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Messages - SarahVaughter

1651
Dermarolling / Microneedling / Copper peptides
« on: January 07, 2011, 02:51:56 PM »
@Emily -

You are free to buy Pickart's products but please refrain from evangelizing for them here. We are not an advertizing platform for scammers.

As to the "different lighting": The luminosity histogram analysis shows the pictures are heavily manipulated. If it simply had been a lighting issue, the peaks in picture 1 and 4 would be as narrow as the peaks in picture 2 & 3, only shifted. If you do not believe us, please consult any image manipulation expert of your choice and report back here with their judgement and credentials. Dr. Pickart is also invited to explain and he can come with any outside expertise to prove that his claims of "peptides" and his photographs are genuine.

And sorry for being blunt! If I were a sweet old lady, I would never have started this site - a lot is about separating the wheat from the chaff.

1652
Dermarolling / Microneedling / Copper peptides
« on: January 07, 2011, 02:43:16 PM »
I am just saying that what he sells are not copper peptides, and that neither does he have any before-and-after pictures to show any results.

The research is neither independent nor unbiased. We found plenty research where Pickart provided the peptides. He can provide one thing and sell another, obviously. He is not even denying it. And since he is the only one to benefit greatly from a positive result, it is questionable whether research done by obscure researchers have any merit at all - especially seen the fact that we've already established that the before-and-after pictures are crude fakes and that his 2nd generation Skin Remodeling Copper Peptides are in fact a suspension of weed killer in soya sauce, to take some poetic liberties.

But please - if you do not want to hear my opinion on people's products, don't ask me for it. If I do give my opinion, don't be angry when I express it, based on a solid understanding of resp. chemistry and image manipulation. What we don't know, we get outside expertise for. Everything we say is based on science and logic. We greatly encourage people to find flaws in our reasoning, so that the truth may emerge. I will be the first to apologize for mistakes made.

1653
Dermarolling / Microneedling / Copper peptides
« on: January 07, 2011, 01:50:01 PM »
We had someone look at Pickart's "before and after" testimonials. Someone who's quite knowledgeable with Adobe Photoshop. He says these pictures are highly manipulated to show less contrast, structure and detail from picture 1 to pictures 2 & 3 and picture 4. He says picture 1 is artificially darkened and picture 4 is artificially (very) brightened. Interestingly, he says that picture 2 & 3 are identical. The only change is a very subtle change in the red balance, and a shift of a few pixels.

He sent me these histograms to prove it. You can see that picture 1 is much darker than picture 2 and 3 (which have identical luminosity spectrums). He says that picture 2/3 is the original, because the spectrum is narrowest. Pic. 1 and 4 are photoshopped to exaggerate resp. hide detail.

Original:



Picture 1: (darkened - wider spectrum due to brightness reduction)



Picture 2 (original):



Picture 3 (identical to picture 2 except for minute modifications):



Picture 4 (wider spectrum due to brightness increase):



The histogram spectrum analysis was performed on the lower 3/4 of the photographs to avoid introducing a bias, an innaccuracy due to the pink quotes on a white background in the upper left of the first photo.

So these photo's are fake, plain and simple. even when picture #4 is perhaps a combination of "Photoshopping" and extra lighting, extra lighting is just as much manipulation as is image manipulation. Any trick to make it seem "progress", be it Photoshop or a halogen lamp is fraud. In order to be taken seriously, the pictures should all have roughly the same spectrum. Same X-position and same width. The fact that they are vastly different shows digital manipulation as well as possible lighting tricks.

On top of that - and here comes my own expertise - even if these photo's were real, they would prove exactly nothing. The acid burn would have healed just as well with copper peptides as without. But the photo's show nothing. They are so heavily manipulated that nothing can be derived from them at all. Those red marks aren't stretchmarks, they are burns from acid peels. The stretchmarks themselves did not improve visibly. Most likely, these photo's were taken in the same session, and they were 100% certainly Photoshopped to make it seem "progress". I am only the messenger, people. I know Pickart is loved and respected by many. We knew for a long time that he is a questionable player in this field. We avoided exposing him because we are not in the business of tarnishing people's reputation and starting wars. Most likely, this is going to reflect badly on us and people will be posting bad things about us because we attacked their Dr. Pickart. However, the line is drawn when someone suggests that his "peptides" are stronger than ours. We have to defend ourselves when people start sugegsting on our own forum that Pickart's "peptides" are better than ours.

I want to ass that Dr. Pickart is more than welcome to criticize our products and we will not prevent him from posting here either.

1654
Dermarolling / Microneedling / Copper peptides
« on: January 07, 2011, 01:15:36 PM »
I take everything back if it turns out that the ingredient list does in fact mention Copper peptides. I am assuming Kakalakingma told us the truth about the ingredients. He even called Pickart's office. Pickart is invited to explain here how hydrolized soy protein and Copper chloride combine into something with the price of Platinum, a molecule so complex that there is an entire field of Chemistry dedicated to simplify peptide synthesis, in order to bring down their price to the level of Gold as opposed to Platinum. Pickart's only comment so far has been "no comment".

1655
Dermarolling / Microneedling / Copper peptides
« on: January 07, 2011, 10:55:06 AM »
Copper peptides are good for the skin (not many products are provenly helpful in skin remodeling), but they are not worth twice as much as gold. Hence do we recommend you do not spend more than a modest amount on them, and especially not spend a small fortune on fake products. And don't forget that our masks contain quite a few more beneficial ingredients. We thought that for 3 dollars it's a good deal.

Kakalakingma is a valuable asset to this small forum. He has brought a lot of good information to this forum and answered many questions very thoroughly.

1656
Dermarolling / Microneedling / Copper peptides
« on: January 07, 2011, 03:42:59 AM »
I have nothing against Kakalakingma. Kakalakingma is an honest, helpful forum participant. I simply have a different opinion than him about this issue. It could be that he is right, it could be that Dr. Pickart is right, it could be that you are right, it could be that I am right.

This forum is a place to exchange views, that's all. I am not "against" Kakalakingma, not at all. I think he brings a lot of useful information to the table and I think he answers many questions here very thoroughly and properly. He has answered many questions better than I could do without doing a lot of research first. He clearly is extremely educated about these topics. That does not mean he knows everything. I already voiced my concern a few days ago in this thread, about the ingredients and my scepticism. He said that perhaps there was something "special" about Dr. Pickarts 2nd generation blue water. I left it at that. It is for the reader to draw conclusions and investigate further. I said I was sceptical and I gave my reasons, Kakalakingma said perhaps there was something we did not know about Dr. Pickarts formulation. Who knows. But you interpreted this wrongly. You interpreted this as my endorsement for everything K said.

This forum used to be a place where I answered 100% of all questions posed. But I can't remain the "dictator" of this forum much longer. Too many questions are asked about too many things that do not concern our products. We can't possibly answer all questions about all (competing) products for example. We also don't want to say too many bad things about competing products. What we want is this forum to be a place of discussion by the forum participants, and we will answer what we can, and we will give our opinion when required. When you said that our GHK-Cu product was in fact obsolete because Dr. Pickart implies so, it went too far and I stated my detailed opinion. Writing my detailed, well-argued opinion took me an hour, however. I can't spend my life here, dissing other people's products. There are too many questionable products out there. Buyer beware. Do your research. When I say that his "peptides" likely don't have any peptides in them and "Kaka" says perhaps they have something special that we don't know about, then you can't just believe whomever posted last. You have to use your own brain :-)

"People have been using these products for 5 years" - People have been smoking for 50 years and more. Why do people do things? In this case it's marketing. And I'm not sure people used his "2nd generation peptides" for 5 years. Why do people use ThreeLac while it doesn't work against mycelial Candida or the symptoms commonly misdiagnosed as intestinal Candidiasis? I can't help but noticing a linear relationship between marketing effort and product purchase. People believe a lot, as long as "everybody else is using it" and "everybody says that it helps". Sorry to say, but 95% of people are "sheeple". They follow the herd without thinking for themselves.

All that counts are the facts. FACT: - No copper peptides in the ingredients list. FACT: Promises of eternal youth. ERGO: A bunch of nonsense.

I will later add something to this thread/posting. I know that Pickart cheated, documenting the efficacy of his products. He used a girl that had an acid burn wound and he claims his product made her heal nicely. However, it is scientifically arguable that she would have healed just as nicely without. He twisted the facts in that case. I hope it's still on his site.

Pickart is singlehandedly responsible for hyping Copper peptides. They have but a limited effect on skin enhancement. We do not think you should spend much money on them at all, due to the limited added value they have. Vit. A and C likely are an order of magnitude more beneficial to the skin healing process than even the best copper peptides formulations. Coper peptides are a nice "icing on the cake" but by no means essential. Just about the only one benefiting from the hype is Dr. Pickart. He most likely wrote the Wikipedia article on Copper peptides himself and he seems to be sponsoring most research into them as well. Someone asked us to sell copper peptides and we found a very good product with a high (the highest recommendable) concentration of CHK-Cu, for a low price (we sell them for 3 dollars per mask). We did not find any other copper peptide products that are both trustworthy and reasonably priced. None. Otherwise we would be selling it already. We do not think that copper peptides are such a miracle product that one should spend much money on them.

About deleting postings: I value everyone's input, so as long as people don't post SPAM or impolite attacks on others, I think we should just leave things be, so that others can easily follow the discussion. It would be very boring, a forum where everybody always agrees with everybody :-)

1657
Dermarolling / Microneedling / Copper peptides
« on: January 06, 2011, 04:02:50 PM »
@Emily:

We are very sceptical towards those "2nd generation SRCP's".

As Kakalakingma said, the ingredients are Copper chloride (which has nothing to do with copper peptide and is just cheap blue blue dye basically) and hydrolized soy protein, which is a run-of-the mill emulsifier.

I avoided criticizing Dr. Pickart but since you leave me no choice - It is our position that his SRCP's can be assumed to contain hardly any GHK-Cu unless it is proven by lab analysis that it does. Copper peptides are extremely expensive because this complex molecule is devilishly hard to synthesize. The copper peptide we are talking about, GHK-Cu, is called Glycyl-L-histidyl-L-lysine-Cu(2+) and as any chemist can see, this has little to do with the simple Copper chloride salt. Copper peptides cost almost twice the price of gold, gram-for-gram. You can verify that for yourself. It is therefore hard to make a profit on a large bottle with a GHK-Cu product. At the very least, one would have to sell such a bottle for several hundred dollars to make a modest profit. If there is no GHK-Cu on the ingredient list (in a high concentration) and if this can't be independently verified, it's safe to assume it's a scam, sorry to say. Dr. Pickart can come here and elaborate - I just go by Kakalakingma's remark that the stated ingredients are CuCl2 and hydrolized soy protein. No mention of GHK-Cu. If that's correct, and his further observations/remarks suggest so (even though he himself gives Dr. Pickart the benefit of the doubt), then I do not believe the product contains any significant concentration of copper peptides. Please bear in mind that Dr. Pickart is in the Copper "peptide" business to make money and the fact that he is mentioned half a dozen times in the footnotes of the copper peptides Wikipedia article and in many studies can either mean he is a respected scientist or a relentless self-promoter. The studies I found on copper peptides that mention him, seem to have largely been paid for by himself. He donated the copper peptides, for example, making him an investor, influencer and stakeholder in the study. This is all too common nowadays. Don't forget that he used to be, and to a large extent still is, the only one hyper-promoting and agressively selling these products, using near-fraudulent claims and doubtful formulations of products that have no copper peptides on their ingredient list, but are suppost to perform "much better". To the bottom line, no doubt. Searching for "Dr. Pickart" on Google gives as search result #1 "Stay young / fountain of youth". Snake oil, people. Copper peptides, the real GHK-Cu ones, have some beneficial effect on the skin but they can by no means make you "stay young" or are the "fountain of youth". Commercial hype. It is highly questionable whether his "second generation skin remodelling copper peptides" in fact contain a medically significant amount of them.

Peptides do form when proteins and CuCl are combined, but then I'd like to know the exact type of peptides and their concentration. There has been no study on his 2nd gen copper products, they don't contain GHK-Cu and the FDA did not approve them as a drug. Kakalakingma called his office and his assistant said the type and concentration of the peptides was their secret. Dr. Pickart would already be a multi-millionaire if he started a copper peptide factory according to his magical chemical miracle method. A gram of GHK-Cu goes for around 70 dollars on the world market. 13 kilo of soy and copper chloride would then be sufficient to yield him a million dollars worth of GHK-Cu. All he'd need is a bucket of soy protein and a bucket of Copper chloride, mixed in a bathtub filled with water of the required purity and temperature. Say 250 dollars' worth of ingredients.

1658
No you cannot due to a risk of eyeball injury.

   

  When you put your finger under your eye, you'll feel a bone. Do not roll closer to your eye than where that bone is. When you roll under the eyes, pull/stretch your skin downwards from the eye with your other hand and roll it with the other.

Do not roll/needle inside the red area. (Plastic surgeons can do that safely - not us "home rollers"..)

 

 

   I am not sure for what reason you want to roll there but the lines you are pointing at with red arrows are not wrinkles. These are natural creases.

  Even babies have them:

   



                      Attached files    

1659
Dermarolling / Microneedling / Copper peptides
« on: January 05, 2011, 07:52:44 AM »
Emily, the first thing to make clear is that there currently is no method that can completely get rid of deep scars or stretch marks. You can only improve them.

   

  By dermarolling and especially by single needling or derma stamping you can achieve remodeling of the scar - the alignment of the scar tissue will remodel. Unfortunately it will not remodel back into scar-less skin but in many cases it softens the scar, improve its color, texture and depth.

     

  You can certainly needle your surgery scar eight months post-surgery.

   As Kakalakingma said, you can use A-Ret in combination with copper peptides but you should not apply it in combination with vit. C. Vit. C stays in the skin for several days (the levels are going down - its tissue half-time is 4 days) so applying it every second or third day is sufficient.

I normally do not recommend using acidic products such as Retinoic acid (A-Ret ) immediately after needling/rolling because it will sting and irritate the skin but in case of scars or stretch marks it is OK provided you can handle the stinging. Wait a little and then you can top A-Ret off with a little bit of Infadolan.

  I always advise to do a needling test patch on a small part of the scar.

  Thus you will find out how it turns out. Keep in mind though that remodeling of a scar takes months. Do not give up too soon.

   Needling by itself often "wakes up" melanocytes.

   

  In addition, you can attempt a transfer of melanocytes:

   

  Needle your scars and immediately roll all over the area (scars and surrounding scar-free skin) with a 0.5 mm roller. The melanocytes are at the bottom of the epidermis, which is about the depth to which the 0.5 mm roller penetrates.

   

  Read more here (scroll down for my answer number 2)

   

  https://http://forums.owndoc.com/dermarolling-microneedling/Melanocytes-transfer-for-white-scars-and-hypopigmentation

1660
Dermarolling / Microneedling / derma stamp
« on: January 04, 2011, 05:30:37 PM »
No problem using a dermastamp. Just don't completely mash the skin. (You can needle extremely densely with the single needle because you can target the scar only). With a derma stamp the surrounding skin is going to be hit so do not totally mash it.

     

  It might be quite painful to roll with a 2 mm roller onto the areas that have just been stamped. But if you can handle it, do it. Otherwise do it the other way round, first roll, then stamp. Or first roll and stamp a day or several days later.

1661
Thank you :-)

I want to add that in the rare case that a customer reports a problem with a product, that we always refund immediately and/or send a free replacement as well. Sometimes we do both.

1662
Dermarolling / Microneedling / Copper peptides
« on: January 04, 2011, 05:26:58 AM »
@Kakalakingma:

Just to be clear: We have no problems with you and we appreciate it that you post here!

Just to show that we appreciate you, email me at sarah@owndoc.com and we will send you a present :-)

1663
Dermarolling / Microneedling / Copper peptides
« on: January 03, 2011, 04:59:41 PM »
Our forum is a bit different in terms of how much we let people get away with at the moment because we are eager to turn it into a thriving forum where people help eachother so that I don't have to answer al the questions. This forum still is tiny compared to other forums, and "Kaka" started to answer people's questions quite thoroughly and in my eyes satisfactorily. If he would just be posting "buy this" links we would have banned him a long time ago.

I'll check out the details on Copper peptides and surgery scars and come with an answer later. Or perhaps Kaka can come up with a clear, concise and authorative answer?

1664
Dermarolling / Microneedling / instanttaneous indentations on skin
« on: January 03, 2011, 03:15:41 PM »
No.

   

  It has to do with ascorbic acid breaking down into positively and negatively charged parts. The higher the pH the more ionized it is.

   For our purpose it means that the pH of vit. C preparations has to be kept below 3.5 for the best absorption.

   You can use a dermaroller for product penetrating enhancement (short needles) to enhance the absorption of vit.C but if you apply it right after dermarolling, it will sting because it is acidic. If you apply it after dermarolling, add more water to vit. C serum to make it weaker.

   

    The question about a comparison of pig skin with human skin is a good one but I do not know yet the answer. I suppose that the fact these studies are made with pig skin suggests that they must be similar in relevant characteristics.

1665
Dermarolling / Microneedling / derma stamp
« on: January 03, 2011, 09:56:04 AM »
Pinpoint bleeding. Meaning a tiny bead of blood, pumped out in the fraction of a second it takes for the micro-hole to close again. So the skin laceration takes time to heal, but the actual hole itself closes immediately, as if you had put a stick in viscous mud and pulled it out again. Microneedling is not like coring an apple, it is more like sticking a needle into rubber (elastin..)

The reason you'll get more product penetration on dermarolled skin is mostly due to capillary action and suction. Rubbing products into dermarolled skin causes lateral friction in the microchannels, so by capillary action and suction, the product slowly gets absorbed, aided by increased blood flow. After rolling, you do not have a lot of 0.25 mm wide holes in your skin.