Image of various anti-aging products
If you're searching for magical anti-aging potions, bring along a shaman.
By Susan Caba
My New Year’s resolution is simple: I want to turn back time.
I’m going to find the elixir of youth and drink deeply—or, more accurately, apply lavishly. Here’s a guilty secret: I’ve already bought—for $170—a peeling lotion by NATURA BISSE at Neiman Marcus. So I don’t want to spend more than $100—which pretty much rules out surgery, Botox, professional peels and celebrity emollients. I’m thinking I can get everything I need at Walgreens, where the potions-and lotions aisles stretch into the distance like the yellow brick road to Oz.
What I’m talking about is a superficial fix— nevermind eating healthy and exercising. I want, as one product promises, “fresher, more youthfully radiant skin, immediately.”
Department stores offer similar products with more luxurious packaging. CLINIQUE’S line presents a bounty of choices: I love the subtle heft and gentle foam of the Facial Soap ($10.50) and dip into my mother’s Dramatically Different Moisturizing Lotion ($23) whenever I visit. And I can hardly resist the allure of Superdefense Triple Action Moisturizer ($39.50), if only because it promises to bridge “the evolution gap between your skin’s natural defenses and the demands of today’s environments,” making regular sunscreens “seem almost primitive.”
The truth is, there have been a lot of developments in skin care since the introduction of Retin-A (tretinoin, a form of vitamin A) about 20 years ago, and the evidence indicates that some products do slow the breakdown of skin structure caused by aging and sun damage. Cosmetic companies at all price ranges are vying to sell their versions of the fountain of youth.
What I like about the jars of hope and promise at mass-market chains is their accessibility: no appointment needed, no white-coated salesperson to come between you and your beauty fix. And there isn’t a woman alive (or a man—25 percent of the $2 billion spent each year on topical wrinkle-reducing products is spent by men) who isn’t captivated by the alluring words: hydrating, clarifying, rejuvenating, refreshing, replenishing. The jars promise to be fierce warriors for the skin, providing “powerful advantages against deep wrinkling” and “multiple results.”
My problem is choice. I am transfixed by abundance. My grandmother’s sole beauty product was a jar of cold cream, a product first formulated in the second century from melted wax, olive oil and rosebud-scentedwater. The Egyptians had oils and unguents with lanolin, butter or nut oils as a base; Elizabethan women slept with rawbeef on their faces to treat wrinkles.
There are now more than 200 wrinkle-reducers on the market, many once only available by prescription. I call in my dermatologist, Dr. Madhavi Kandula. She agrees to meet me at the Brentwood Target.
“I get asked every day, all day long, ‘What should I use?’” she tells me. She has plenty of patients who can afford what she calls “dream creams”—department-store or prescription products that cost $100 or more—but plenty of others who don’t want to spend that much. She’s used a product with retinol on her face since she was 25.
“Every woman should be using a retinol,” she says. “It’s like exercising—you get up and get on the treadmill at 5:30 a.m. You have to take care of the face this way, too. And slapping on a lotion is a lot easier than getting on the treadmill.”
Kandula likes Oil of Olay, Neutrogena and L’Oréal products “because they are created after research, not just put together by someone in the back room.” L’Oréal, she notes, is owned by the same company that makes the more expensive Lancôme department store products. For people with rosacea or very sensitive skin, she recommends Aveeno’s “ultracalming” products.
Kandula outlines a simple routine: gentle cleanser in the morning, followed by moisturizer with sunscreen; gentle cleanser in the evening, followed by a retinol product for bed; exfoliation by way of acid peel or microscrub two or three times a week. For cleaning, she recommends NEUTROGENA Fresh Foaming Cleanser ($8)—“It really does foam,” she says.
A lot of moisturizers contain SPF 15 sunscreen. Kandula suggests going with a higher power, OIL OF OLAY Complete Defense with SPF 30 ($13). For those who don’t need moisturizer, she recommends NEUTROGENA Ultra Sheer Dry-Touch Sunblock, SPF 30 ($11): “It’s the most amazing sunscreen in existence.”
Full-strength nighttime wrinkle creams— retinol products that repair sun damage and rebuild skin structure—require prescriptions (and cost about $100) but weaker versions are available over the counter. Kandula’s recommendation: NEUTROGENA Healthy Skin Anti-Wrinkle Intensive Night Cream ($18).
Exfoliation, anyone? Office minipeels and microdermabrasion cost about $100 each, with three to six visits recommended. Over-the-counter products used two to three times a week for a month generally equal one office treatment. The peels, too, repair sun damage, and NEUTROGENA’s Advanced Solutions Facial Peel ($26) is a one-step process. “You can’t hurt yourself with it,” says Kandula. “It’s good for everyone, from teenagers to older people.”
For dermabrasion—rubbing off dead skin with a gritty or nubby cleanser—Kandula recommends AVEENO Daily Cleanser Pads ($7), with a rough side for exfoliating and a smooth side for gentle washing. She advises against the popular wands with spinning heads that operate like electric sanders.
“People like to use the tool,” she concedes, “but the tool is a little aggressive.”
I walk out of the store with $69 of miracle (I hope) potions. And if they don’t work? That’s the advantage of drugstore products: I can afford to try, try again. I’ve got all the time in the world.
