Be it in foods, supplements or as ingredients in skin- and hair-care products; antioxidants often are the big promise of a healthy body and life. In fact, antioxidants can help reducing the harming effects of oxidative stress in body cells, caused by unhealthy nutrition, sun irradiation or pollution, among others. Companies and research allies do right in trying to utilize the power of antioxidants in novel products to counter an adverse amount of free radicals, as they often occur as a result of various factors of a modern environment and lifestyle. Many substances such as herbs, spices, fruits and vegetables contain impressive amounts of antioxidants, which makes them promising ingredients for those products in question. However, tremendous differences between vendors, packaging, storage and procession state can be found in regard of the raw material’s Antioxidative Power and therefore in the final product.

Here Gematria Test Lab GmbH offers a reference database of selected substances measured with regard to their Antioxidative Power (AP) and reaction time t_r.

The sunscreen market is one of the most increasing parts in cosmetic industry. Every year, about 4,000 new suncare products arrive on the market. All products claim adequate UV protection and are normally classified with the SPF label.
The SPF method classifies only the UV B protection of a sunscreen. Therefore, several other statements claim the UV A protection of the products (among others, UVA-PF, UV A/B balance, high UV A protection, % of UV A transmittance, star rating systems).

The overflowing number of market products and the incoherent labeling of the products complicate the consumer’s selection.

Not only the differences in prizes but also the availability of the products (discount products or pharmacy products) connote a remarkable difference in the protective effect. Is there really this great difference? Are high SPF values an assurance of high protection? And do high prize products amount to high protection? These are the questions we wanted to answer. We tested 16 different suncare products ranking from SPF 15 to 50+ and 6 daily care products ranking from SPF 4 to 15 by using the RSF method. This method measures the amount of free radicals generated inside the skin during UV radiation. High RSF values mean high protection against free radical impact.