Why professional skin care products are better than the drug store ones?

I have read somewhere else that "If they (estheticians) glower at you when you mention you use drugstore skincare, I would not return again. Nothing irks me more than snobby estheticians who try to profit by making you feel less, looking down on because of how much you spend on your products."

As all of you know already I use just 100% natural and certified organic products. Therefore I can't agree with that claim above 100%, because drugstore brands usually contain synthetic and harmful ingredients that are really bad for the skin and our health.

Your esthetician should tell you why she wouldn't suggest those drugstore brands. It's not fancy, or being snob, it's aware you about the ingredients and their effect on your skin.

Drug store brands and salon products can have the same ingredients (although it's hard to find), but the amounts of those ingredients are different. Over the counter brands have those effective (if there is any) ingredients in much lower quantities.

While some of these may have benefits for your skin, I think there are not enough of those ingredients (with benefits) in the product to have any real effect, especially not for a long term.

When you get a facial - depending on your skin -, your esthetician usually use a product that contain much stronger ingredients than those drug store brands. Drugstore brands are created to fit almost everyone, this is how they guarantee that a product is "safer" (the safer in this case means you can't burn your skin off), but it means they don't incorporate much healing or therapeutic concentrations. In other words: they are not really results-oriented.

Drug store brands can't always give visible changes to the skin's condition. A professional skin care product contain active ingredients at the top of the list, but if you take a look at those over the counter brands, active ingredients usually won't be the first. (Water is not an active ingredient.)

Over the counter products usually contain active ingredients in a very low concentration (bottom of the ingredient list), so it means you don't get enough to be effective.

If someone has a very sensitive or problematic skin, drug store brands could cause allergic skin reaction, because of the preservatives, fragrance, stabilizer, thickeners, etc.

Skincarepro published a great post where she writes about some interesting questions that we should ask about over the counter products (I quote):

1. What was tested — an individual ingredient or the finished formulation?
2. How was it tested, in-vitro (in a test tube or petri dish, in an ideal environment), or was it tested in-vivo (on actual skin)?
3. Were the studies double-blinded (meaning, the person applying the product and the person evaluating the results each have no knowledge of what they are applying or evaluating; it is strictly objective)
4. Was the formula tested against placebo cream (like glycerin or petrolatum), or against nothing, or against another type of similar product?
5. How long was the test conducted? On how many participants?

Skincarepro also says "Many consumers "self-diagnose" when choosing a skin care product, product to try from a drug or department store, these products must be made safely, meaning, big cosmetic companies cannot afford to have masses of consumers with issues from using very active products - so, skin care product may feel good and smell good, but it likely won’t have a lot of activity in the formulation.

Remember too, it’s not just about one really fabulous ingredient — it’s the mixture of the right amounts of active ingredients working synergistically together that work best in the skin, similar to how oral multivitamins work internally in our bodies with a mixture of vitamins and minerals for best absorption.

So as you can see it doesn't mean you are putting someone down by saying it's not the best choice to buy drug store products and we (estheticians) don't say it because we want more profit on our brands. My clients' skin and health are very important for me, thus I want the best for them.

Be aware: there are some professional products that are not effective and you can find a drug store brand with the same ingredients, just much cheaper (like Kerastase, because it's a L'Oreal brand), but it means the salon brand is bad too. Unfortunately many salons and spas don't pay enough attention to the ingredients.

Sources:

http://www.happynews.com/living/haircare/professional-versus-drug.htm

http://skincarepro.wordpress.com/2008/08/27/over-the-counter-skincare-vs-cosmeceuticals-or-pharmaceuticals-what-is-the-difference/