Face

gene-ious!

July 19, 2010

It’s one of L’Oreal’s major releases this year - a revolutionary skincare regime that can affect skin cells on a genetic level - Youth Code.

It’s been ten years in the making, scientists at Paris Saint-Louis Hospital have worked alongside L’Oreal scientists to unlock the skin’s repair genes. They took findings from the Genome Project, the same technology that’s used in other medical areas like Cancer research, and applied it to young and mature skin cells to find the difference.

I interviewed Dr Kerry Loomes, Senior Lecturer in Bio Chemistry at Auckland University, to understand the process. He’d been asked by L’Oreal to relay this information on a down-to-earth level and did so, without pay, out of professional curiosity. He did his own research to see if the claims stacked up and he couldn’t find any fault with the findings from the two professors behind this breakthrough: Professor Louis Dubertret and Bruno Bernhard, Phd.

It’s a complicated process but involves the mashing of skin cells to scramble the genes. Basically what they did was take mature skin cells and youthful skin cells and scrambled them up to see what happens. When a skin cell is insulted (either through environmental damage or ageing) it will react by ‘turning on repair genes’. They found 144 genes common to both which they termed the skin repair genes. Then they looked at how quickly they were turned on in young skin compared to old and of course, they found in old skin the repair genes responded much slower.

This is consistent with the belief that older skin becomes less efficient at being able to repair itself.

“The hypothesis is that if you could speed those up, then the older skin can repair itself like young skin and then over time become more efficient at this because the skin is continually renewing itself and that will promote a more healthy, youthful look,” explains Dr Loomes.

Enter Youth Code, the humble moisturiser that inflicts harmless insults to skin cells to make them fight back with the repair process.

“The active ingredient in Youth Code is the bacterial extract bifidis, which is found in yoghurt and is like an insult to the skin. So if you apply it to the skin, they claim, that these repair genes are activated more efficiently. So for older skin, as you apply the product over time, it turns these repair genes on more efficiently and that makes some of the protein markers useful for cell adhesion and firmness increase.”

You basically teach your skin to do this process more often and quicker.

Normally you wouldn’t find this intricate level of research and development in a middle market range - it’s usually the domain of the luxury brands. Blame it on the GFC, it seems that companies like L’Oreal are hellbent on delivering alluring products at affordable prices. To our gain. This product is good. I’ve trialled it on two friends and both have found it hydrating and good at eliminating fine lines etc. They both liked the smell and texture and both asked me for more!

The Youth Code range consists of Day Cream, $37.50; Eye Cream, $34.99; and Anti-Wrinkle Concentrate, $37.50.

Buy from Life Pharmacy and Farmers.

Tamsin xo