I once said that I’m too young to start worrying about fine lines, wrinkles, and other signs of aging. But when an excellent product like the Clinique Youth Surge night moisturizer falls into my lap, who says I can’t start my anti-aging routine now? At the Clinique Youth Surge launch last week, it was explained to us that the new Youth Surge moisturizers contain a unique ingredient called sirtuins, a naturally-occurring protein that facilitates cell growth and repair to delay the visible signs of aging. To keep the skin in repair and protect mode for 24 hours, Clinique developed two different Youth Surge moisturizers: the SPF 15 Ace Decelerating Day Moisturizer, and the Age Decelerating Night Moisturizer. The day moisturizer protects skin from incidental sun damage, while the night moisturizer improves the cells’ natural ability to recover while we sleep. What the sirtuins do is that they lengthen cellular life – instead of allowing skin cells to die off at the end of their life span, they “shock” the cells back into life and encourage more growth.
What made me impressed about the Youth Surge moisturizers is the extensive research that went into developing the product. It contains a cocktail of exotic ingredients: peacock’s tail, skullcap root extract, Japanese knotwood, and mulberry root extract, to name a few. Despite that, Youth Surge does not claim to reverse aging or make you look young forever. Instead, you walk away with a realistic promise of slowing down aging – which is really the most that an anti-aging cream can do.
So now my evening beauty ritual involves patting on some Youth Surge Age Decelerating Night Moisturizer after cleansing and toning. This cream feels incredibly dense and firm, as though it were heavy with ingredients. It moisturizes very well, even when I apply a minuscule amount, but this is probably because my sample jar was for combination-dry skin types. Another thing that I like about the Youth Surge moisturizer is that it has no parabens or fragrance, two deadly cosmetic chemicals that cause the skin to produce substances that speed up aging (technically, fragrance can contain as many as hundreds of chemicals). Any anti-aging cream that contains these ingredients is useless. Don’t get me wrong – Youth Surge is by no means an organic product (completely free of man-made chemicals), but it’s good to know that it doesn’t contain two of the most notorious chemical ingredients.
Before going to bed, I dab a little of the Clinique Repairwear Intensive Eye Cream under my eyes to get rid of lines and eye bags. I don’t have eye bags or dark circles to worry about, but if you look close enough I have these fine lines under my eyes. I read somewhere that under-eye lines are a symptom of allergies, but I also know that smoking dries up the skin and can cause wrinkles to appear early – which is why I quit! I think that’s another fact about cigarettes most female smokers tend to forget. It’s fine by me if you want to keep on smoking, but until you quit you’re pretty much just wasting your money on anti-aging products.
The Clinique Youth Surge moisturizers will be available at Clinique counters in Rustan’s starting March 2010. Suggested retail price is P3,650.
Interesting ingredients. I wonder how they thought of adding peacock’s tail :)
Actually, peacock’s tail is the name of an herb that resembles it, not an actual peacock’s tail. Would’ve been cooler if it was!
good to know… but yeah, it would have been cooler if it was the real thing. thanks for clarifying :)