Does your face cream make you fat?!

Pink in honor of breast cancer awareness programs (Photo credit: beapen)

Long term readers of my blog would know me as an anti-sunscreen and anti-fairness guy. I have seen a sunscreen that claimed to be paraben-free on the pack with three parabens listed in the ingredients list. Parabens are ubiquitous cosmetic preservatives but known to have a low but significant association with breast cancer.  But a recent finding would make products with paraben even more disagreeable to cosmetic users. A study showed that parabens have adipogenic potential, or in other words it can increase body fat! This potential increases with the length of alkyl chain making ethyl paraben more adipogenic than methyl paraben. Aromatic chain further augments this property making benzyl paraben the most adipogenic paraben.

Parabéns, Fâ! (Photo credit: Daniel F. Pigatto)

I don’t know how the main stream cosmetic industry is going to counter this. But if you don’t have a weighing scale near your mirror, don’t say I didn’t warn you!

The article is here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22956630