Aunty Helpful Dictator, scourge of the senile; left me this link on my previous post and urged me to use my limited scientific knowledge to expose Nivea’s lying ways. Unfortunately it seems that there may be a hint of a scientific basis to their claims regarding their DNAge products.
They claim:
” 80% of skin ageing is a result of external influences, e.g. exposure to sunlight, which lead to damage at the skin cells’ core… With age, the DNA’s own renewal capacity declines and cell damage accumulates… Contain the powerful combination of cell-active Folic Acid and Creatine to stimulate cell renewal from within and protect the skin cells' DNA against future external damage…The result: The skin looks younger and firmer and wrinkles are visibly reduced…”
Accumulation of errors in cellular DNA is generally regarded as one of the major causes of ageing and UV light is capable of introducing errors in our DNA. I don’t know about if sunlight is responsible for 80% of skin ageing, however folic acid is responsible for major DNA repair mechanisms particularly with those responsible for repairing UV damage. Here however, repair doesn’t imply a correction of errors that are already present, rather it merely implies that any errors that creep in during the replication of DNA are corrected before they have a chance to become permanently established in the DNA strand. Additionally the folic acid will only make a difference in those individuals whose diet is deficient in that particular vitamin (folic acid is a B-complex vitamin), for those whose diet provides them with their RDA of folic acid (0.4mg/day). It is estimated however that 88% of North Americans suffer from folic acid deficiency. For those who don’t, any extra folic acid won’t make a difference.
The folic acid however cannot, as I already mentioned, corrects errors already present in the DNA. Since wrinkles are a result of an accumulation of errors in the DNA of skin cells, folic acid cannot remove wrinkles already present on your face. This they seem to claim is the role of creatin, which in their words “stimulates cell renewal” to somehow iron out the wrinkles. I’m not sure if creatin is capable of doing this, however it makes me wonder whether you really want to be using a formulation that stimulates cell division.
What we were taught in college was that any animal cell has a finite number of divisions that it can undergo before dying out. The reason is that with each cycle of replication the number of errors in it’s DNA increase, (errors that folic acid cannot prevent), till eventually so many errors accumulate that the cell dies, so voluntarily stimulating unnecessary cell division seems counter-intuitive. Of course it will have been clinically tested before approval for marketing, however no clinical trials last long enough to test this theory of mine out. Such a test would involve regular use of the product for many, many years and clinical trials that long are unheard of.
They claim:
” 80% of skin ageing is a result of external influences, e.g. exposure to sunlight, which lead to damage at the skin cells’ core… With age, the DNA’s own renewal capacity declines and cell damage accumulates… Contain the powerful combination of cell-active Folic Acid and Creatine to stimulate cell renewal from within and protect the skin cells' DNA against future external damage…The result: The skin looks younger and firmer and wrinkles are visibly reduced…”
Accumulation of errors in cellular DNA is generally regarded as one of the major causes of ageing and UV light is capable of introducing errors in our DNA. I don’t know about if sunlight is responsible for 80% of skin ageing, however folic acid is responsible for major DNA repair mechanisms particularly with those responsible for repairing UV damage. Here however, repair doesn’t imply a correction of errors that are already present, rather it merely implies that any errors that creep in during the replication of DNA are corrected before they have a chance to become permanently established in the DNA strand. Additionally the folic acid will only make a difference in those individuals whose diet is deficient in that particular vitamin (folic acid is a B-complex vitamin), for those whose diet provides them with their RDA of folic acid (0.4mg/day). It is estimated however that 88% of North Americans suffer from folic acid deficiency. For those who don’t, any extra folic acid won’t make a difference.
The folic acid however cannot, as I already mentioned, corrects errors already present in the DNA. Since wrinkles are a result of an accumulation of errors in the DNA of skin cells, folic acid cannot remove wrinkles already present on your face. This they seem to claim is the role of creatin, which in their words “stimulates cell renewal” to somehow iron out the wrinkles. I’m not sure if creatin is capable of doing this, however it makes me wonder whether you really want to be using a formulation that stimulates cell division.
What we were taught in college was that any animal cell has a finite number of divisions that it can undergo before dying out. The reason is that with each cycle of replication the number of errors in it’s DNA increase, (errors that folic acid cannot prevent), till eventually so many errors accumulate that the cell dies, so voluntarily stimulating unnecessary cell division seems counter-intuitive. Of course it will have been clinically tested before approval for marketing, however no clinical trials last long enough to test this theory of mine out. Such a test would involve regular use of the product for many, many years and clinical trials that long are unheard of.
1 comment:
Half way through reading your post I blacked out... actually I didn't. My friend beaker worked on a study about folates so I have been exposed to some ramblings like this before...
I'm not sure if I should be worried about the title "scourge of the senile"... I'm feeling as though I might be turning I little senile myself, and this could result in my hunting myself down in a sort of Momento style
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