The anti aging and skin care industries are huge. Millions or billions of dollars are spent by consumers on anti aging skin care treatments, and so there is big money to be made. And there are plenty of big companies in the anti aging and cosmetics industry that take advantage of this.

But that doesn’t mean that the products work well, and there are many big brand name anti-aging skin care products that do very little. There is no government regulation in the US requiring companies to demonstrate that their products work or that they even use safe ingredients.

So as well as the fact that many skin care products don’t work they can contain dangerous ingredients.

But they sell in spades to cater to the desire of so many consumers to look younger, or at least to believe that they will look younger. And so there are hundreds of well known brand name products that promise all sorts of anti aging benefits everywhere you look.

So the challenge for the consumer is to navigate through all the hype and actually find a range of anti-aging skin care products that work and don’t contain potentially dangerous ingredients.

Here’s how not to choose a good anti aging product.

1. Make sure you don’t buy any anti-aging products that contain fragrances. The big companies put fragrances in their skin care ranges because they know we like to look younger and smell good.

There’s 2 problems. Firstly you won’t look younger because chances are the skin cream won’t make you look younger, though you may feel good about having used it.

And second, fragrances are just chemicals and not really all that good for you. It’s the same with perfumes, but you just dab a little perfume here and there, you don’t apply it to a wide area like you do with, say, a moisturizer.

2. Don’t buy anti aging skin care creams with collagen in them. Now we all know that as we age our skin loses collagen, so surely we need collagen replaced to combat the sagging and wrinkling and lines that come with skin aging?

Not necessarily. Yes it’s good to replenish the collagen, however collagen molecules are quite large and don’t really enter the skin. So rubbing it on might make you feel good, but doesn’t really add to the levels of collagen in your skin.

But you can increase the levels of collagen in the skin by stimulating the skin to produce more of it’s own collagen.

However remember, the big cosmetics and anti aging companies are in the business of selling their products. If they put collagen on the label people buy it. And if they put it in a fancy bottle and get a good looking celebrity to say how much younger they look using it, then it will sell.

So it may not do much, and it may have dangerous chemicals in it like fragrances, but it still sells like hot cakes.

That’s how these companies make so much money.

But all this fancy TV advertising costs a bomb, and the celebrity needs her huge cut.

So even though that anti aging treatment doesn’t do much, other than make you smell better, it costs a bomb. And people assume if it costs that much it has to work.

So there is 2 things to avoid when looking for a good anti aging skin care treatment. There’s more but this is getting long.

Does all this mean that you should give up on anti aging creams and products because they don’t work? Not at all. There are excellent anti aging products that work fine, produced from ingredients from plants that are safe to use.

But they aren’t made by the big name brands but by small niche companies that you’ve probably never heard of. They don’t spend on TV advertising which is why the products are moderately priced and why you’ve never heard of them.

But there’s no need to despair. I’ve told you about some of the things you need to avoid when buying anti-aging skin care products. And that there are excellent alternatives. Now it’s up to you. Find out more about natural skin care products on my website.