I read the studies so the packaging has to compete with them

I am Jessica. I work with skin all day, and I spend a slightly unreasonable amount of my own time reading the actual papers behind the claims printed on the front of the bottle.

Most of what people call a skincare problem turns out to be a reading problem. A claim is technically true about an ingredient and not true about the product it is printed on. A study is real and was run on an injected version, or at ten times the concentration, or for twelve weeks on sixty people who were also told to wear sunscreen. None of that makes the product bad. It makes the story on the box a different thing from the evidence.

What I am, and what I am not

I am a skincare and ingredient expert with a pharmaceutical background. I am not a doctor, not a dermatologist, and I do not diagnose anything. That is a deliberate line and I keep it visible, because the moment someone in this field starts sounding medical, they have stopped being useful and started being a liability.

What I can do is read a study properly, tell you what it actually measured, and tell you how much of the claim survives the reading. Often the honest summary is “a real effect, and a modest one”. That sentence has never sold a serum in its life, and it is still the correct one.

How I test

Everything goes on the same patch of forearm first. Then one product at a time — never two — for at least four weeks, and twelve before I will commit to an opinion. Every test is written down by hand: date, product, what the skin did.

The notebook is not an aesthetic. It exists because memory quietly rewrites itself to match what you were hoping for, and because “I think it is a bit better?” is not data.

My own skin flushes. Heat does it, exercise does it, and being told something mildly awkward in a meeting does it. It settles in about twenty minutes. I mention it because I would rather be visibly imperfect than describe all of this from behind a textbook.

The three things I would say to almost anyone

Sunscreen daily, and genuinely enough of it — the amount is doing more work than the number on the bottle.

One active at a time. Two new things at once means that when something happens, you have learned nothing.

Give it twelve weeks before you decide. Most “this does not work” is really “I did not give it a chance”.