Dr. Oz Touts DMAE Cream and Anti-Inflammatory Diet

Be careful with what you put on your skin.

DMAE Cream -- It's the latest fad in anti-aging products, and according to Dr. Oz it can work miracles when combined with an anti-inflammatory diet. So have scientists discovered the fountain of youth, or is it just another barrel of snake oil?

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Dr. Nicholas Perricone, a dermatologist who's written numerous books on anti-wrinkle creams and weight loss appeared on the Dr. Oz show to talk about his latest health cure-all -- DMAE cream.

DMAE, or Dimethylethanolamine, is a chemical that will reportedly tighten up your skin and make you look years younger. Dr. Oz showed before and after images of subjects who had used the cream, and the results had the studio audience excited.

However, DMAE's safetly has not been thoroughly studied by the FDA. The cosmetic safety database at EWG.org lists DMAE in its table of "Ingredients Not Assessed for Safety."

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One Canadian researcher says DMAE is potentially harmful to your skin. Pharmacologist Dr. Francois Marceau of the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Quebec says DMAE swells skin cells with water, which indeed reduces wrinkles.

But the after-effects can be harsh: the outer skin can harden and, in some cases, kill skin cells in just one day.

"From our point of view the cells are altered," Marceau said. "They stop dividing, they stop secreting, and after ... 24 hours a certain proportion of them die."

The moral of the story? Be patient until more research has been conducted. Your anti-aging miracle can wait until then.

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