Getting to the Bottom of the Matter

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I am dizzy reading daily emails about anti-aging skin care products, vitamins and supplements that promise to bring back the moisture, suppleness, elasticity, smoothness, and firmness that my face and body once enjoyed. What’s especially dizzying is that each product seems to have an entirely different combination of collagen-and-elastin boosting, oxidant-reducing ingredients to help aging skin. Collagen and elastin are proteins that give young skin its firmness, suppleness and wrinkle-free appearance, while oxidants are external elements or group of elements that adversely affect the skin over time, including pollution, stress, smoking, drinking, and UV light (aka rays from the sun.)

How’s an FOF to decide what to try?

The most important fact to know is that skincare creams, lotions and serums work only to protect and care for the top layer of our skin, called the epidermis. No matter what manufacturers claim, these products simply cannot change what’s happening in the dermis—the layer beneath the surface–which contains the collagen, elastin and moisture-producing properties, or the skin’s building blocks. So if someone at the cosmetics counter at some fancy store tells you a product contains elastin and collagen, don’t expect it’s going to get your skin to bounce back to where it was when you were 30. Creams and lotions like these may temporarily increase your skin’s moisture or firmness.  Temporarily, I stress. That’s all.

There’s always plastic surgery, for permanent results, which I advocate wholeheartedly, as many of you know.

Short of that, however, it seems to make sense to try anti-aging supplements, which reportedly work inside your body. So when the makers of a product called Imedeen® asked me if I’d try a 90-day regimen of their Time Perfection®  (retail value: $206 for a 3-month supply) “marine complex and antioxidant supplement, and they’d compensate me, too, I thought, “why not?”  Today, I took the first 2 of 180 tablets, with a glass of water, as instructed.

Imedeen® has been manufacturing skincare products since 1991.  Time Perfection® , its newest formula, has been created to work from “the inside out” on women 40 and older, and has been shown “to reduce fine lines and wrinkles, improve skin quality and moisture balance, and protect collagen and elastin fibers against oxidative damage in as little as 90 days,” according to its literature.

Time Perfection®  contains an exclusive blend of proteins and polysaccharides (a chemical term for carbohydrates, such as starch, insulin or cellulose) that is important for the skin’s structure and moisture and resembles the elements naturally found in the skin’s supporting tissue. One of these ingredients, called LycoPhence GS, provides tomato fruit and grape seed extracts, which help protect skin against oxidative damage. The other is Vitamin C, a vital antioxidant, which is essential in the formation of collagen. These targeted nutrients go “deep down” in the dermal layer to strengthen the skin’s invisible building blocks.

I will be reporting back over the next few months to tell you whether Imedeen® seems to be working. I recently took the photo here, before starting the regimen, and I’ll take a new photo for each new post. Imedeen®  offers a skin assessment on its site, to help you determine which of its anti-aging formulas work best.

In the meantime, the makers of Imedeen® are hosting a giveaway for one lucky FOF, who will receive a 90-day supply to help improve her skin.  Comment below on why you’d love to try it.  FOF will select the winner at random.