Browse evidence-based analysis of health-related claims and assertions
Being in the sun a lot over your whole life — not just on vacations — makes you much more likely to get SCC, a type of skin cancer.
Correlational
Spending lots of time in the sun on vacations or weekends is more likely to cause BCC than being outside during daily routines like walking to work.
Getting badly sunburned many times before age 25 makes it much more likely for women to get any kind of skin cancer later in life.
Petrolatum works the same way on normal skin and on eczema skin that looks okay — it boosts germ fighters and barrier proteins, which may explain why it helps even when the skin doesn’t look broken.
Descriptive
Even though petrolatum is thought to be just a plain ointment, it seems to turn on some of the skin’s natural alarm signals like IL-6, IL-8, and IL-1β, which are involved in fighting germs and healing.
Even on skin that looks normal in people with eczema, putting on petrolatum seems to reduce the number of immune cells that cause inflammation.
Petrolatum may help thicken the outermost layer of skin and boost proteins that keep it strong and sealed, like repairing a leaky roof.
Putting petrolatum on your skin seems to turn up the production of natural germ-fighting chemicals, which might help protect against infections.
The FDA only approved this enzyme injection for the butt, but doctors often use it on the thighs too — with a weaker solution and different injection pattern.
One doctor tried giving a blood-clotting medicine before and after the injection, and in one pair of twins, the one who took it earlier had less bruising — but this is just one case, so we don’t know if it really works.
After getting the cellulite injection, most people get bruises that get less bad with each treatment, but in fair-skinned people, dark spots from bruising can last more than a year.
Taking consistent photos of the butt and thighs from specific angles before and after treatment helps doctors and patients see real changes, instead of just remembering how it looked.
Doctors use different strengths of the enzyme injection depending on whether they're treating the butt or thighs — weaker for thighs — and must use regular salt water, not special preserved water, to keep the enzyme working.
A special enzyme injection breaks up the tough bands under the skin that cause dimples, making the skin look smoother in the butt and thighs.
Mechanistic
These capsules can hold a lot of minoxidil — half their weight — and still stay stable in solution, which is hard to do because minoxidil doesn’t dissolve well in water.
The more of these capsules you put on the mouse’s skin, the more hair grew back — and the strongest dose worked better than plain minoxidil.
These tiny capsules didn't harm skin cells in the lab, even at high doses, and didn't stop the cells from multiplying.
When applied to mice, these minoxidil capsules made the hair grow back faster and thicker than regular minoxidil, by helping more hair follicles stay in the growing phase.
These tiny capsules made from chitosan can hold a lot of minoxidil and slowly release it into the skin better than regular minoxidil solutions.
If a product doesn’t clog rabbit ears much, it’s probably fine for most people’s skin — but if you’re the type who gets lots of blackheads, it might still cause problems.
Rabbits’ ears get clogged more easily than human skin when tested with the same products, so the rabbit test might be too strict and flag things that don’t actually clog human pores.
Some ingredients that clog rabbit ears also seem to clog pores in young Black men’s skin when left covered for a month, so rabbit tests might help guess which products could cause breakouts in people.
New ways to treat adult female acne include a new topical cream that blocks male hormones, eating better and reducing stress to lower insulin, taking berberine as a supplement, and future vaccines that target a specific bacterial enzyme.
Eight out of ten people with acne have a family history of it, meaning genes play a big role.