Is Meladerm Safe For Long Term Use?
Submitted by The Beauty Brains Blog
Cat’s question: She wants to know more about Meladerm skin lightener. Specifically, she wanted to learn more about alpha arbutin, one of the ingredients in Meladerm. She was concerned that it’s related to hydroquinone a skin lightening chemical that has safety concerns. She also wanted to know if Meladerm is safe to use for 2 or 3 months or longer.
Unfortunately, she had trouble getting in touch with the Civant Skincare, the company that makes Meladerm. She said that she never got answer to her calls and didn’t receive responses to her emails so she asked us for help.
The Left Brain Replies:
On Cat’s behalf, we contacted Civant and asked them to help answer her questions. Here is the response from John Connelly of Civant’s R&D department:
Commitment to customer service
“Thank you for bringing this matter to our attention. I am sorry to hear that your reader had so much difficulty reaching us. I do realize our phone lines get busy and apologize for the inconvenience it has caused. I understand the importance of live assistance and we are working to hire more operators in order to improve communications. Our phone system does have a voicemail option that allows callers to leave a message for our management department if they have trouble getting through to a sales operator.
I did a search of our email logs and was not able to find any inquiry from the specified email address. It’s possible that a different email address was used or perhaps it was mistyped in our contact submission form. When we create our email responses, we send them directly to the email address that is specified in the submission form. If an individual mistypes their email address in the form, our response gets directed to an invalid address and the individual does not receive the reply.
Regardless of what happened, ultimately, we are at fault here and I want to do whatever I can to rectify the situation. I’ve listed my responses to the reader’s questions below. I have also forwarded your email to our customer service department and we will do our best to prevent similar situations from occurring again. If there is anything else I can do to assist you or your readers, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Answers about Arbutin
1) Arbutin is extracted from Bearberry (Uva Ursi) and is natural occurring substance, unlike synthetic hydroquinone. Arbutin is present not only in the Bearberry plant, but also found in many plant-derived foods. Arbutin can be converted into hydroquinone when introduced to very alkaline conditions. These conditions however are uncommon and most definitely do not occur on the skin. Gastric fluids are known to be alkaline, but the Arbutin would have to be taken orally for it to enter the gastrointestinal tract. Our product, Meladerm, uses Alpha-Arbutin as opposed to regular (beta) Arbutin. Alpha-Arbutin is considered the most stable and effective form of Arbutin and does not readily hydrolyze into hydroquinone.
Arbutin and hydroquinone each have a different chemical composition and differ greatly in their skin lightening properties. Arbutin inhibits melanin synthesis where as hydroquinone can actually be cytotoxic to melanocytes. Furthermore, Arbutin does not have the associated side effects of hydroquinone. Due to the safety concerns presented by the FDA, we do not use hydroquinone in our products.
2) We suggest discontinuing daily use after 3-4 months. This is generally advisable for all skin lighteners, and not just Meladerm. After a few months of use, you will find that the results will begin to plateau and regular applications will no longer be necessary.
If there are any further questions, please have your readers contact our customer service. For specific product questions, I would advise them to send an email through our website’s contact page. Emailing enables us to direct inquires to our R&D dept and allows the staff some time to fully investigate the questions and provide a thorough and knowledgeable response. Readers should ensure that their contact information is entered correctly so we do not encounter any issues when responding. It’s also a good idea for them to double-check their spam email filtering options as sometimes important emails can be unintentionally deleted by the filters.”
Thanks to Civant for promptly responding to Cat’s concerns. The Beauty Brains are glad we could be of help!
Want lighter skin in as fast as 2 weeks? Click here to try Meladerm skin lightener today!
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