Basics — how to read what you are told
Plain-language pages for readers who are not specialists. They do not answer which treatment to have, and they do not recommend any procedure, product or clinic. What they give you is what to check before believing a claim.
- If the material is the same, why do products differ? The same material name does not make the same product. In the literature the variables that actually separate them narrow to a few: for particles, size and its distribution; for gels, the degree of crosslinking; for biologically sourced materials, the source and the purification; and what the material is suspended in. Whether a result from one product can be carried to another depends on whether these match.
- What does an approval or clearance actually mean? An approval tells you three things and withholds one. It tells you which country, which kind (cosmetic, device or medicine), and for what use. It does not tell you how well the product works. And an approval in one country has no force in another.
- What does it mean when something is said to be proven by studies? That studies exist tells you almost nothing on its own. What tells you something is what kind of studies they are. Work done in a culture dish, work done in rats, and work randomising people into compared groups do not carry the same weight. Papers are also retracted, and after retraction they remain high in search results and continue to be cited.
- What does it mean when something is said to build collagen? This is the most frequently heard sentence in the field. In the literature it usually points to one of two things, and the two are not alike: placing collagen, or placing something else so that the body builds collagen. For the second, a substantial share of the evidence comes from cultured cells or laboratory animals rather than from people.
- What is the difference between skin boosters, fillers, botulinum toxin and threads? These four are discussed as if they were one menu, but what they do in the body differs. One occupies space, one provokes the body into building something, one reduces the signal running to a muscle, and one holds tissue in a new position. Sorting them by what they do rather than by product name means that an unfamiliar name can still be placed correctly.