Listen: should we trust our beauty brands without clinical studies

A new lockdown means once again beauty salons are closed. People are again having to resort to home treatments and looking for effective home beauty products. However, the beauty industry is known for inflating their product claims and only 39% of Brits trust the claims that are made.

One problem is that few beauty brands use serious clinical trials to test the efficacy of their products (relying instead upon cheaper consumer feedback which has no scientific merit and is vulnerable to the placebo effect). But, this isn’t universal across the beauty industry. There are products that have clinical trials tested on them, meaning you can have greater peace of mind on the products you use this lockdown.

Collagen is naturally produced by the body but production starts to decline from our mid-20’s. It is needed for skin elasticity and is often the key ingredient in anti-ageing products, promising to deliver elasticity back to promote a youthful appearance. However, there is little evidence that collagen in topical skincare is effective and because collagen is a protein, when taken orally in a supplement it is subject to the destructive action of the stomach which breaks down and renders most of the collagen useless.

Aston spoke to Stewart Long, president of the Society of Cosmetic Scientists and Tara Crowe, marketing director at Ingenious to discuss how important it is to trust the beauty products we use will actually deliver.

Photo by Jazmin Quaynor on Unsplash