Moisturizers, per se, will not remove wrinkles and liver spots permanently, but they can have the wonderful temporary effect of making the skin smooth and soft. Moisturizers do this by sealing in the skin's own moisture, very much like paint protecting a wall. These products do improve the texture and feel of the skin. They can even help smooth very fine wrinkles for a short time.

A plain non-prescription product cannot penetrate deeply enough, to do more than this, if it did it would be classified as a drug, according to the FDA regulations. Over the years, many catch-all ingredients have been added to moisturizers to increase sales and prices. Ingredients such as collagen, elastin, placenta, aloe vera, caviar and natural herbs are being prominently mentioned as key formulations in the products sold by virtually all the large cosmetic companies. As advertised in full page ads in Vogue, Allure, and other magazines, these products sport names and promotional copy that imply or even state that they can lift, rejuvenate, or protect the skin, or even improve the skin's strength (I'm not even sure what that means).

The question I am often asked is whether these ingredients do anything beyond what a well-made, inexpensive product like Vaseline Intensive Care does, and the answer is an unequivocal no.

Over the years, I have watched in amazement as the utterly false and deceptive claims made by such products have escalated faster than the ever. Anyone buying these cosmetics would have to be convinced by the packaging that the ingredients that make them so expensive will do something wonderful. The truth is that there is no medical, scientific, or common sense evidence to prove that these products do anything more for your skin than can be accomplished with the olive oil from your kitchen cabinet. What these products lift, rejuvenate, and protect are the corporate profits of the companies that manufacture them. Recently, small unscientific studies have been used to show statistics proving such and such percent improvement of skin texture, skin color, wrinkles and so on to validate their deceptive claims.

Save your money and keep it simple and inexpensive when buying moisturizers. When any ad seeks to imply a direct medical effect, yet the product still does not need any government regulation, you should be suspicious. The next time one of these "revolutionary" products is announced, read the ads very carefully and notice how the language hedges. If any of these products, now marketed as "cosmeceuticals," were to actually make medical claims, they'd have to be approved by the FDA. One of the dermatologists who helped develop a new vitamin C-based cream said it best: When it comes right down to it, a lot of these skin products are just dreams in a jar.

When choosing these products, think about what you are trying to accomplish. If your skin is naturally dry, the use of a moisturizer to seal in and hold on to the little bit of moisture your skin can make is a great idea. If your skin is oily to begin with, applying a moisturizer can make it downright greasy, and then you will have to go out and spend money on an astringent to remove the oil. Many cosmetic routines take advantage of this dog-chasing-its-tail approach to skin care, selling a moisturizer to someone who doesn't need it, and then selling a bunch of other products to remove the grease and even to treat the acne and plugged pores caused by the moisturizer that was never needed in the first place.

One of the most-believed consumer myths is that people with dry skin are more likely to prematurely wrinkle than people with oily skin, but this is just not true. What happens is that almost all of us notice our skin getting drier as we age, about the same time we would have noticed wrinkles anyway. The dry skin doesn't cause the wrinkles; it's just another sign of aging.

Lifetime use of moisturizers makes the skin too lazy and more dependent or addicted to moisturizers. Moisturizers do not slow or delay wrinkles, which actually come from sun exposure, smoking, facial expression, and, most significantly, genes.