Heliocare 360 Gel Oil-free SPF-50
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Cantabria Labs Heliocare 360 Gel Oil-free SPF-50Ingredients explained
Good old water, aka H2O. The most common skincare ingredient of all. You can usually find it right in the very first spot of the ingredient list, meaning it’s the biggest thing out of all the stuff that makes up the product.
It’s mainly a solvent for ingredients that do not like to dissolve in oils but rather in water.
Once inside the skin, it hydrates, but not from the outside - putting pure water on the skin (hello long baths!) is drying.
One more thing: the water used in cosmetics is purified and deionized (it means that almost all of the mineral ions inside it is removed). Like this, the products can stay more stable over time.
An often used emollient with a light and silky feel. It's very mild to both skin and eyes and spreads nicely and easily. It's often used in sunscreens as it's also an excellent solvent for sunscreen agents.
A semi-essential (infants cannot synthesize it, but adults can) amino acid that is one of the primary building blocks of hair keratin and skin collagen. It's a natural moisturizing factor, a skin hydrator and might also help to speed up wound healing.
Arginine usually has a positive charge (cationic) that makes it substantive to skin and hair (those are more negatively charged surfaces) and an excellent film former. Thanks to the positive charge, it also creates a complex with AHAs (AHAs like to lose a hydrogen ion and be negatively charged, so the positive and the negative ions attract each other) that causes a "time-release AHA effect" and reduces the irritation associated with AHAs.
A chemical sunscreen agent that gives strong protection in the UVB (280-320nm) range with its peak protection at 306 nm. Its special property is that unlike most sunscreen agents, it is not oil but water soluble, so it is ideal to create light, oily skin compatible formulas. It is also fairly photostable and can be used to protect other less stable UV filters (like famous UVA blocker, avobenzone) in the formula. It is approved worldwide and can be used up to 4% in the US and up to 8% in the EU.
This long-named molecule is a chemical sunscreen agent that protects the skin from the UVA II rays (320-350 nm mainly) with a peak absorbance at 335 nm. Unlike most other sunscreen filters, it is not oil, but water-soluble helping formulators to create less greasy sunscreens.
It also has a good safety profile with very low skin penetration and is approved up to 10% in the EU and pretty much everywhere else except for the United States (due to old and bad FDA sunscreen regulations).
Its INCI name is a bit of a mouthful, but Bis-Ethylhexyloxyphenol Methoxyphenyl Triazine is worth recognizing it as it is one of the best sunscreen agents known today. Unfortunately, it's not FDA-approved so you will not find it in sunscreens coming from the US (not because it's not good, but because US regulations make it impossible for newer sunscreen agents to get approved), but it is widely available in other parts of the world like Europe, Australia or Asia.
It is a broad-spectrum (covers the whole UVB and UVA range, 280-400 nm) chemical sunscreen agent with peak protections at about 310 and 345 nm and unlike older UV filters, it's very photostable. It hardly deteriorates in the presence of UV light and it's also useful in stabilizing other less stable sunscreen agents, like the famous UVA protector, avobenzone.
It's a new generation sunscreen agent that was specifically designed for high SPF and good UVA protection and based on a 2007 study that compared 18 sunscreen agents available in the EU it really had the best SPF protection (they used the highest concentration allowed by EU regulations from each 18 sunscreens and Trinosorb S gave an SPF 20 all by itself).
It is an oil-soluble, slightly yellowish powder that is not absorbed into the skin too much. This is good news for a sunscreen agent as it needs to be on the surface of the skin to do its job properly. Regarding Bis-Ethylhexyloxyphenol Methoxyphenyl Triazine side effects, we have good news here as well: it has a great safety profile and unlike a couple of other chemical sunscreens, Trinosorb S (and M) does not show estrogenic activity.
Overall, we think Trinosorb S is one of the best sunscreen options available today.
Are you into sunscreen agents? We have shiny explanations (along with product lists) about others as well:
- Methylene Bis-Benzotriazolyl Tetramethylbutylphenol, aka Tinosorb M, the good buddy of our current molecule Tinosorb S
- Tris-Biphenyl Triazine, aka Tinosorb A2B, the newest addition to the Tinosorb family that protects strongly in an in-between wavelength that most other filters miss
- Ethylhexyl Triazone, aka Uvinul T 150, another new generation sunscreen agent with super-high UVB protection
- Diethylamino Hydroxybenzoyl Hexyl Benzoate, aka Uvinul A Plus, a new generation sunscreen for UVA protection
Titanium Dioxide is one of the two members of the elite sunscreen group called physical sunscreens (or inorganic sunscreens if you’re a science geek and want to be precise).
Traditionally, UV-filters are categorized as either chemical or physical. The big difference is supposed to be that chemical agents absorb UV-light while physical agents reflect it like a bunch of mini umbrellas on top of the skin. While this categorization is easy and logical it turns out it's not true. A recent, 2016 study shows that inorganic sunscreens work mostly by absorption, just like chemical filters, and only a little bit by reflection (they do reflect the light in the visible spectrum, but mostly absorb in the UV spectrum).
Anyway, it doesn't matter if it reflects or absorbs, Titanium Dioxide is a pretty awesome sunscreen agent for two main reasons: it gives a nice broad spectrum coverage and it's highly stable. Its protection is very good between 290 - 350 nm (UVB and UVA II range), and less good at 350-400 nm (UVA I) range. Regular sized Titanium Dioxide also has a great safety profile, it's non-irritating and is pretty much free from any health concerns (like estrogenic effect worries with some chemical filters).
The disadvantage of Titanium Dioxide is that it's not cosmetically elegant, meaning it's a white, "unspreadable" mess. Sunscreens containing Titanium Dioxide are often hard to spread on the skin and they leave a disturbing whitish tint. The cosmetic industry is, of course, really trying to solve this problem and the best solution so far is using nanoparticles. The itsy-bitsy Nano-sized particles improve both spreadability and reduce the whitish tint a lot, but unfortunately, it also introduces new health concerns.
The main concern with nanoparticles is that they are so tiny that they are absorbed into the skin more than we want them (ideally sunscreen should remain on the surface of the skin). Once absorbed they might form unwanted complexes with proteins and they might promote the formation of evil free radicals. But do not panic, these are concerns under investigation. A 2009 review article about the safety of nanoparticles summarizes this, "to date, in-vivo and in-vitro studies have not demonstrated percutaneous penetration of nanosized particles in titanium dioxide and zinc oxide sunscreens". The English translation is, so far it looks like sunscreens with nanoparticles do stay on the surface of the skin where they should be.
All in all, Titanium Dioxide is a famous sunscreen agent and for good reason, it gives broad spectrum UV protection (best at UVB and UVA II), it's highly stable, and it has a good safety profile. It's definitely one of the best UV-filter agents we have today, especially in the US where new-generation Tinosorb filters are not (yet) approved.
Similar to other glycols, it's a helper ingredient used as a solvent, or to thin out thick formulas and make them more nicely spreadable.
Hexylene Glycol is also part a preservative blend named Lexgard® HPO, where it helps the effectiveness of current IT-preservative, phenoxyethanol.
A 100% vegetable origin emulsifier that usually comes to the formula with its buddy called C12-20 Alkyl Glucoside. The duo is trade-named Montanov L and works as an effective oil in water emulsifier. It creates ultra-soft, light texture, has excellent dermo-compatibility and is readily biodegradable.
Chemically speaking, it is a mixture of fatty alcohols with 14 to 22 carbon atoms in their fatty chains.
A 100% vegetable origin emulsifier that usually comes to the formula with its buddy called C14-22 Alcohols. The duo is called Montanov L and two together help to create ultra-soft light formulas.
Diethylamino Hydroxybenzoyl Hexyl Benzoate is a new generation, chemical sunscreen agent (not available in the US due to impossible FDA regulations) that's designed for high UVA protection and high photostability. It gives sun protection in the whole UVA range (320-400 nm) with peak protection at 354nm. It can be used up to 10% worldwide except for the US and Canada.
An odorless, slightly yellowish powder that's used as a polymer microsphere (a tiny little ball from repeated subunits). It gives products an elegant, silky texture and better slip. It can also scatter light to blur fine lines while letting enough light through so that the skin still looks natural.
We don't have description for this ingredient yet.
An oily liquid that makes your skin nice and smooth (aka emollient). It is also claimed to have some humectant and moisturizing properties without a greasy after-feel. But its real superpower is being an outstanding solvent for hard to solubilize sunscreen agents (that is most of the chemical sunscreen filters) making it an excellent emollient choice in high SPF products.
We don't have description for this ingredient yet.
A chemical sunscreen agent that's very oil soluble and requires relatively low concentrations to achieve high SPF values (it gives an SPF 12.5 at the max allowed concentration of 10%). It protects in the UVB and UVA II range (but not in UVA I) with a peak protection at 310 nm. It's particularly suitable for water-repellent and water-resistant formulations.
Regarding photostability, Diethylhexyl Butamido Triazone is super photostable. It looses 10% of its SPF protection abilities only in 25 (!!) hours when 2 hours counts already as "photostable" in the world of chemical sunscreens.
Btw, it is not a FDA-approved sunscreen agent, so you will not find it in sunscreens coming from the US. It's allowed up to 10% in Europe and up to 5% in Japan.
It’s pretty much the current IT-preservative. It’s safe and gentle, but even more importantly, it’s not a feared-by-everyone-mostly-without-scientific-reason paraben.
It’s not something new: it was introduced around 1950 and today it can be used up to 1% worldwide. It can be found in nature - in green tea - but the version used in cosmetics is synthetic.
Other than having a good safety profile and being quite gentle to the skin it has some other advantages too. It can be used in many types of formulations as it has great thermal stability (can be heated up to 85°C) and works on a wide range of pH levels (ph 3-10).
It’s often used together with ethylhexylglycerin as it nicely improves the preservative activity of phenoxyethanol.
We don't have description for this ingredient yet.
Ferulic Acid (FA) is a goodie that can be found naturally in plant cell walls. There is a lot of it especially in the bran of grasses such as rice, wheat and oats.
FA - whose main job is to be an antioxidant - owes its fame to a 2005 research that discovered that adding in 0.5% FA to a 15% Vitamin C + 1% Vitamin E solution not only stabilizes the highly unstable, divaish Vit C, but it also doubles the photoprotection abilities of the formula.
Couple of other studies show that FA just by itself is also a nice addition to cosmetic formulations: it can penetrate the skin (which is kind of important to do the job) and it has protecting properties against UV caused skin damage.
So if you spot it on the ingredient list be happy about it. :)
We don't have description for this ingredient yet.
It’s a handy multi-tasking ingredient that gives the skin a nice, soft feel. At the same time, it also boosts the effectiveness of other preservatives, such as the nowadays super commonly used phenoxyethanol.
The blend of these two (caprylyl glycol + phenoxyethanol) is called Optiphen, which not only helps to keep your cosmetics free from nasty things for a long time but also gives a good feel to the finished product. It's a popular duo.
We don't have description for this ingredient yet.
We don't have description for this ingredient yet.
Ethylhexyl Triazone is a new generation, chemical sunscreen (not available in the US due to impossible FDA regulations) that gives the highest photo-stable absorption of all available UVB filters today. It protects in the UVB range (280-320nm) with a peak protection of 314nm. It is an oil soluble, odorless, colorless powder that works well in fragrance-free formulas. It can be used up to 5% worldwide except for the US and Canada.
A clear, colorless, low viscosity, volatile (does not absorb into the skin but rather evaporates from it) silicone fluid that has excellent spreadability and leaves a light, silky and smooth feel on the skin.
According to manufacturer info, its big advantage is that it's compatible both with other silicones and with natural plant oils, so it's a great ingredient to formulate products with good-sounding, consumer-pleasing vegetable oils but still maintain a cosmetically elegant, non-greasy and non-tacky feel.
A polymer (big molecule from repeated subunits) that improves the film-forming and aesthetic (no tacky after-feel) properties of sunscreen formulas. It also boosts SPF values, in some cases by as much as 70%, at least according to the manufacturer.
- A natural moisturizer that’s also in our skin
- A super common, safe, effective and cheap molecule used for more than 50 years
- Not only a simple moisturizer but knows much more: keeps the skin lipids between our skin cells in a healthy (liquid crystal) state, protects against irritation, helps to restore barrier
- Effective from as low as 3% with even more benefits for dry skin at higher concentrations up to 20-40%
- High-glycerin moisturizers are awesome for treating severely dry skin
A very stable and promising form of the skincare superstar, Vitamin C. If you do not know why Vitamin C is such a big deal in skin care, you can catch up here. In short, Vitamin C has three proven magic abilities: antioxidant, collagen booster, and skin brightener. The problem, though, is that it's very unstable, turns brown and becomes ineffective in no time (after a few month) and the cosmetics industry is trying to come up with smart derivatives that are stable and have the magic properties of pure Vitamin C.
Ethyl Ascorbic Acid or EAC for short is an "etherified derivative of ascorbic acid" that consists of vitamin C and an ethyl group bound to the third carbon position. This makes Vitamin C very stable and soluble in both water and oil.
However, for a Vitamin C derivative to work it's not enough just to be stable, they also have to be absorbed into the skin and be converted there to pure Vitamin C. We have good news regarding the absorption: on top of manufacturer claims, there is some data (animal study) demonstrating in can get into the skin, and it seems to be better at it than Ascorbyl Glucoside, another vitamin C derivative.
Regarding conversion, we can cite only a manufacturers claim saying that EAC is metabolized in the skin into pure ascorbic acid (and the ascorbic acid content of EAC is very high - 86,4% - compared to the usual 50-60% Vitamin C content of other derivatives).
As for the three magic abilities of Vitamin C, we again mostly have only the manufacturer's claims, but at least those are very promising. EAC seems to have both an antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effect, and it's claimed to be able to boost the skin's collagen production. The strong point of EAC though is skin brightening. On top of manufacturer claims, there is also clinical in-vivo (tested on real people) data showing that 2% EAC can improve skin tone and whiten the skin.
Overall, Ethyl Ascorbic Acid is a very promising but not a fully proven Vitamin C derivative. It's worth a try, especially if you are after Vitamin C's skin-brightening effects.
A multi-functional helper ingredient that's used mainly as a pigment carrier. The pigment can be an inorganic sunscreen (such as titanium dioxide) or a colorant that is blended with alumina platelets and then often coated with some kind of silicone (such as triethoxycaprylylsilane). This special treatment enables pigments to be evenly dispersed in the formula and to be spread out easily and evenly upon application. It is super useful both for mineral sunscreens as well as for makeup products.
Other than that, alumina can also be used as an absorbent (sometimes combined with the mattifying powder called polymethylsilsesquioxane), a viscosity controlling or an opacifying (reduces the transparency of the formula) agent.
An emollient liquid that usually comes to the formula combined with C12-15 Alkyl Benzoate and Dipropylene Glycol Dibenzoate as the trio works in synergy to solubilize hard to dissolve sunscreen agents while providing a nice, non-greasy skin feel.
We don't have description for this ingredient yet.
- Green tea is one of the most researched natural ingredients
- The active parts are called polyphenols, or more precisely catechins (EGCG being the most abundant and most active catechin)
- There can be huge quality differences between green tea extracts. The good ones contain 50-90% catechins (and often make the product brown and give it a distinctive smell)
- Green tea is proven to be a great antioxidant, UV protectant, anti-inflammatory, anticarcinogenic and antimicrobial
- Because of these awesome properties green tea is a great choice for anti-aging and also for skin diseases including rosacea, acne and atopic dermatitis
If you have spotted ethylhexylglycerin on the ingredient list, most probably you will see there also the current IT-preservative, phenoxyethanol. They are good friends because ethylhexylglycerin can boost the effectiveness of phenoxyethanol (and other preservatives) and as an added bonus it feels nice on the skin too.
Also, it's an effective deodorant and a medium spreading emollient.
It’s the most commonly used version of pure vitamin E in cosmetics. You can read all about the pure form here. This one is the so-called esterified version.
According to famous dermatologist, Leslie Baumann while tocopheryl acetate is more stable and has a longer shelf life, it’s also more poorly absorbed by the skin and may not have the same awesome photoprotective effects as pure Vit E.
It's one of the most commonly used thickeners and emulsion stabilizers. If the product is too runny, a little xanthan gum will make it more gel-like. Used alone, it can make the formula sticky and it is a good team player so it is usually combined with other thickeners and so-called rheology modifiers (helper ingredients that adjust the flow and thus the feel of the formula). The typical use level of Xantha Gum is below 1%, it is usually in the 0.1-0.5% range.
Btw, Xanthan gum is all natural, a chain of sugar molecules (polysaccharide) produced from individual sugar molecules (glucose and sucrose) via fermentation. It’s approved by Ecocert and also used in the food industry (E415).
We don't have description for this ingredient yet.
We don't have description for this ingredient yet.
We don't have description for this ingredient yet.
We don't have description for this ingredient yet.
Exactly what it sounds: nice smelling stuff put into cosmetic products so that the end product also smells nice. Fragrance in the US and parfum in the EU is a generic term on the ingredient list that is made up of 30 to 50 chemicals on average (but it can have as much as 200 components!).
If you are someone who likes to know what you put on your face then fragrance is not your best friend - there's no way to know what’s really in it.
Also, if your skin is sensitive, fragrance is again not your best friend. It’s the number one cause of contact allergy to cosmetics. It’s definitely a smart thing to avoid with sensitive skin (and fragrance of any type - natural is just as allergic as synthetic, if not worse!).
A type of silicone that's used mainly to stop the product from foaming when it's not needed. It's also often used to coat the sunscreen agent titanium dioxide for better spreading and easier formulation.
We don't have description for this ingredient yet.
Super common little helper ingredient that helps products to remain nice and stable for a longer time. It does so by neutralizing the metal ions in the formula (that usually get into there from water) that would otherwise cause some not so nice changes.
It is typically used in tiny amounts, around 0.1% or less.
A white powdery thing that's the major component of glass and sand. In cosmetics, it’s often in products that are supposed to keep your skin matte as it has great oil-absorbing abilities. It’s also used as a helper ingredient to thicken up products or suspend insoluble particles.
A type of oil soluble vitamin F that is used as an emollient. Read more at ethyl oleate.
A super common emollient that makes your skin feel nice and smooth. It comes from coconut oil and glycerin, it’s light-textured, clear, odorless and non-greasy. It’s a nice ingredient that just feels good on the skin, is super well tolerated by every skin type and easy to formulate with. No wonder it’s popular.
We don't have description for this ingredient yet.
Butylene glycol, or let’s just call it BG, is a multi-tasking colorless, syrupy liquid. It’s a great pick for creating a nice feeling product.
BG’s main job is usually to be a solvent for the other ingredients. Other tasks include helping the product to absorb faster and deeper into the skin (penetration enhancer), making the product spread nicely over the skin (slip agent), and attracting water (humectant) into the skin.
It’s an ingredient whose safety hasn’t been questioned so far by anyone (at least not that we know about). BG is approved by Ecocert and is also used enthusiastically in natural products. BTW, it’s also a food additive.
- It's a helper ingredient that improves the freeze-thaw stability of products
- It's also a solvent, humectant and to some extent a penetration enhancer
- It has a bad reputation among natural cosmetics advocates but cosmetic scientists and toxicology experts do not agree (read more in the geeky details section)
A very common ingredient that can be found in all cell membranes. In cosmetics it's quite the multi-tasker: it's an emollient and water-binding ingredient but it's also an emulsifier and can be used for stabilization purposes. It's also often used to create liposomes.
A helper ingredient that helps to make the products stay nice longer, aka preservative. It works mainly against fungi.
It’s pH dependent and works best at acidic pH levels (3-5). It’s not strong enough to be used in itself so it’s always combined with something else, often with potassium sorbate.
- Primary fat-soluble antioxidant in our skin
- Significant photoprotection against UVB rays
- Vit C + Vit E work in synergy and provide great photoprotection
- Has emollient properties
- Easy to formulate, stable and relatively inexpensive
Linalool is a super common fragrance ingredient. It’s kind of everywhere - both in plants and in cosmetic products. It’s part of 200 natural oils including lavender, ylang-ylang, bergamot, jasmine, geranium and it can be found in 90-95% of prestige perfumes on the market.
The problem with linalool is, that just like limonene it oxidises on air exposure and becomes allergenic. That’s why a product containing linalool that has been opened for several months is more likely to be allergenic than a fresh one.
A study made in the UK with 483 people tested the allergic reaction to 3% oxidised linalool and 2.3% had positive test results.
A super common and cheap fragrance ingredient. It's in many plants, e.g. rosemary, eucalyptus, lavender, lemongrass, peppermint and it's the main component (about 50-90%) of the peel oil of citrus fruits.
It does smell nice but the problem is that it oxidizes on air exposure and the resulting stuff is not good for the skin. Oxidized limonene can cause allergic contact dermatitis and counts as a frequent skin sensitizer.
Limonene's nr1 function is definitely being a fragrance component, but there are several studies showing that it's also a penetration enhancer, mainly for oil-loving components.
All in all, limonene has some pros and cons, but - especially if your skin is sensitive - the cons probably outweigh the pros.
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| what‑it‑does | solvent |
| what‑it‑does | emollient | antimicrobial/antibacterial |
| what‑it‑does | skin-identical ingredient |
| what‑it‑does | sunscreen |
| what‑it‑does | sunscreen |
| what‑it‑does | sunscreen |
| what‑it‑does | sunscreen | colorant |
| what‑it‑does | solvent | emulsifying | perfuming | surfactant/cleansing |
| irritancy, com. | 0-1, 0-2 |
| what‑it‑does | emulsifying | surfactant/cleansing |
| what‑it‑does | sunscreen |
| what‑it‑does | viscosity controlling |
| what‑it‑does | emollient | viscosity controlling |
| irritancy, com. | 4, 2 |
| what‑it‑does | emollient |
| what‑it‑does | surfactant/cleansing | emulsifying |
| what‑it‑does | sunscreen |
| what‑it‑does | preservative |
| what‑it‑does | antioxidant |
| what‑it‑does | antioxidant | antimicrobial/antibacterial |
| what‑it‑does | antioxidant |
| what‑it‑does | moisturizer/humectant | emollient |
| what‑it‑does | surfactant/cleansing |
| what‑it‑does | sunscreen |
| what‑it‑does | emollient |
| what‑it‑does | skin-identical ingredient | moisturizer/humectant |
| irritancy, com. | 0, 0 |
| what‑it‑does | antioxidant | skin brightening |
| what‑it‑does | viscosity controlling | abrasive/scrub |
| what‑it‑does | emollient |
| what‑it‑does | surfactant/cleansing |
| what‑it‑does | antioxidant | soothing |
| what‑it‑does | preservative |
| what‑it‑does | antioxidant |
| irritancy, com. | 0, 0 |
| what‑it‑does | viscosity controlling |
| what‑it‑does | perfuming |
| what‑it‑does | emollient |
| irritancy, com. | 0, 1 |
| what‑it‑does | chelating |
| what‑it‑does | viscosity controlling |
| what‑it‑does | emollient | perfuming |
| what‑it‑does | emollient |
| what‑it‑does | emollient | perfuming | solvent | viscosity controlling |
| irritancy, com. | 2, 4 |
| what‑it‑does | moisturizer/humectant | solvent |
| irritancy, com. | 0, 1 |
| what‑it‑does | moisturizer/humectant | solvent |
| irritancy, com. | 0, 0 |
| what‑it‑does | emollient | emulsifying |
| what‑it‑does | preservative |
| what‑it‑does | antioxidant |
| irritancy, com. | 0-3, 0-3 |
| what‑it‑does | perfuming |
| what‑it‑does | perfuming | solvent |