REVIEW: La Roche Posay Toleriane Creams

La Roche Posay is the #1 recommended brand by Dermatologists in Canada. And with good reason! They have a complete line of skincare that addresses every skin concern need for men, women, teenagers and children of all ages. They are famous for their body creams for extremely irritated and sensitive skins. Their products are soothing and loads of parents buy them for their small ones.

Today I'm talking about their TOLERIANE line of moisturizers. Their TOLERIANE line is meant for sensitive skins that are more on the oily side. There is a TOLERIANE FLUIDE, which is the lightest of all their moisturizers. Then there is the TOLERIANE, which is a bit richer. Then there's the TOLERIANE RICHE, which, as the name implies, is...well...rich! Despite the "RICHE" name, the lotion is still OIL-FREE! Actually all three are oil-free!

Feeling the three different textures is something you must do to really appreciate this line of moisturizers. The FLUIDE comes out like a cream, but as soon as you touch it, it feels like water on your skin! The regular TOLERIANE comes out like a light cream, and the RICHE comes out like a thick anti-aging cream. Such a range of textures!

The most amazing thing is that they're all oil-free! Glycerin is the active moisturizer in these 3 moisturizers. These creams are wonderful for increasing the water levels in your skin. Someone with acne is most likely using products like Benzoyl Peroxide or Salicylic Acid which are meant to sop up the oil from your skin, with an unfortunate side-effect being that they also DEHYDRATE the skin.

Dehydrating the skin causes your brain to send more oil (it can't send more water)... so you create this vicious cycle of using harsh products to eliminate the oil, which causes your body to only make more oil! This moisturizer helps to break that cycle because it not only increases your skin's water levels, but because Glycerin is a HUMECTANT, so it continues to pull water out of the air all day long and into your skin.

Everyone, not just those with acne-prone skins can benefit from increasing the water levels in their skin!

The BEST BEST BEST part is the sheer lack of ingredients. The FLUIDE only has 14 ingredients, and the regular TOLERIANE cream only has TEN INGREDIENTS!

For someone with very sensitive skin, someone who's allergic, someone with redness and rosacea, this is a dream-come-true. It is almost impossible to have an allergic reaction to a product that has SO FEW INGREDIENTS! There are no fragrance, no colour, no parabens, no fillers. Every single ingredient in these creams plays an important role in it's moisturizing abilities.

The next time you're in a drug store, pick up any moisturizer from a brand who's commercials you see on TV. Just look at the sheer size of the ingredient list. It's not unusual to see that there are 40-50 ingredients. If you consider yourself sensitive, you might as well save yourself the trouble and go straight for the La Roche Posay TOLERIANE creams.

Even the "cheapy" drugstore brand creams are now selling for $25 and up. La Roche Posay's TOLERIANE CREAMS are $31 for 40mL(1.4oz) and are definitely worth it!

I don't know where you can get La Roche Posay in the United States, but in Canada it's available at every Shoppers Drug Mart. And you should definitely check it out soon!

Goddess Jewelry

REVIEW: La Roche Posay Redermic [+] Eye cream

When first reading about this cream, and the rest of the Redermic [+] line, one feels compelled to try it out! It sounds like a great moisturizer! It sounds like a lovely and mild anti-aging product!

According to the good folks over at La Roche Posay (Canada's #1 recommended brand by dermatologists) "one of the key ingredients is a nearly pure derivative of madecassoside, which is one of the molecules in Centella asiatica, a healing plant from Madagascar. Madecassoside is purified at over 95% concentration and is combined with pure Vitamin C dosed at 5%. Vitamin C is a well known anti-aging active ingredient." Along with "Neurosensine: Combats micro-inflammatory stress, a true aging accelerator" and Hyaluronic Acid, which we know is a wonderful hydrator, plumper, and encourages Collagen to stick around longer in the skin.

It SOUNDS like a great product! But there's a problem....

It balls off when you apply it. Like putting on too much primer. I tried putting on less. I tried putting on more. I tried NOT rubbing it in... but it still balls upon application.

Some days I'd get lucky and it wouldn't ball up around my eyes... I wanted to do a little touchdown dance! But then I'd put concealer on, and the concealer would ball up. Sigh...

I did a little research. "Ahhhh! There it is - DIMETHICONE!" (again!!!!). It's the second ingredient from the top! And then TWO more forms of it show up in the ingredient list.

Wait. What's Dimethicone? And why is it so bad for me?

Well, technically speaking - it's safety IS up in the air. Environment Canada recently requested more studies to be done on it, as it is suspected to be bioaccumulative/persistent and a possible environmental toxin.

But even if it is found to be safe, the problem with Dimethicone is that it creates an OPTICAL ILLUSION! Dimethicone is well known by those in the cosmetics industry to be a "soft focus" creator. It's similar to taking a photograph with a camera that's out of focus; wrinkles disappear. The people who create these anti-aging formulas know this and add Dimethicone as one of the main ingredients. Dimethicone comes in a variety of molecular sizes that are transparent to look natural, but they bend and refract light in such a way that they "instantly fill wrinkles".

Dimethicone is the SECOND ingredient in Redermic [+] eye cream! ALWAYS read your ingredient lists... If Dimethicone is one of the top 7 or 8 ingredients then stay far far away! You could be spending your money much more wisely on products with active ingredients that actually improve your skin's tone/texture/etc and aren't just instant wrinkle fillers. (note: there is another brand out there that starts with an "O" and ends with a "lay" that has 2 anti-aging lines... 100% of the time, Dimethicone is one of the top 7 ingredients in every single cream/lotion/serum)

My advice? Don't waste your money on La Roche Posay's Redermic[+]. I didn't notice any difference using this eye cream, it was a bother to apply, and it was terrible under make-up!