Ditch the moisturiser! (From Living Northeast)

Ditch the moisturiser!

1:12pm Thursday 18th February 2010 in

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National hair and beauty brand Saks is hoping to bridge the gap between Harley Street and high street with its Advanced Beauty clinics. Jenny Needham reports.

ANN Kettlewell is an enthusiast. She can talk for hours about skin. She has been in the beauty business for a long time and seen many treatments and products come and go, but she is positively evangelical about her latest range of cosmeceutical skincare, CosMedix.

“It’s fantastic,” says Ann, who heads up the beauty section at Saks in Ripon, North Yorkshire. “For years, instead of educating skin to work correctly, we have been putting products loaded with chemicals onto our skin and then wondering why they don’t improve it.

“Moisturisers, for example, are a waste of time and often full of chemicals, which upset and unbalance the skin. If your skin is working correctly, your own lipids will naturally create moisture at the level you need.”

Ann’s aim is to restore the skin’s balance by prescribing a course of treatments that enables skin to do as efficiently as it can what it was designed to do: to protect itself, to nourish itself and to regenerate itself.

“While there is a plethora of skin treatments in the market place claiming to prevent ageing, and treat acne and other skin conditions, all they do is mask the complaints,”

says Saks head of beauty, Kirsty Jewson. “We offer a prescriptive course of action which actually tackles the problem head on, with real, long-term solutions.

During the Advanced Skin Assessment, the Saks aesthestician aims to pinpoint the cause of the client’s condition and creates a bespoke dermal plan of treatments and homecare.”

From non-wounding antioxidant peels to dietary supplements, the skin care products are designed to treat, heal and enhance the appearance of troubled skin. The treatments use entirely natural ingredients and only the actively helpful isomers of enzymes, antioxidants and acids to correct, protect, nourish and stimulate skin.

Chemicals are banished, especially parabens, the villain of the piece. “There’s not a chemical or paraben in any of these products,” says Ann.

COSMEDIX products contain several key ingredients, including essential oils, which have powerful antiseptic properties and L-lactic acid. This is a bio salt that occurs naturally in the human body and is effective for promoting cell turnover and exfoliation.

But first and foremost, CosMedix believes that skin health starts inside the body. An unhealthy body will not have healthy skin, regardless of the skin care products used, so the company offers a line of dietary supplements, antioxidants and other beneficial products that work from the inside out, facilitating cell renewal, stimulating circulation and fighting free radicals.

“Never mind your ‘five-a-day’, CosMedix Balance contains 44 fruit and vegetable extracts, essential fats and trace minerals,” says Ann.

CosMedix makes kits for different skin care needs. The CosMedix Correct Kit, for example, is a skin care regimen designed for intensive correction and skin renewal.

The kit contains small sizes of four popular products – Benefit Clean, Affirm firming serum, Protect moisturising cream with UV protection and Define resurfacing treatment. The trial size products allow newcomers to CosMedix to try out the line.

As with several other medical grade skin care lines, CosMedix requires a comprehensive consultation before the corrective course of treatments is prescribed.

“It’s a brilliant product for people with an issue with acne, rosacea, and even scars from acne or chickenpox, “ says Anne. “The peels work on a deep level to increase cellular renewal. An older skin, for example, will shed skin cells every 30 days, a younger skin in just eight days. By using the products I have got my own cell turnover down to the younger levels because the products get right down to where the cells grow and stimulates them.”

Under a Woods lamp, which looks a bit like a welder’s mask, ultra-violet light shows up skin damage and other problems. My face had a patch of rosacea down my nose and chin areas, partly, says Ann, because my skin doesn’t like the products I am using on it. After a thorough cleansing to remove any traces of it, and a facial to soothe and rebalance my skin, the red rosacea patches had almost disappeared.

Ann herself had a huge amount of sun damage, which she says is being repaired using the CosMedix range.

What Ann says makes sense. Her own skin is bright and fresh. The results of an hour’s work on my skin were quite impressive. And as we all become keener to avoid chemicals in our bathrooms and make-up bags, CosMedix seems to fit the bill. It’s not cheap, particularly the initial treatment regime to rebalance the skin, but after that, tiny amounts of product will keep your skin working its socks off.

“You have to get the inside sorted out before you can work on the outside,” says Ann. “It’s quite an outlay initially, but I can guarantee you – and your skin – will love the results.”

■To book an Advanced Skin Assessment call into Saks Ripon, 23 High Skellgate, or phone 01765- 690125. More information on saks.co.uk