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Long before stores were stocked with beauty creams, even during ancient civilizations, anti aging skin care already existed.

Egyptian queens were said to bathe in goats milk. The earliest Egyptian graves held more than the remains of their occupants. People were buried with things they hoped to bring with them after death. Graves of ancient Egyptian queens also held their kohl tubes, jars of oil for their bodies and unguent pots containing their beauty creams.

Every culture has its own traditional beauty recipes, passed from mother to child. Before the commercial beauty cream was available, women would make their own beauty treatments in the kitchen. It was through such recipes, with the help of chemists that cosmetics industry was born. Entrepreneurs would concoct their own creams based on family beauty recipes and with the help of chemists or with the knowledge of chemistry, develop beauty creams with a long enough shelf life to sell to the masses.

Anita Roddick started The Body Shop in 1976 where she developed skin care, cosmetics and makeup based on the beauty recipes she discovered on her travels as a teacher for the United Nations.

A moisturizer is typically an emulsion of water and oil, stabilized by lecithin, beeswax or some other emulsifier. When you apply a moisturizer on the skin, it forms a layer over your skin, locking in the moisture in your skin, making skin appear smoother and better looking. In the past, women might even rub butter, milk or even vegetable oil (scented with flowers or herbs) over their skin to relieve dryness. Egg whites or honey were often used as face masks.

Today's modern anti wrinkle creams go beyond traditional recipes. Many are developed in the laboratory with much research and patented formulas or ingredients. Claims that had to be a con job several decades back are plausible today.

These types of ingredients are used in today's wrinkle creams to combat the signs of aging.

1. Antioxidants

Now, free radicals are often blamed for the aging signs on our skin. The antidote? Antioxidants. The typical anti aging cream today would contains antioxidants in some form or other.
Let me explain this.

Free radicals are highly reactive molecules that are missing an electron. They cause oxidization (loss of electrons) of the molecules they come in contact with. When free radicals come into contact with the cells in your body, they damage your cells at a molecular level. This damage is thought to be the cause of aging. Free radicals are produced in your body's normal functions. They are also introduced to the body through pollution, the UV rays of the sun and other environmental stresses.

Antioxidants neutralize free radicals by donated extra electrons to them, thereby stabilizing these otherwise dangerous molecules. Most anti aging products would have antioxidants in some form or other to neutralize these free radicals.

Typically, vitamin C, Vitamin E, green tea, pycnogenol, CoQ10 and Lipoic Acid are the antioxidants commonly used as oxidants in anti aging creams. Idebenone, found in Elizabeth Arden's Prevage is probably the most potent antioxidant known at the moment. More about this at http://www.getyouthful.com/Prevage-MD.htm

2. Sunscreens

The best defence is a good offense. Since sunlight wreaks havoc on the skin, prematurely aging the skin and possibly causing skin cancer, the best thing you can do is to wear a sunscreen all day long. The smart day creams should contains some form of sunscreen built into them. Use one that has at least SPF 15. Although it wouldn't erase your existing lines, it would slow down the formation of new wrinkles.

Compare the women who sustained a sunkissed tan throughout their youth and the women who preferred the look of fair skin and dilligently carried parasols or stayed out of the sun. When they reach their forties onwards, the difference is stark. Those who tanned look much older than those who shied from the sun. Photoaging is one of the key causes of premature aging of the skin.

Exposure to sunlight causes collagen deep in your skin to break down at a higher than normal rate. 70% of your skin is made up of collagen. As the levels of collagen decreases, skin sags, lines appear and skin loses its firmness. All these are the visible signs associated with aging. Wearing a day cream with SPF15 or higher all day long protects your skin from such damage and prevents photoaging.

3. Collagen rebuilders.

Since the loss of collagen leads to saggy skin and wrinkles, if a cream can rebuild the skin's collagen, wouldn't that erase wrinkles?

That's the line of thought that fuels many anti wrinkle creams today.

This is where it gets very interesting. Many patents exist on new ingredients create to rebuild the skin from within. Lancome Absolue Premium boasts of a new lab created molecule, Pro-Xylane, that claims to act on every layer of the skin to redensify and restructure its matrix and rejuvenate the skin. More about this at http://www.getyouthful.com/Lancome-Absolue-Premium.htm.

Clinique repairwear contains type 1 collagen to firm your skin. Estee lauder advanced night repair range builds your skins hyaluronic acid stores and boosts collagen production. Many of this new generation of wrinkle creams tackle the problem by coaxing the skin to repair itself. These work from inside out, purportly levelling out the wrinkles.