Ladies and gentlemen! I am back – Christmas shopping is all done and I’m set for the year! It’s wonderful to have a girlfriend that takes care of all your stuff. Now I have more time to write these blogs!
So with that taken care off, let’s take some time to talk a bit more about silk cocoons – which, my girlfriend Jan had been using consistently for the past 2 weeks. I gotta say I’m starting to notice a difference too, her face is definitely smoother to the touch and when she smiles her face simply beams. I guess the cocoons are doing its work.
So why does it work? Well, to be honest with you, there are no definitive conclusions since the cocoons, while ancient, is so little known in the West that big industry names have not bothered to do research into it, save for a few select studies here and there. Good thing though, is that I understand Chinese and Japanese, which are the two biggest markets for silk cocoons, and here are some things I found out:
1. Silk cocoon works a bit differently from silk facial masks.
The facial masks focuses on two specialties of silk – moisture preservation and nutritional nourishment, which is why users of silk facial masks report tender and plumper skins. The cocoons, however, due to their natural and unprocessed state, contains a much higher percentage of sericin, a.k.a. silk glue. Sericin, while slightly irritating in large quantities, is the perfect beauty compound:
– It is adhesive. The “glue” part of sericin makes it a great agent in taking off any hard-to-remove dead skin as well as dirt hidden deep within the pores in your skin. Perfect if your face is prone to blackheads and pimples.
– It replenishes collagen. This is currently being researched into, but there is a clearly positive correlation between contact with sericin and improved collagen regeneration. For those of you who don’t know what collagen is – it’s what keeps your facial skin (and really, skin all over your body) elastic.
– It repels all kinds of harmful bacteria. Sericin not only glues the cocoon together, but also acts as a protective layer that keeps harmful bacteria away from the pupa inside. Likewise, massaging with silk cocoons would help you dispose harmful bacteria on your face.
– It is natural. Sericin is a naturally occurring protein produced by silk worms, and contains the 18 kinds of amino acids a human body requires for proper functioning. It is completely natural and has been proven to be harmless to human skin in small quantities.
Here is an article from the Daily Mail for those wanting real scientific proof that the cocoons work: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2837024/Rub-face-silkworm-cocoons-wipe-away-wrinkles-sounds-bizarre-works.html
…so if you feel that there are things (dirt/blackheads/oil) clogging up your pores, silk cocoons work amazingly well. According to Jan it was better than the many brands of deep facial cleaners she used before.
2. Silk cocoons are *really* big in Japan and China.
It’s one of the most common household facial cleaning tools in Japan, thanks to TV endorsements by some of the most famous cosmeticians and beauty therapists. (If you know Japanese I can give you some names and you can research into it yourself.) These cocoons go back a few centuries, however, all the way back to feudal times when the most famous “Oirans” or more commonly known as Geishas of the ancient capital Kyoto used them exclusively for facial cleaning. There is, in fact, a book on this topic called “Japanese Women Don’t Get Old or Fat” by Naomi Moriyama (I know the title sounds very… offputting, but it was a fun read).
A research into Chinese history reveals more amazing facts – compared to the Japanese, the ancient Chinese, who mastered the production of silk over 2000 years ago all the way back in the Han dynasty, started to use silk cocoons as beauty products as early as the first century! Unfortunately, silk had always been a priviledge available to the aristocrat and literati classes exclusively in ancient China, which is probably why that it was not as widespread as Japan in terms of use. It was mentioned, however, in many different ancient Chinese medical works spanning over 10 centuries, the most famous being Ben Cao Gang Mu about 500 years ago, and most of the books noted its healing properties on coarse skin. Crazy huh?
Anyways, that’s all I’m going to say about silk cocoons for now. It’s fun to dig deeper around such an item that is seemingly insignificant and find so much history and modern research around it; however, beauty products really aren’t my thing. Next time I’m going to go back to actual silk – stay tuned!
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