Archive for the ‘Wrinkle Creams/Anti Aging’ Category:
The FDA is now officially warning people that using Botox, whether for cosmetic purposes or for muscle spasming purposes and other less conventional uses for the originally cosmetic purpose, there are small chances that there could be serious side effects, even some fatal (which is indeed very rare). This drug was approved by the FDA for cosmetic purposes as an anti aging tool against wrinkles since, when injected into localized sites on the face, it relaxes the muscles that cause wrinkles such as crows feet, smile lines, laugh lines, and forehead creases. Those smooth foreheads you see in Hollywood even on forty something actresses? Most likely due to Botox!
The most incidents they have seen that are serious are in children that have cerebral palsy, and have recieved injections of Botox to avoid the muscle spasms that are uncontrollable which are a hallmark of cerebral palsy. What happens is that the toxin travels from the site that it was injected at, and causes muscle paralysis or partial paralysis in areas that it’s not supposed to. This can result in shallow breathing, labored swallowing and other potentially very dangerous side effects.
The FDA has said that while Botox injections have not been specifically approved for the use in patients with cerebral palsy, they do not want to discourage it’s use for them since this does really help a lot of young patients with uncontrollable muscle spasms, but they do want them and their parents to understand the risks involved with this choice in treatment. As far as actual Botox use for cosmetic purposes, there have not really been that many difficulties reported, perhaps because of the age of the patients as well as the fact that the injection sites are very shallow and have a smaller risk of migrating.
I have to admit, that as I age and the creases become more noticeable around my eyes, I’ve found Botox to become a bit more appealing, but after reading things like this and the fact that they really don’t have much long term data about possible long term side effects of Botox, it still makes me hesitant. I think I’m sufficiently keeping the signs of aging at bay by using my preferred choice of anti aging and wrinkle treatments, so I’ll keep taking my chances going natural for now!
Could it be? Do we have a potential alternative to Botox wrinkle relaxing injections on the horizon any time soon? Well, as with most other cosmetic fads, Botox is bound to sooner or later be outdone by a competitor or even itself, as many companies tend to improve and/or evolve their own existing product lines as new technology and research becomes available.
However, it looks like this latest potential Botox competitor is not made by the same company, and comes out of Europe, where it is already approved and getting high marks for relaxing forehead wrinkles and frown lines, which is one of the most common uses for Botox. It’s another European invasion story of better, more advanced cosmetic products for wrinkles and anti aging coming over to the US.
Don’t expect it to be approved any time soon over here in the US though. We have a longer and more stringent approval process for cosmetic improvement products and anything that involves surgery or new invasive techniques or medications, so there’s no telling how long it might be, if at all, this Reloxin product becomes available here in the US. The benefits of Reloxin are said to be that it may take longer to break down completely in the muscles, which means it may last months longer before needing to be done again, unlike Botox, which typically wears off in a few months and needs to be refreshed.
It also disseminates more widely into surrounding tissues. Err, wait, is that a good thing or a bad thing you say? At least that’s what I thought when I read it, and so it’s true. It’s not the best option for those who get Botox injections to treat any areas around the eye, as it have become more popular to use as a treatment for crows feet and around the eye wrinkles. The problem with Reloxin is that it takes a highly skilled technician to do the injection correctly, because if not, it can easily leak to areas around the eyelid, causing a temporary droop to the eyelid.
Not so attractive, and very scary that it can do anything to your eyes at all. Not worth it if you ask me. It begs the question also, if it can disseminate this efficiently, what’s to stop it from migrating beyond it’s intended site of treatment? I mean, we are still talking about a muscle paralyzing concoction here, and we don’t really want that to go where it’s not supposed to.
Reloxin may also compare to Botox favorably in one other way (besides being a better treatment for forehead wrinkles – NOT around the eyes), in that it may cost about 15% less than Botox if it were introduced in to the US for use. Botox costs just over five hundred bucks for a vial currently, and depending on how much you need per injection, this could last you a whole year if you get minimal injections.
Ok, so the next anti aging and wrinkle fighting product that’s on my radar to try was a toss up between Derma E Hyaluronic Acid formula, Derma E Peptide formula and the ROC Deep Wrinkle Night Time formula. I’ve been itching to try the ROC one for a while because I keep seeing it in the beauty aisle along with all the other wrinkle and anti aging creams in the drug stores, plus it has a great price, although admittedly a higher one for typical drug store products.
I’ve also been wanting to a try a product that was heavy on Retinol, which I’ve been reading more and more positive reviews about lately, and the ROC night time deep wrinkle formula has a lot of concentration of Retinol. Retinol tends to work in an opposite manner than most other anti aging products, which slough off the outer layers of skin, revealing new skin, and that is how they reveal the newer skin and speed cell turnover.
However, retinol is a little different, in that with several weeks of use, it is supposed to help to thicken the skin instead of strip the layers away and speed the cell turnover, so it is especially helpful for deeper wrinkles and fine lines, although it is not recommended to be used heavily around the eyes because this is a sensitive area. That was the one drawback I read, because this happens to be precisely where I need the most work on my deeper wrinkles and crow’s feet.
I still decided to try it because my crow’s feet actually angle down away from my eyes, so I figured they were distant enough from the paper thin area right around the eyes. I’m going to buy it as soon as my current DMAE, vitamin C and hyaluronic acid serum is out. Gotta be frugal and watch the money like everyone else in this economy! Oh, the product runs around twenty bucks, a little higher in some stores who jack up their prices like CVS or Rite Aid. I couldn’t find the ROC line in Target and I’m not sure if they sell it in Wal-mart, but they do have the whole line on Amazon for a really good price.
I became interested in copper peptides when I was surfing around looking for what the benefits of hyaluronic acids were in skin care products for anti aging and wrinkle reduction, and came upon copper peptides as a complementary treatment to skin care products that strip away the outer layers of skin to achieve brighter, newer skin with less fine lines and wrinkles.
It was mentioned a few times that copper peptide based products were good at wound healing, and they actually sped up the healing process of the skin because of their ability to sort of “rebuild” the vital protein building blocks that make up the skin’s surface and under layers. The first time I heard of copper peptides being used in skin care products for anti aging and wrinkle reduction was when I saw a Neutrogena ad a few years back featuring the gorgeous Angie Harmon, formerly of Law and Order, and currently starring as the wife of a famous professional football player and in some other Oxygen channel show.
I remember it because I had never heard of a “metal” being used in a skin care product, so it piqued my interest, but I never really followed up because at the time my skin wasn’t really showing the signs of aging as it is now. So, what are copper peptides, and what can they do for your skin? Well, copper peptide is a combination of copper molecules with peptide molecules.
They combine well because copper molecules are apparently very attracted to peptides, which are essentially incomplete proteins. They form one bigger molecule, and are supposedly great at helping to mend wounded skin, as well as to help “fill” wrinkles in by making the skin thicker. Thin skin is especially susceptible to wrinkles, and that is why depending on your nationality, your skin may show wrinkles at an earlier age than if you were a nationality with notoriously thicker skin.
It’s basically the difference between European fair complexions, which tend to be thinner skin and more pale, and African American skin which tends to be thicker and more resillient, hence the reason african american women’s skin looks amazing well into their later years.
Here’s what skin care products with copper peptides in them can supposedly do for your skin :
Make it smoother in appearance
Improve texture of the skin
Improve wrinkles and fine lines
Help speed recovery of skin that has been abraded or stripped away, such as with hydroxy acids or microdermabrasion
Thicken the skin
Help improve sun damage
I don’t know, call me crazy, but whenever I see the word “permanent” associated with any type of plastic surgery self improvement, I am filled with a sense of trepidation. When I think of permanent, I think “not easily reversed” or “possibly disastrous”. I can’t help it, I’ve seen too many of those bad face lifts, nose jobs, lip plumping injections with permanent fillers, cheek implants, and tummy tucks (ala Tara Reid’s botched belly job), that end up looking ten times worst than the person pre-surgery that I treat anything that is permanent with severe caution and would research it thoroughly if I were to even ever think about it.
Hence my skepticism on permanent injectable wrinkle fillers, like the newer Artefill wrinkle filler that’s been approved by the FDA. Even many plastic surgeons and dermatologists won’t use permanent fillers because of their higher likelihood of being botched, migrating to other areas and creating a deformed look that requires surgeries to fix them and also serious pshychological issues in those that a botched job afflicts. You may have seen some bad jobs on celebrities, whose lips suddenly look inflated and uneven, or maybe they have facial features that don’t look quite symmetrical, perhaps because of a migration of the inejctable filler, a lot of these may be due to permanent fillers since they are more difficult to reverse.
Artefill is one that is injected into wrinkles and other areas like the lips that fills them out and rounds out wrinkles. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m a fan of temporary fillers like Juvederm and Restylane, but it’s because those are harmlessly absorbed into the skin, and they are actual collagen derivatives, so they actually may also improve skin over time. Fillers that are permanent are made to stick around for good, which means higher risk for them moving around to where they are not supposed to be. Read our Revitol reviews for more information on an excellent at home wrinkle treatment regimen that works wonders.
However, Artefill, which was recently approved in 2007 (yes, that’s not that long ago in my book), uses an interesting technology whereby particles of a certain filler chemical are suspended in bovine (cow derived) collagen and then injected into the body, but not enough to actually intantly fill out the area. Instead, what happens is that gradually over time, new collagen is produced by your body, encapsulating what is leftover of the formula, so you are essentially filling in the rest of the wrinkle with your own collagen.
Very cool! However, I couldn’t find much about the safety and the effectiveness of this product, so I would do some prudent research of your own on this aspect – try RealSelf.com for personal sories and experiences with this filler, it does sound like it may have a risk of migration that causes problems. I have to say, it is a very novel concept though, and if it could be perfected, it could be the beginning of a new wave in permanent fillers, but I’d wait for a better alternative to come along, which there inevitably will be.
A friend of mine got me a pamphlet from the place where she goes tanning here in Northeast Ohio in the Cleveland area, on a new product that her tanning salon is offering called the Rejuvasun Omnilux bed, which is a tanning bed style solution to treating your face to the nurturing, rejuvenating soft light phototherapy rays on the face. It is not an actual tanner, but simply a wrinkle-fighting red plate of light that shines only on your face, where you can tan the rest of your body if you’d like, or just lay there with the tanning bulbs off and only the face treatment phototherapy section on for a relaxing, lay down twenty minute phototherapy treatment for anti aging and wrinkle reduction on the face.
The bed-style treatment uses the same technology that many dermatologists use in-office for rejuvenating light therapy called Photo Therapeutics Omnilux. The idea behind soft light phototherapy (which incidentiatlly uses red light, long known to be replenishing to the skin, and used in acne and anti aging treatments in spas for a few years now), is that it stimulates the under layers of skin to create more collagen. It also has antibacterial properties, which is why it is also good for acne treatment. It heals the skin, so it would help speed recovery of acne lesions, as well as help mend old acne scars and smooth out the wrinkles and any imperfections on the face.
The going rate right now is about $200 for eight treatments, which isn’t too bad considering the price charged for similar treatments in spas and Dr. offices can run as high as eighty to a hundred bucks a pop. After the eight twenty minute treatments, supposedly you only need to go once a month for routine maintenance. The 8 treatments round out to be roughly $25 each. I did see one before and after picture of a woman with mild crow’s feet and some redness on her face, and the after showed significantly smoother crows feet lines as well as significantly reduced rosacea and blotchiness, so this treatment may also be a good option for those with rosacea and hyperpigmentation.
The results Rejuvasun says it helps your skin achieve are as follows :
- Clearer, brighter, smoother complexion
- Lightened age spots, sun spots and dark circles
- Diminished crow’s feet (that would be my favorite part)
- Diminished blemishes
- Tightens sagging skin
- Increases production of collagen and elastin (the building blocks of youthful, tight, toned and lifted skin)
Overall, it claims to reverse the signs of aging and improve the appearance of the skin by up to 74%, pretty impressive if it does what it says. I have to admit, this sounds tempting, even though I’m trying desperately not to spend money right now 
Botox is one of those cosmetic enhancers that I look at with some interest, but also with a lot of trepidation. I just don’t feel that we know the long term effects of this drug well enough for it to be considered “safe” for long term use, as many women have begun using it, especially when the toxin must be administered about three to four times a year just to keep the targeted facial muscles adequately relaxed or frozen to prevent wrinkles and reduce their appearance.
I like to advocate the natural alternatives such as anti wrinkle creams and devices for wrinkles and facial tone such as the handheld soft light lasers that I’ve become fond of myself instead of Botox or any other invasive procedures, but I will admit I’ve had one of them done on myself to test it out (lip injections of Juvederm, which I liked a lot, minus the pain and the bruising afterward and the obvious drawback of having my lips repeatedly stuck with a needle).
This is one of the reasons why I am leery of such injections. Apparently a Botox-type of drug which uses a similar botulinim toxin that is injected into the surface facial muscles to relax them, called Dysport, is being linked to birth defects after a woman who received the injection gave birth to a baby deaf and blind. She had recieved the Dysport injections when she was just one week pregnant with the baby, which explains why, they don’t even recommend any type of injections when you are expecting, and this woman may very well have not even known she was pregnant at the time.
Botox is not without it’s potential side effects either. Some users have reported partial facial paralysis, difficulty swallowing, and even respiratory failure and death in it’s most severe cases, and this has been issued as a potential side effect on that drug. I guess my concern is that supposedly the toxin is not supposed to leak into your body, but it has to if it causes these other problems.
Not only that, how do we know for sure how long the toxin stays in our body, or if it can perhaps be built up to lethal amounts in the brain, or even cause permanent damage to the organs or brain after repeated treatments. I think that Botox-types of drugs are something I will still resist for as long as I can, until there are more studies. Crow’s feet will have to be a burden I’ll bear
My mom asked for a home microdermabrasion kit for Christmas, to replace the one she had that finally ran out (those things last forever, if you’ve never used on before), and it made me think about also getting her some of the Revitol skin care products that are made for fighting wrinkles and other signs of aging, such as age spots, coloring, sagging skin and skin tone since she has an interest in keeping her skin healthy and radiant well into her fifties and her sixties, and seventies, and beyond!
These days, we not only have some great cosmetic procedures that are minimally invasive to use in our arsenal against the ravages of aging and the environment and our lifestyle choices on our skin, but we also have perfect conditions for the innovation and creation of new skin care products that are of a clinical quality.
They use high grade vitamins, minerals and acids that used to only be reserved for the types of skin care products that cost hundreds of dollars just for one tube or bottle, and they used to be harder to come by since we hadn’t yet really experienced the full access that the internet offers us today to a wide range of products, giving the consumer the ultimate end-say and power in the types and range of products they can buy with their money.
What I like about the Revitol line of skin care products is that they use these high grade ingredients, and yet they are still reasonably priced, so you don’t have to be wealthy to be able to afford the best in skin care. Some of the ingredients I speak of that I favor for their extreme abilities to reverse the signs of aging and also to help fend off new signs of aging, are vitamin C, Alpha lipoic acid, hyaluronic acid, DMAE, and a host of other firming, anti sag and color enhancing ingredients.
Even using one of these ingredients alone can make a dramatic difference in your skin, but using them in tandem is like putting those wrinkles in a small barrel and shooting them, it’s easy pickins.
Dermal fillers are, for the most part, a fairly safe and risk averted procedure to have, but as with any other slightly invasive cosmetic procedure (I don’t put this one in the invasive category since no one is taking a scalpel to you), there is some level of risk involved, especially if you happen to have some sort of unexpected allergy to the materials that are being injected or some other unexpected adverse reaction to the procedure itself.
I recently saw an article that was somewhat startling where the headline read that the FDA had received a rash of complaints and adverse reaction reports on dermal fillers, although they were not specifically named by brand, and the number was startling as well, in the nine hundreds, however upon further examination I saw that (as with many headlines in the news), the headline overblew the real story.
What they were talking about is complaints that were received by the FDA in the entire last six years that dermal fillers have been in use popularly. When you break it up by six years, this is still of course not insignificant, but it puts that seemingly big number of people with reports of bad reactions in a little more perspective since it’s not that much out of the realm of possiblity that these were somewhat of a “fluke” and not the expected outcome.
Apparently people getting dermal fillers, which are injected materials under the skin which help to fill out wrinkles on the face and plump the lips, nasolabial folds and other areas that have lost their definition with time and age, have had a whole range of bad reactions from bad swelling to anaphlactic shock and severe allergic reactions.
Also, some reports of facial paralysis were received, although these were pretty few and far between and were definitely considered a rare outcome of injection with dermal fillers. Makes you want to find some good wrinkle and anti aging products like the Revitol vitamin and beneficial acids line that you don’t have to get injections for, but if you were looking to do it, I wouldn’t say to use this as a deterrent, it’s still a safe procedure statistically speaking.
The most commonly used dermal fillers today are Juvederm, Restylane, and Perlane, and they have all been tested for reasonable safety by their makers and approved by the FDA for cosmetic injection use to be used across the US on people who are looking to get their faces that youthful, plumper look for a few months at a time.
While the situation with this economy is probably the most dire most of us will see in our lifetimes, we will come back from this, but it is going to take a lot of time. While we will come back from it, this economy leaves many people seeking reasonable alternatives to expensive cosmetic procedures.
This economy does mean for many of us that we need to make cutbacks on things that are not a necessity or things that could be put off without too much hassle of inconvenience. One of the items that falls in the “not a necessity” category is, you guessed it, one of the burgeoning markets over the past ten years, plastic surgery and cosmetic procedures.
According to most plastic surgeons, the past month or two have brought dramatic decreases in their business, especially when it comes to the more expensive procedures that range in the thousands of dollars category, such as breast augmentations and liposuction, both of which are costly because of the anesthesia and actual complicated surgery that is involved.
Conversely, other specialists that mostly do less expensive procedures such as facial fillers, Botox, and other more temporary, but less invasive procedures that do not involve surgery and thousands of dollars, may have actually seen a slight boost in their sales. In other words, lots of patients who may have otherwise been planning to get a facelift, mini facelift, or some other anti wrinkle facial procedure requiring surgery may have opted instead for the less expensive, less invasive procedure to save money for the time being.
The quest for other alternatives that may be less expensive to these common and very popular surgeries has led many women to look for alternatives to breast implants, face lifts, tummy tucks, liposuction and the like. However, even those areas of opportunity or women and men have seen dips with the faltering economy.
They’re finding that there are some great nonsurgical ways to look and feel fantastic and to improve their bodies as well as their self esteem, which is a great thing since surgery isn’t for everybody and doesn’t necessarily always accomplish what they patient wants.
Facelifts may be the way to go for some, but often times they do not have the desired outcome and look unnatural. I’ve seen a few women in the public eye who have gotten them and looked good, like Madonna and maybe Janice Dickinson would fit in that category, but for the most part facelifts just make the person look like they got a facelift.
There’s no need for that any more with the abundance of cosmetic dermal fillers like juvederm and restylane, not to mention a bevy of at home products that can be used to blast away wrinkles and the fine lines and spots that go with aging. Such products for anti aging and wrinkles I’m referring to are the at home soft light lasers, microdermabrasion systems, chemical peels that are available in the same strength as a dermatologist office (just use caution), and other home treatments that provide a world of difference when it comes to looking younger.
There are also ways to enhance the breasts without surgery, such as natural breast enhancement products, vacuum devices that stimulate growth, and a variety of creams and lotions, heck, even hypnosis for breast enhancement, that have worked for women seeking to enhance this part of their body.
When it comes to cellulite, areas where spot reduction is needed, and body contouring, there are a ton of body wraps that can be used at home, cellulite treatments that work with massage to contour fatty areas, and even special shorts one can wear that reduce specific areas of the body through compression.
So you see, if you are one of the people who has put off that plastic surgery or that “dream procedure” you’ve been hoping for all these years, take heart that you can improve your appearance without surgery, and for a lot less money.
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