dry and irritate my skin. Sometimes products contain chemicals that are unnecessary to the product’s effectiveness and may actually make my skin worse.

The skin care market is flooded with exotic ingredients that don't deliver promised results. Ingredients such as pearl dust and caviar, I would recommend wearing the first and eating the second, but avoid putting it on your face.

I am just an advocate of 'less is more.'

• I avoid parabens (a preservative) when possible (I am not militant about it, I just try to be aware of what is in the products I use) and Phthalates (used in fragranced products).
• I would probably advise people to avoid products with mineral oil because it can clog your pores.
• Many people think that the Sulfates used in certain products (from shampoo to toothpaste to bath products) cause acne and, with bath products, maybe even yeast infections/UTIs in women…so that's something to watch for
• When you try something new, particularly if you're going to smear it all over your face, I really recommend a test patch. It sounds corny, but wouldn't you rather find out that you're going to react to something new in a small quadrant of your cheek then across your entire visage?

One of the things I try to emphasize to my acne patients: stop battering your skin! I advise my patients to look for acne systems or products that avoid acne medications that contain harsh chemicals like:

• sodium lauryl sulfate
• alcohol
• those scrubbing "micro-beads" that abrade skin and allow more acne bacteria to enter the pores.

Harsh chemicals and ingredients only sap the moisture from our skin and leave it weathered and beaten. The analogy I provide for people is this—think of a greasy pan in the kitchen sink and also think about how we get the grease out of the pan. We use harsh detergents as well as scrubs to clean the pan. While this is effective, look at what it does to your hands-dishpan hands!

Those same detergents and scrubs destroy our skin and make it look weathered and abused. If you picture the skin of your face, you would never want that same look to be applied to your face! So the first thing I recommend is avoiding those harsh detergents and scrubs. There are better ways to get the skin clean.

I also remind people frequently that as we get older, our skin becomes less resilient to the stresses of life. Exposure to the elements and to harsh chemicals begins to show in our skin at roughly age 20—when we get our first wrinkle. We treat baby's skin so gently. We need to think about the less resilient adult skin similarly and treat it with kindness and care.