By Danne Montague-King copyright January 2018
During the last 50 years I have been involved with the aesthetic sciences I have seen very few real “breakthru’s” and have been involved in two. Everything else, despite claims of new ingredients, has already been there all along.
Before we get carried away with new ingredients lets take a look at human biology and the requirements that keep this organic computer, our skin, healthy and in homeostasis.
When homeostasis is achieved via treatments, the skin is equipped to fight off viral attack, bacterial overload and all kinds of inflammatory baddies our environment abounds with and life’s’ stresses.
Outside of solar damage and environmental attack, stress is the #1 contributor to acne and ageing syndromes because it interrupts or accelerates the hormonal cascades that actually run our body systems, including the defense mechanisms that we see in the mirror as things we do not like!
Back in the 1970’s I discovered the power of enzymes that would kick start the enzymes present in our skin to start sending the right messages across cell membrane’s to achieve maximum skin health performance.
In tandem to this I noted in Gray’s Anatomy 35th British Edition the huge role vitamin C played in synthesis of collagen via the fibroblast cell-hence everything I formulated contained various types and quantities of both stable and unstable ascorbic acids. In the 1980’s after getting fairly good results on almost any kind of skin condition , I boiled everything we could possibly do as practitioners based upon 1. Remove the excess corneum, allowing newer cells underneath to be rebuilt and kept alive a little bit longer—as our skin really wants to do ( a good examples of this is the skin around the areola of an older woman’s breast as compared to her face, neck, arms and hands exposed to the environment. The breast tissue being her real biological age).
In the 1990’s glycosylation (glycation) forced me to up my research to build an army against excess sugars in the skin and free radicals. The planet was changing.The ozone slowly thinning. Never to come back!
I had made a little topical pain analgesic for my grandmothers arthritis based upon cryotherapy which became known as BIOFREEZE and this surprising global success allowed me much more research funding which enabled me to attack my personal teenage enemy- acne .
Drying out the skin or over oxygenating it with Benzoyl Peroxide did not seem somehow the right approach-so I started working with ingredients designed to kill off p.acnes bacteria while lifting the barriers of old, dried up sebum congesting the hair follicle and addressing the hormonal ups and downs that instigate the disease in the first place! Removing stress instigated by the hypothalamus gland by showing the client real, drug-free changes were actually taking place.
When they see hope, we have an internal healing take place along with topical treatment.
In these years, I found a way to kill off the Demodex Mite, in my opinion the main instigator of rosacea.
I cringe when I hear a speaker get up in front of therapists and state “rosacea cannot be cured but can be calmed down and controlled”.
This “bandage approach cannot get rid of parasites which of course become involved with bacteria as the skin starts to break down with chronic inflammation. I have many people around the world rosacea free who would leap to their feet at these lectures like a tent revival, and shout ‘I’ve been healed!”
In fact nothing is really permanent until we are no longer in this world despite the plethora of quick fixes, machines and syringes. All of these innovations are tools, some quite remarkable such as good fillers and BOTOX and other muscle sleeping serums, but most of the time it’s a SERIES of treatments and religious home prescriptives that wins the day and changes a life.
There is nothing wrong being concerned about miracle ingredients-everything out there has already been there for thousands of years-and used in some manner by ancient Shaman’s, botanists or witch doctors. I personally have had many eye openers in far off Tibet and visiting many back woods places such as Inner Mongolia. My studies in Beta Glucan’s came to me via a military field doctor from Afghanistan who was treating war wounds with a little compound he obtained from the Norwegian fishing industry, funny little yeast polysaccharides gown on barley corn that seemed to heal everything by stimulating the Langerhans cells in the skin!
There are many more mysteries I hope to delve into-but I know all will have to match our skin’s basic chemistry and be one of the hundred categories of treatments that lie in between the basic remove, rebuild, protect and maintain that we as practitioners s must work with to achieve actual and maintainable results. All else is hype for hope and marketing.
Pay attention to your clients body, lifestyle. emotional state and medical history and your own common sense, It will tell you what to do.
And remember, there is not one ingredient or machine or device that will cure or change all the anomalies of skin disorders.