| Patented Products in the Beauty Market This is a specialised area but one that consumers should look at in some detail. A patented product is a branded product that has a special component that is designed different to that found in nature, but could be two different parts of nature engineered to manipulate the skin to do something positive. It could also be a part of an enzyme that has been copied or altered to be beneficial to our skin. This means it involves a novel way of creating, extracting or producing the ingredient that can then be patented. Additionally for claims to be made about the success of the ingredient it is usually clinically tested for several different results. The most powerful components in the body after your heart beating, water and oxygen are hormones, enzymes and the nutrients that theses are composed from. Scientists are continuously looking for new methods of supporting enzymes or hormones that may be defective or can be inhibited to prevent a negative or degenerative effect in the body. The scientist who isolated testosterone from bulls testicles made a lot of money by patenting it until it was eventually isolated in a plant called sarsaparilla, but it is now synthesized from cholesterol. This is a good example of nature providing a medicinal property for human use. Also bear in mind that Cocaine was once a prescribed medicine until it got out of control. At beautyandskin.co.nz we recently took a brief look at Peptide technology and this provided a very good example of how detailed skin research can deliver in terms of new technology for the skin. Patented ingredients are not drugs, although a lot of patented technology is used in the medicine or drug market. Drugs are products that are designed to treat, prevent or cure a disease. Skin is more about preservation through education and intelligent application, however some very smart formulations are naturally better for you than medicines. Ironically the biggest selling drugs in the world are alcohol, nicotine and caffeine, although not legally classified as drugs they all alter the physiology of the body and in some cases the mind. For one reason or another most governments work out that if you had to get a prescription for these chemicals, the heavy tax component of them would make them not so addictive, on top of a doctors prescription, so they remained prescription free. This is similar to the taxes found on petrol recently, until the finance market crashed. It is conceivable that water could one day also be taxed and classified as a drug, because without it we would die and medicine law in some countries is anything that changes the physiology of the body is a drug, so I guess that makes all foods drugs as well! This is an interesting topic and more about business than health and beauty however education is the key to understanding ourselves. Water and its potency, use on the planet and in our body is something we will be discussing in detail in the future. Patented ingredients are exciting and can be used in many applications and hold a lot of potential for the future in skin care. Scientists love to make new discoveries to test their minds and ability but in the business world patenting is all about making money. Once patented it can be sold to distributors who on sell it to manufacturers who use it under different brands. Let us have a look at a couple below. OrganicSpa from Australia This Organic brand has been evolved over the last 15 years through biochemists starting out with basic raw materials and developing organic formulations to create a very high level of purity. In this game purity is everything and the days of the back garden are now replaced with advanced methods of organic growing through to final presentation. Quality soil composition, low acidity and natural potency helps to regenerate natures' natural means of creating mineral diversification that ensures genetic survival. That sounds a bit complicated but as man has developed mono-cultured crops over the last 500 years or so, genetic diversification has led to less potent and more watered down species from the same gene pool, that look good on the table but are providing less phyto-nutrients and goodies for our bodies to feed on. In a way you could say that if you have very high end organic ingredients you have a natural patent? How can the Antarctic Ocean provide an organic ingredient to help boost an already highly pure organic formulation? Wrinkle Defence recently formulated and released by OrganicSpa contains such an ingredient, a patented ingredient discovered by Italian biologists. The name of the product describes it well: Antarticine is a patented ingredient that is composed of 14% carbohydrates and 86% protein, which selectively improves the adhesion of human fibroblasts and promotes the cellular growth of human epidermal keratinocytes. It is extracted from Pseudoalteromonas antartica, a gram-negative bacteria isolated from the Antarctic Ocean. 
The patented ingredient is tested for the re-epitheliation of wounds, increasing keratinocyte production. The ingredient is extracted from bacteria that is resistant to large quantities of salt and can survive in low temperatures. Somehow the scientists extracted a beneficial ingredient, tested this for beneficial properties and came up with a positive result! If you can grow skin more effectively, as it tends to slow down as we get older, and can deform into skin cancers if interfered with by UV light, then you can show a positive influence on it through testing you have a new way of maintaining youth. OrganicSpa is a smart company with a smart formulator who knows what is organically great for the skin whether from the forest or the ocean. For further information contact us.
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