No, we’re not talking about short days, shoveling the walk, or the morning commute. We’re talking about the atmospheric humidity which, together with sauna-like indoor heating, can bring humidity levels as low as 5-10%. And what happens to skin not accustomed to such conditions? It struggles to keep up by building its barrier, but that adaptation can take a while, and often gums up the whole system.

There is a cascading impact that ripples through the skin’s infrastructure when there’s not enough moisture. The lipid layers stall, the normally plump skin cells flatten and create fissures. The shedding process, which is dependent on water, stops functioning, so that dead cells stay stuck in the skin’s surface, and then break off in scaly chunks. Cracks in the skin make it more vulnerable to germs and permeation of all kinds of things. The skin can usually adapt over time, but in the meantime, it’s not a pretty (or healthy) picture.

Sana works by helping the skin do its thing. Give skin support in adverse conditions, and it’s amazing how beautiful and healthy it’ll stay. Dry, damaged skin often develops because the natural barrier is compromised, or because the barrier simply can’t adapt quickly enough to external stressors, like dry air, sun, or stretching.

So what is Sana’s answer? We chose the organic botanicals and extracts best suited to support skin when it needs help. Why? Because those botanicals mimic natural lipids, waxes and anti-oxidants in your skin. Evolutionarily, plants have been at it for millions of years – a lot longer than people have – which starts to explain their remarkable array of defenses to moisture loss, oxidation, and external contaminants.
We don’t rely on synthetics for a host of health and environmental reasons. But even from a functional perspective, we’d rather start from scratch. Synthetics are often just cheap derivatives of the real thing. In some cases, synthetic skin care ingredients act by altering the chemistry of the skin. Every day we learn new things about the mystery of skin and its –and the body’s – reactions to synthetics. We’d rather help skin do its thing, naturally.
Skin hydration is the single most important thing for overall skin health. Naturally supporting the skin’s barrier, while nourishing and anti-oxidizing, is what Sana is all about…

Warning: tanning is not fully understood, so take the following with a grain of salt. Wearing sunglasses makes sunburns more likely. Why? Light hitting the optic nerve signals the pituitary gland to produce melanin – the body’s main defense against burning. It’s also what makes you look tan. Sunglasses, in effect, trick our bodies. The optic nerve registers less light and thus the pituitary gland produces less melanin…meaning less of a defense, less of a tan, and more vulnerability to burning.Of course, it’s also theorized that melanin production is triggered by UV rays hitting deeper layers of the skin….and it may be a combination of the causes.
In any case, it’s important to protect your eyes from UV radiation. Don’t discard the glasses, just think about taking them off for a minute or two every once in while. You might get the best of both worlds: a better tan and better protection.

Water may be the sine qua non of healthy skin, but hanging out in water causes all kinds of problems. Why? Sitting in water strips your skin of essential oils necessary for your barrier to function properly…meaning putting water on actually sucks water out. Add chlorine or saltwater to the equation, and it gets more serious still. Not only does it dry your skin, it makes it more permeable. Why? For one, with the protective lipids effectively stripped, moisture is now traveling back and forth through your skin. Add to that the fact that water is a primary breeding ground for microbes. There’s a reason you get athletes foot in the locker room: moisture makes your skin more permeable, and standing water is chock full of microbes.

OK, so hanging in water is dehydrating and makes skin more vulnerable to infection and absorption. Anything else? Uh huh. Spending time in water makes your skin more prone to injury. Skin cells swell with water, essentially begging to be burst. Not done yet. Showering after swimming usually exacerbates the lipid stripping problem, especially if you’ve been in chlorine. And if you’re using an alkaline soap, it may further impede the anti-microbial function in your acid mantle. By now, the protective coating has been significantly compromised. Rough towel drying, a form of exfoliation, is not good for compromised skin. All of which suggests might want a good, barrier supporting moisturizer, sunscreen and lip balm, products without permeating synthetics and that are water resistant. Where to find such a set of products?

Skin replenishes itself all the time. Water travels through the skin layers from the bottom up, and skin cells do the same. Over the course of a few weeks skin cells rise from the bottom layers, eventually forming the bricks at the surface, before eventually shedding invisibly off the skin. It is essential for healthy, vibrant skin to replace the old with the new. When we exfoliate, we are giving the shedding process (also called desquamation) an extra push. Just be careful not to push too hard…gentle exfoliation is a good thing, aggressive exfoliation can cause skin trauma.

The shedding process is not just about making skin look good. The dead cells can be filled with toxins. Desquamation is a form of detoxifying your skin. And it’s one more reason to drink water…it doesn’t just flush your fluids, it flushes your skin by making sure the cells shed properly!

It’s all about water. When the skin loses too much water – either because the barrier is compromised or simply can’t keep up with its environment – the skin is in trouble in more ways than one. Ever wonder about ashy, scaly skin? That happens because the skin stops shedding properly without water. Pliability? The lipid layers need moisture to function. Physical barrier? Cracks and fissures form when there’s not enough moisture at the surface, allowing even more moisture to evaporate and more contaminants to get in. Germ-Killing? Even the anti-microbial function of the skin is compromised when there isn’t enough water.

It’s not that tough to stop. Just drink water and feed your barrier.

Swimming strips skin of sunscreen and essential oils. Sweat exacerbates burning, and sunglasses may impede the skin’s natural defenses. UVB rays deplete NMF from skin cells, drying skin out. And dry skin creates risks of infection, and improper shedding. Skin doesn’t look or feel good and your body is at risk.

And frankly, that’s just the beginning. Cross training can implicate a whole range of issues. The keys are keeping the barrier strong, keeping skin hydrated, and protecting it from UV rays. And that’s where Sana comes in…

BPA is all over the American marketplace. It makes plastic clear, strong and shatter-proof. You’ll find it in the liners of most metal soda and food cans, as well as polycarbonate bottles (including baby and water bottles).

BPA is an endocrine disrupter. It mimics estrogen and may result in adverse, long term reactions and reproductive damage. Studies have shown negative impact on thyroid glands, the brain, the pancreas and prostate glands in animals, even in low doses.

Unfortunately, babies are particularly at risk, due to a variety of factors including their developmental vulnerability, BPA’s presence in baby bottles and infant formula containers, and the fact that BPA bio-accumulates. It leaches out of containers and can collect in fetal and placental tissue.

Responsible companies like Whole Foods and Patagonia have removed BPA from their packaging. New companies should avoid it in the first place. Sana does.

Your skin is a wall, but it’s not made of concrete. It’s designed to retain most of the skin’s moisture and to keep most external contaminants out. Most, but not all. The skin releases some moisture to keep the outer layers hydrated, to cool skin down when the body is overheating (AKA, sweating), and it sheds moisture-carrying skin cells all the time. It also absorbs moisture from the outside world.
This semi-permeable system is effective, but there are risks. There’s lots of bad stuff out there – some of which is in the very products people rub on their skin to make it look or feel better. Some synthetics permeate the skin’s barrier and go right into the body, where they can stay put. Take sunscreen chemicals – a recent study showed levels of estrogen-like sunscreen chemicals in the blood stream and umbilical cord of people. Other studies have shown the average American has hundreds of synthetics in their bloodstream, many of which got there through topical application.
The point? It’s very important to pay attention to what you put on your skin. That goes double for mothers and babies, who are at particular risk for permeation and systemic damage. It means people should pay particular care in certain areas of their bodies, where skin is thinner or there are mucous membranes (like lips). They should keep their eyes out for nanoparticles (found in many skin care products and in particular in sunscreen), which are designed to permeate the barrier. Fortunately, Sana makes it easier.

Ominous synthetics roaming the skin care landscape…mysterious chemicals with disputed toxicity or even carcinogenicity remaining unregulated on store shelves. How this could be? Maybe the risks are overblown. Maybe in such small amounts they’re not really harmful. Surely if it were that bad, the FDA or someone would step in.

Unfortunately, that’s not how it works. The US system puts most of the burden on consumers to inform themselves about risks. Of course, accessing relevant information is next to impossible, let alone practical. The system of regulation is lax, under-enforced, painfully slow, and ultimately insufficient. Is the Government forcing manufacturers to adhere to strict labeling guidelines so consumers can make informed decisions? Is it monitoring the packaging coming from China or analyzing products before they hit the shelves? Is it banning ingredients that have some evidence of toxicity or carcinogenicity, even where banned the world over? No, no, and in many cases, no.

There are independent sources out there that are helping. Visit the Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep database of cosmetics or go to the NRDC’s site for environmental and health issues. Sana has condensed relevant information about the most commonly found risk items: Phthalates, Parabens, Bisphenol A (BPA), Endocrine Disrupting Sunscreen agents, as well as related issues like bio-accumulation, infant susceptibility, and nanotechnology. Hope it helps.

What’s it mean? In the skin care arena, it generally relates to the accumulation of certain substances in the body over time. In order for something to accumulate, of course, it has to stay in the body and not get flushed out. Many synthetics in skin care, unfortunately, do stick around. While companies get away with trace amounts of toxic synthetics in their products, those trace amounts can add up.

A 2004 EWG study looked at industrial chemicals in babies and umbilical cord blood. It found 287 industrial synthetics. The average baby in the study carried over 200 industrial chemicals. Many of those chemicals likely came from pesticides on the inorganic food we eat. Others came from skin care.

Of the 287 industrial synthetics, over 200 are potentially toxic, carcinogenic or may cause defects. Others have impacts we don’t yet know. We do know that things like low birth weight, type 2 diabetes, low sperm counts, breast cancer, and early onset of female puberty, among other related health issues, are on the rise.

Advice? Eat organic and local if you can. Filter your water, and stay away from fish high on the food chain. Use synthetic-free, organic personal products.

Let’s be clear: your skin is designed to lose water to evaporation…the key is losing the right amount. The dryness of the air has a big impact on how quickly moisture evaporates from skin. We call it the atmospheric humidity gradient, or more generally, the osmotic gradient. Between the seasonal humidity fluctuation and heaters, humidity can get as low as 10-15 in the winter. The drier the air, the stronger the barrier needed to maintain the proper hydration equilibrium. Let’s look at an example: Prune Fingers. So why exactly do your fingertips get wrinkly when you go in the bath? Guesses? Do your fingers shrivel because all the water is gone? Nope, they’re actually over-hydrated from soaking in water. The skin cells fill up like balloons, making skin expand and forcing it to form waves. You have too much skin for your fingers!

Next question: how long does it last? That’s the osmotic barrier in effect…the greater the differential between skin hydration and air humidity, the greater the stress on the barrier to maintain the status quo. Next time you go to the desert, unless you feed and water your skin properly, you’ll see that it will de-hydrate to match the dry air. And you don’t want that!

Start with a remarkable architecture of bricks and mortar. The bricks are cells at the skin’s surface. They’re filled with a water-loving amino acid cocktail that acts like a magnet to pull water up from deep in the skin, and sometimes out of thin air. The bricks swell with water, and the skin surface becomes soft and pliable. This reverse irrigation system ensures that every skin layer is well-hydrated.
The bricks are held together by mortar, a bunch of natural lipid layers that provide softness and smoothness. The mortar, unlike the bricks, is relatively water-tight. It’s a team effort: the bricks bring the water to the surface and the mortar keeps it there.

Is the FDA doing its job? Depends on your view of what its job is, we suppose. If you think it’s analyzing skin care products before they hit the shelves, getting out front on suspect ingredients, or setting up an enforceable system for accurate labeling of naturals, chemicals and organics, then no, they’re not doing their job. You can’t really blame them. IOHO, they’re under-funded and under-authorized.

phthalates and elements of packaging (e.g., BPA) that are widely used in the US that are banned in other industrialized countries. In fact, the Environmental Working Group has found that more than 750 personal care products would violate safety standards in other industrialized countries. There is no pre-approval for cosmetics or even over-the-counter drugs. There is gross non-compliance in the industry on labeling standards, and less than aggressive labeling requirements.

Where does that leave us? It means the consumer has to be particularly vigilant and informed. Fortunately, there are sites out there to help. Sana has taken upon itself to create products that would meet the standards we’d all like to see…standards that put health, safety and the environment above commercial concerns. We’ve also tried to provide as much information as we can about things to look for and things to avoid. Please let us know if you have questions or things to add…

Parabens are low molecular weight synthetic preservatives used in a wide range of personal care products. They are endocrine disrupters, which means they can interrupt and/or disrupt the flow of hormones in the body. Their primary impact appears to be as an estrogen-mimic with mild carcinogenic properties. Unfortunately, recent studies have shown that parabens can permeate the skin, enter the body and bio-accumulate. Parabens appear to be most troublesome in areas where absorption is most likely – e.g., in deodorants and shaving cream. Some studies have found a connection between parabens and breast cancer.

Sana does not use Parabens, or, for that matter, any other synthetic preservative.

Skin is a physical barrier to keep intruders out. It doesn’t like loiterers, either. Skin effectively attacks all kinds of microbes and germs at the skin surface. It secretes antimicrobial peptides with waxy stuff called sebum. Sebum is a good sealant – it helps build the wall, reducing skin permeability and keeping good in and bad out. It’s also an acidic lipid, which makes the skin less than hospitable for intruders. The acidity is called the acid mantle.

Sebum isn’t all good. Like a lot of things relating to the skin, hormones control sebum production…which is why sebum levels sometimes go out of control at puberty. And too much sebum is not a good thing: it is such a good sealant, it locks everything in, including dirt, and is closely linked with acne. Too little ain’t so great, either, since the acid mantle is an essential defense against intruders.

So what does bathing and soap have to do with sebum? Lots.

Soap can cause havoc. It affects the acid mantle in two ways: First, surfactants strip the skin of sebum and other important natural lipids by binding to proteins. Second, the alkaline pH of soap can interfere with the normal acid barrier, raising the pH (e.g., 5.5 to 7.5), and making infection and cracking, fissured skin more likely.

Not only that, skin pH effects the normal shedding process. The dead skin cells normally degrade and shed under acidic conditions. When the skin’s acid mantle is impaired, the natural exfoliation process gets impaired as well…which can lead to scaly xerosis. The skin is very good at repairing itself, and can usually correct the damage after a few hours, BUT chronic washing, say 10 times a day, can permanently alter the acid mantle. Seriously, wash carefully!

Sana approached packaging the way it approaches everything: safety, quality, functionality and environmental and social responsibility come first. Price, convenience and conformity come second. Or not at all.

The overwhelming majority of the industry chooses plastic from China for its packaging. Yes, study after study shows that dangerous synthetics (like BPA and phthalates) can leach from the plastics. Yes, Chinese safety regulations are virtually non-existent. Yes, their rivers run red with dyes simply dumped from the backs of factories. Yes, labor standards are unacceptable. Go figure. Then again, Chinese plastic is really cheap. And the consumer has no way of knowing where packaging comes from, so what’s the diff?

Sana chose aluminum produced in the US and Canada for a bunch of reasons. From a safety perspective, sourcing from local producers allowed us to ensure compliance with good manufacturing processes. Avoiding plastic means avoiding aforementioned synthetics. Importantly, the products do not sit in aluminum: our innovative tubes have a non-BPA liner.

Aluminum is also preferable from an environmental perspective. It’s one of the most plentiful substances on the earth’s crust. It is also the most recylable material in the marketplace. Unlike even the most recylable plastic (Polyethylene, or PET), which has only a couple generations before it degrades, aluminum never degrades and is infinitely recyclable. It’s also easy to recycle, requiring a relatively low level of energy. The amount of energy saved by recycling aluminum cans in 2003, for example, was equal to 15 million gallons of crude oil, or America’s entire gas consumption for one day. An aluminum container can be back on shelves 60 days after it’s sent to recycling. And buying local means less transportation, no dumping in rivers and no shortcuts.

Over-hydration of the skin can compromise the barrier function, meaning that substances are more easily absorbed into the bloodstream. It’s called percutaneous absorption. It is usually a short term phenomenon, but it can make the skin more vulnerable to waterborne allergens and irritation. Not just that, the production of Natural Moisturizing Factor, the water magnet that brings water to the skin’s surface, is impeded by over-hydration…which can lead to under-hydrated skin down the line.

Just a couple of reasons to think twice about what you’re putting on your skin. And the skin of your loved ones. But keep in mind, drinking lots of water won’t overhydrate your skin. Rather, overhydration is usually a function of prolonged exposure to water and/or an overly powerful barrier (watch the overly occlusive skin care products!).

Phthalates are everywhere. Phthalates are plasticizers. In case you couldn’t guess, that means they’re used in plastics to make them pliable – everything from pvc tubing, to straws to baby toys and pacifiers. They also find their way into some skin care products, since they alter the “feel” of products. Three quarters of off-the-shelf cosmetic products have phthalates. Virtually everyone of us, at this point, has some level of phthalates in our system (the CDC tested the urine of 2,790 people, and found phthalates in all but 12 of them).

So how bad are they? Most of the rest of the industrialized world has banned them: some variation of phthalates has been banned in baby products in the EU, Japan, Norway, Argentina and Mexico, and Canada, among other places. Oh, and California has taken it upon itself to impose a ban on phthalates in baby products starting in 2009, with several other states thinking about following suit. The FDA, on the other hand, neither bans nor restricts them, and hasn’t shown any inclination to do a thing going forward.

What exactly do they do? Phthalates are endocrine disrupters, which means they can alter the normal flow of hormones in the body. They are anti-androgenic chemicals, generally meaning they impact estrogen levels in the body. Numerous studies have shown that they may cause permanent reproductive damage of various kinds, particularly for boys. Phthalates also bio-accumulate, so small dosages can add up over time. Several studies, summarized by the Environmental Working Group, show the increased risk from additive exposure – the so called “synergistic” effect of combining two forms of phthalates: DBP and DEHP. Further, the manufacturing process associated with phthalates is not without harms: furons and dioxins are released, which carry health and environmental risks for everyone.

Needless to say, Sana does not use phthalates.