I bought an issue of Cosmopolitan back in December and was flicking through the pages until I came across an ad for Loreal Revitalift Laser Renew. The words ‘with ProXylane’ caught my eye. I asked my boyfriend what this was, as he is currently studying biomedical science at university. I thought that he might know what this mystery ingredient was.
He had absolutely no idea but went about researching it for me while I waited for an explanation. Little did I know that this innocent question would send us all the way down the ProXylane rabbit hole. He discovered so much about it from the very little information available online, and it gave me an idea. Why not blog about these supposed ‘miracle ingredients’ in beauty products and expose them for what they really are?
What Is ProXylane And What Does It Claim To Do?
According to Loreal (using a lot of Jargon), ProXylane is an anti-ageing molecule that remodels tissue structures that become disorganised with age. The benefits include firmer skin, reshaped contours, and reduced wrinkles. The molecule itself is a sugar-protein hybrid extracted from birch and beech wood using ‘green chemistry’. Apparently, ProXylane will synthesise GAGs (you don’t really need to know what these are). There are 4 different classifications of GAGs, but the one we’re focusing on today is hyaluronic acid.
Hyaluronic acid is a network of molecules which provide support to cells. It has a variety of functions, including wound repair, cell migration, and skin healing. This is important, so we’ll come back to this later in the post when examining the evidence, or lack thereof.
The Issues Surrounding Loreal’s Claims
ProXylane was actually created by Lancome, Loreal’s parent company. On the Loreal website, under the page ‘What is ProXylane?’, they state outright that the ingredient is exclusive to their company. After all, they discovered it themselves. The problem with this is that they can play their cards very close to their chest. If nobody else has access to the molecule, nobody can debunk their claims, or even prove them. Meanwhile, Loreal essentially get to cherry-pick and exaggerate any findings that will generate sales of their products. Or, maybe they can outright lie about it.
On top of this, they can make claims such as ‘9 out of 10 women agree that [PRODUCT] works’ and ‘98% of women would recommend [PRODUCT] to a friend’. This raises questions such as ‘who did you ask?’, and ‘where did you get the sample group from?’. The participants could have been asked leading questions or incentivised with the promise of free products. As far as we can tell, their so-called ‘studies’ do not go through a third party for secondary checks as any other scientific research would.
Additionally, in terms of skincare, most products that you use will make your skin feel better by default. So, how do we know the effectiveness of this new anti-ageing molecule, and how can that actually have been tested?
So What Does The Evidence Say About ProXylane?
Having established that Loreal isn’t a trustworthy source, my boyfriend had to try and find other external studies about ProXylane which are few and far between. However, he did find studies not specifically related to Loreal’s products, but rather the hyaluronic acid mentioned earlier that ProXylane supposedly synthesises.
Our bodies naturally produce hyaluronic acid; which supposedly has a positive correlation with levels of Vitamin A in our skin – this is why our skin is hydrated. The hyaluronic acid, as mentioned earlier, is an integral part of wound repair and skin healing; the Vitamin A is what would primarily be responsible for skin hydration, as it aids in the production of new skin cells. As such, you would need both hyaluronic acid and vitamin A to achieve the desired effect on your skin, obviously, there are other factors involved with hydrated and young-looking skin. However, this can be achieved using pretty much any other skincare product, there is no evidence to suggest that ProXylane does what they claim; and that having such a thing in their product would even make any difference.
So where are the benefits to ProXylane? They promote it as some incredible exclusive substance that only they have, something that makes them better than the other competitors, but there is no research to back it up. I’m not saying that their products don’t do what they claim to; they do, but does ProXylane really play some big part in it? No, it doesn’t appear to. More than anything it seems to just be a marketing strategy.
Aidan’s Verdict:
As a scientist, I would not give it my time of day; no visible research, no evidence to back up the claims made, nothing that seems reliable. Even if it did stimulate the production of Hyaluronic Acid, to what extent? How can we be certain it is enough of a change to make a difference? For all we know, it could be the same product/formula in their products from before ProXylane was announced yet modified very slightly in order to come out with this brand-new product which will steal the market from their competitors.
What Beauty Ingredients Would You Like Us To Investigate Next?
There are probably so many more ingredients like this in beauty products that seem totally made up and are worth investigating. So, what would you like us to research next? Drop us some replies and I’ll let Aidan pick the next one! Please let me know if you enjoyed this post and found it interesting as I’d love to turn it into a blog series!
As always, feel free to leave a comment below or send me a DM on any of my social channels! These are linked at the top of the page.
* DISCLAIMER – All photos were taken in-store as I wouldn’t buy this product due to animal testing issues! Also – isn’t it funny that their packaging says ‘Loreal has been committed to a world without animal testing for more than 30 years’? Give me a break.
If you want to read more beauty-related posts, click here.
Love, Flossie ♡
FakeScienceDebunker says
A few simply mistakes:
1. Lancome is owned by L’oreal.
2. The hyaluronic acid research does not relate to Pro-Xylane at all.
3. L’oreal’s own research may be biased, but when it comes to patented ingredients, it’s still worth to look into the data.
4. Pro-Xylane’s biggest issue, which yo failed to mention, is the fact that the molecule itself and ProXylane™ Complex are two different thing. Meaning a product can have 30% of the complex, but only 0.5% of the molecule itself. Whilst another product from, say Helena, can have 20% of the actual molecule. But L’oreal can still advertising their 0.5% as 30% ProXylane.
stylebyflossie says
Thanks for your input Fake Science Debunker! Your tone makes it seem like you’re a little upset by my post but please don’t take it too seriously. This was just casual research done for fun by myself (no background in science) and my boyfriend (first year biomed student at the time) using info we could find on the internet for my personal blog 🙂
Aidan says
Hi FakeScienceDebunker,
Thank you for your response.
1. We do recognise that we had it the wrong way, in that we stated Lancome was the parent company – thank you for clarifying that for us.
2. We mentioned that we found research regarding Hyaluronic Acid, which is a product used in these L’oreal Pro-Xylane products, but nothing actually regarding Pro-Xylane itself – we never specified that the actual research for Hyaluronic Acid was related to Pro-Xylane.
3. Thank you for agreeing that L’oreal’s research is biased. We tried to look into data from a variety of sources, as mentioned in the actual post, and we found nothing – if you are talking about other patented ingredients, then they were not of concern to us in this post as we were specifically looking into Pro-Xylane.
4. The issue with what you have said here, is that on L’oreal’s own website they claim that Pro-Xylane is a “sugar-protein hybrid” – which, if you are a scientist, would know is incredibly vague. They don’t specify the nature of the sugar; whether it is for example a monosaccharide, such as glucose, fructose, and the other primary and well-known sugars, or a disaccharide, polysaccharide, etc. As such we would assume it is simply the more widely known monosaccharide. In regards to the protein side of things, as proteins are just large biomolecules, they are literally molecules. This of course means that as a “hybrid”, it would be the offspring of the two and technically become one, meaning it would be a molecule. If it were a complex then it would be described as a “sugar-protein complex”, which it is not – leading us to believe that it is, in itself, a molecule. To further back this up, looking at external websites for reference shows us that they also consider it a molecule, not a complex. I searched for a “Pro-Xylane Complex” and found that the term only related to products which had complexes of various chemicals which contained “Pro-Xylane”, as the molecule itself, and not an actual complex – the other ingredients in the complex can do their job fine, but Pro-Xylane the MOLECULE involved in this COMPLEX has no significant unbiased research relating to it; this was the point we were making.
Thank you for taking your time to leave a comment, please don’t hesitate to get in touch if you wish to discuss this further.
Kind Regards,
Aidan
Nastia says
Thanks for taking the time to write this blog article about that ingredient! It is hard to find information about it
I was trying to research it because it’s an ingredient now used in a product I came across by Vichy Laboratories, which have a better reputation and supposedly have “higher standards” in formulation.
I’ll add a link to it in case you’re interested:
https://www.vichy.ca/en/neovadiol-phytosculpt-3337875647182.html?cgid=Face-Menopause#start=8&cgid=Face-Menopause
I would love to hear your input on it if you have any!
L says
Hey, this isn’t patented anymore… as of recent you can find research studies and the like on line.. would love an updated review of this with the data.
Kara says
An excellent and informative piece. I did something similar when looking at how language is used in beauty advertising when studying sociolinguistic at uni as a mature student a few years ago. I just saw an Advert for a product containing a proxylane And felt sure it was a made up one Designed to sound ‘ medical‘. It infuriates me that these companies can get away with this.