Learn The Truth About Collagen Facial Creams

Using a collagen facial cream is regularly often recommended, but rarely beneficial. There is no scientific reason supporting the use of collagen creams for any purpose on the face and body. There are a number of scientific reasons that explain why they are ineffective and could cause adverse reactions. The rising popularity of modern collagen facial cream is probably due to the increasingly popular collagen-injections that stretch out wrinkles and puff up the lips. For those people who want this kind of procedure, the risks are explained in detail.

The most common skin problem is prolonged redness caused presumably by an allergic reaction. Doctors perform a skin patch test to rule out the reaction before proceeding. Collagen facial creams are also known to redness and it is advisable to test on an inconspicuous patch of skin, before using the product all over the face. In this situation the redness may not show up until after people have used the product for several weeks. For that reason an extensive and proper testing period is recommended. There is really no point in going to all of that obvious trouble, because collagen creams are simply ineffective. When people do see visible results, it is due to other ingredients in the product. The layers of the skin will not absorb collagens. There are no collagens in the layer of epidermis, the four or five outermost layers of skin. Those skin layers are composed primarily of keratin.

In the basal skin layer, which is about five layers down, "daughter" cells are produced and begin to make their way to the surface. As there are no blood vessels in the skin layer of epidermis, the cells change shape and composition as they die. The protein keratin is inserted and eventually they come to the outermost skin layer where they slough off. The whole chemical process takes about 27 days. For that reason every month or nearly so, people actually have a brand new bunch of cells on the skin's surface. There is no way that collagen facial cream products can contribute to this process; but, there are some alternatives. Instead of looking for collagen facial creams, people might want to look for those that contain bio-active keratin.

This form of the protein part of the product was extracted from sheep's wool and through the use of patented processes, the company that makes it was able to make it water soluble, which it ordinarily is not, without rendering the protein inactive.

The cells of the skin can pick up and use keratin, which will contribute to the cell rejuvenation process described above. In medical studies, it has been seen that lotions containing bio-active keratin stimulate the production of new cells.

Now the rate of actual turn-over, which usually slows down with age, improves. A collagen facial cream product has never been shown to do anything in clinical trials. There was never any reason to think that collagen facial creams would "work". The inclusion of the ingredient of the product is basically an advertising gimmick. If people want to delay or reverse the signs of advancing age, they want something better than a collagen facial cream.