It’s uncanny how much attractiveness relies on the beauty of the eyes and the length of eyelashes! And the one and only answer to the prayer so far was mascara, or any of its modern versions.
Since the rise of the ancient Egyptian culture, it has been impossible to imagine women’s beauty regime sans mascara. Modern versions include those coloring eyelash tips and some that contain artificially lengthening fibers.
But that’s what we need science for – to offer us new ways in replacement of the ancient ones, and make them more natural and easier to employ. And scientists didn’t let us down on this.
The Daily Telegraph informs us that French scientists from L’Oreal’s research laboratories claim to have developed a gel that promises you eyelashes that will be thicker and longer through prolonging their lifetime.
Generally our head hair keeps growing for the period of three years, while with the eyelashes the lifetime is limited to three months after which they fall out. Of course that gives them only so much length they can grow to. The scientific team decided to try and make them grow longer naturally by giving them a longer lifetime.
And soon they discovered that the gel increases the number of eyelashes as well as their length!
Let’s get the view of L’Oreal’s lead researcher Patricia Pineau on that:
“Modern mascaras create the illusion of longer eyelashes. When women take their make-up off, their lashes are still the same length. Eyelashes are similar to other hair in many ways but they’ve two key differences that we can exploit.
“The first is the speed of growth which is much faster in eyelashes while the second is the amount of hair growing at any one time. In head hair, 70 to 80 per cent of the hairs are growing at any one time while in eyelashes only about 15 per cent are growing.”
Knowing that, Ms Pineau was sure that prolonging the duration of the growing phase will make the eyelashes grow longer. Also it postponed the resting phase, and the lashes that were to fall out some time ago but are still there definitely make your eyelids look bushier.
The gel the Paris researchers developed is a combination of citric acid, another acid called arginine, and some exotic stuff extracted from a Mexican plant that goes by the name of Centella asiatica. These ingredients showed the best effects during the experiments.
The new gel is to be applied to the eyelid fringes before bedtime for the period of three months. The preliminary clinical trials conducted on 32 women resulted in their eyelashes showing a 20-per-cent average increase with this figure coming up to 30 per cent in some cases, both length and density considered.
It’s small wonder that Ms Pineau sounded pleased!
“Even we were surprised by the difference,” she said, adding that most of the women participating in the experiments asked to keep using the serum.
