THE BOTTOM LINE: WHAT IS A CLINICAL RESULT’ AND WHY SHOULD I CARE? IS A ?200 CREAM WORTH EVERY PENNY? WHAT IS A CLINICAL RESULT’ AND WHY SHOULD I CARE?

As a physician, I’m trained to cast critical eye on all types of statistics and supposed success rates that don’t have solid research behind them. Whenever a beauty company quotes a level of improvement with their latest product after a certain number of weeks, it doesn’t quite paint the full picture. In other words, the public is never told just how many participants were in the study, or even what the condition of the skin was to begin with.

That said, it doesn’t necessarily mean that every quoted percentage of improvement is full of dead air. The bottom line is: don’t believe everything you hear just because it’s in a lively commercial with a gorgeous twenty-year-old model.

IS A ?200 CREAM WORTH EVERY PENNY?

What is it about creams with astronomical price tags that make perfectly sane women, and a handful of men, too, run to the stores to stock up on them? Judging from my patients’ testimonials, a lot of this brouhaha is wildly undeserved. But let’s face it – there’s something very exciting about buying a luxurious cream with the price tag to match, but any informed consumer will see past the glamour appeal.

To be fair, it is sometimes necessary to place a higher price tag on certain creams simply because better ingredients are more expensive.

Some of the chain store own-label brands, for example, can’t make use of certain raw ingredients because it would simply cost too much, an expense that they would have to share with their customers.

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