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Permalink Reply by Marty Glenn on December 13, 2015 at 1:14pm

Eileen,

 

There is no such thing as professional strength.  That is a made up description within the skin care industry.  What you have to look at is if a skincare line while developing their products has looked to the past 10 - 30 years within Derm to make sure that what they are formulating with is at the proper percentages proven to work on that particular skin condition.

 

So for example:  You mentioned...5% Matrixyl 3000

 

That ingredient is the number one active peptide and clinically proven to be effective to enter the skin, and then to signal collagen production through topical application of peptides.  It has been proven to work and has been in the skin care industry for more then a decade and the patent number WO 2005/048968 proves it.  This ingredient is the one used by all skin care mfgr’s but there is a difference...

 

The company Sederma who makes it says by their own words that concentration levels can be between 3 and 4 and they have another product which states 3 - 8%.  By their own words they say over 6% did not result in further clinical results so I formulated with 6%.  Why add more when it doesn’t matter?

 

The question is??? Does this make it Medical Strength or anything like that???  The answer is no.  It is a made up phrase.

 

With that said that ingredient is used in thousands of products so after you add the 6% or 8% what is the next important thing to work on as a formulator or skin care mfgr?  Yep you guessed it:  The base formula.

 

So from there and this is something private label skin care companies cannot do which is remove each and every ingredient that does not belong.  Well I guess they could but it would cost them a fortune and that is why they are private label to begin with... they are under capitalized. With that said this is a big subject and I hope I have helped you a little.

 

Medical strength or any words like that which are used within skin care are made up and only referenced to try and set the line apart from other lines.  That is it. 

There is no skin care line on the planet that is medical strength or anything like that. What you have are owners who have done a lot of work and spent a lot of money to be better then other lines and spent a serious amount of time and money to be different and it is these line which deserve to use those words. 

But that is very subjective, but if you look at the education and results of the line and how it goes about treating each and every skin condition with the tools (products) within its line and uses a philosophy of care that is Product to Skin vs Skin to Product* then I think they might be a step up and deserve the right to use those words. I rarely use them and when I do I reference the details within this post for sure. If you are proud of what you have done and spent the time and money then I feel its ok a little but of course that is up to me to decide.  With that said even my line cannot clinically state that it is a medical line... no line can.

 

* See attached file on the idea and the document I show during product knowledge education

Marty Glenn

SkinCareScience.com

 

 

 

 

 

Attachments:

• product_to_skin_vs_skin_to_product.pdf, 125 KB

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Permalink Reply by Eileen Mai on December 13, 2015 at 5:47pm

Thanks so much, Marty, for your thorough reply and explanation in great detail. Much appreciated!

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