High Street beauty Products vs Physician Strength Products

At Outline Skincare Ltd we are passionate about what we do and the products we offer. Skincare is our forte and we hope the following tips may help you to spend your money wisely!

Most people have had the unfortunate experience of spending money on facial skincare, sometimes good value ones but more often very expensive ones, and then putting it to the back of the cupboard because it didn’t “do what it said on the tin”!

The products we believe are most helpful for anti-ageing are the “Cosmeceuticals”, rather than products found on the High Street or Department Stores.

When considering face creams, there are different extremes: cosmetic “beauty” products and at the other end, pharmaceutical products. Somewhere in the middle of these two extremes lie our “Cosmeceuticals”. These products are available from professional sources only and not readily available on the High Street, but also don’t have medical side-effects.

A few Cosmeceutical products are available from selected, highly trained beauty therapists, but on the whole, these products are medical only. In other words, they are sold by doctors, nurses and medical clinics. This is because the level of active ingredients are higher than can be sold to the general public. Professional products are used under the guidance of a medical professional, and the key fact is THEY WORK!

Here’s the low-down:

• Beauty, cosmetic skin products make the skin appear better in the very short term, usually by hydrating it. This means for a few hours after applying it, your average High Street cream will give the skin an improved appearance, by reflecting the light better, hydrating it (plumped skin looks younger than dry skin) and creating a smoothed surface. What they don’t and cannot do, is change your skin in the long term.
• Beauty, cosmetic creams contain very, very little amounts of the active ingredients necessary to make changes to your skin on a long term basis. Laws regulating the amount of active ingredients in High Street products govern the amount that can go into them.
• Beauty cosmetic products are loaded with extra ingredients that cause irritation and sensitivity, such as perfumes and oils to make the creams smell nicer and feel nice on the skin.
• You don’t always “get what you pay for” with High Street cosmetics. Some of the brands available in Department Stores are ludicrously overpriced for what they are and the ingredients they contain. Stop and think next time you buy your favourite brand:
  “What am I paying for here?” If you suspect for a minute that it is: expensive packaging such as boxing, pretty glass jars or gold lids, delicate perfumes, excessively over-priced media campaigns such as TV adverts or celebrity endorsements (do you think Penelope Cruz, Claudia Schiffer, Andie McDowell etc. come cheap?) then you have to question what you are actually getting for your money! To quote a famous brand “you’re worth it” so think before you buy!!!

Cosmeceuticals, on the other hand, actually change the way your skin appears and can reverse some of the previous damage to your skin, caused by external factors such as sun-damage.

• Cosmeceuticals are exceptional value for money, many of them being significantly cheaper than some of the well-known beauty brands.
• Cosmeceuticals are regulated by only being available from a medical source, hence they are allowed to contain higher levels of active ingredients, such as alpha hydroxyl acids (AHA’s), beta hydroxy acids (eg: salicylic acid), Vitamin A derivatives (eg: retinol, retinyl,) and growth mimicking peptides
• Continued use of Cosmeceuticals can reverse some of the signs of ageing, such as sun-damage and free radical damage
• Many Cosmeceuticals contain ingredients that help to repair lipid-barrier damage. Many people believe they have “sensitive” skin and avoid certain products and ingredients. Typically, very few of us actually have truly sensitive skin and most people tolerate Cosmeceutical, medical grade products very well. Rather than being sensitive to the active ingredient, most people are allergic to the perfumes, oils and extras added to our High Street products to make them smell better and feel nicer on the skin!
• Cosmeceutical products are backed by science and medical research, rather than reader and user “polls”. How many times do we see in the small print at the bottom of glamorous TV adverts that “87% of users felt their wrinkles were reduced” by a famous brand?! This is a marketing gimmick and not true clinical research. Medical grade products are pioneered by doctors and clinicians (usually dermatologists) and research and clinical studies are carried out on them to confirm that they actually do what they claim.
• Cosmeceuticals generally give excellent value for money. They have inexpensive (sometimes quite unglamorous!) packaging and many even come unboxed. They do not contain added perfumes, and if any are fragrant, this will be from plant extract ingredients rather than perfume. They are not advertised in expensive marketing campaigns, and aren’t advertised by celebrities, unless they have an actual endorsement from someone who has benefited from them (such as Trinny Woodhall with Jan Marini Bioclear Cream). This means when you buy them, you are paying for the product itself and NOT the incidentals that you don’t actually need.

The cosmetic industry is one of the fastest growing in the UK at present. With so many products to choose from, it is easy to become overwhelmed and distracted by glossy brochures, elaborate and extravagant websites and costly media advertising campaigns. Because we specialise in our field and we don’t profess to specialise in any other, we deliver promises effectively and help you to buy the products that will truly benefit your skin – this is what we have done for over a decade!