Evolué

Super Oil

The Super Oil is an all plant-based squalane oil to help supplement essential vitamins for healthy skin.

Uploaded by: vieenrose1065 on 01/19/2020

Ingredients overview

Olive Derived Squalane Oil, Vitamin A, Oil-Soluble Vitamin C, Vitamin D, Vitamin E, Vitamin K1

Read more on how to read an ingredient list >>

Highlights

Key Ingredients

Antioxidant: Oil-Soluble Vitamin C, Vitamin E

Cell-communicating ingredient: Vitamin A

Skin brightening: Oil-Soluble Vitamin C

Skin-identical ingredient: Olive Derived Squalane Oil

Other Ingredients

Emollient: Olive Derived Squalane Oil

Skim through

Ingredient name	what-it-does	irr., com.	ID-Rating
Olive Derived Squalane Oil	skin-identical ingredient, emollient	0, 1	goodie
Vitamin A	cell-communicating ingredient		superstar
Oil-Soluble Vitamin C	antioxidant, skin brightening		goodie
Vitamin D
Vitamin E	antioxidant	0-3, 0-3	goodie
Vitamin K1

Evolué Super Oil
Ingredients explained

Olive Derived Squalane Oil - goodie

What-it-does: skin-identical ingredient, emollient | Irritancy: 0 | Comedogenicity: 1

It seems to us that squalane is in fashion and there is a reason for it. Chemically speaking, it is a saturated (no double bonds) hydrocarbon (a molecule consisting only of carbon and hydrogen), meaning that it's a nice and stable oily liquid with a long shelf life.

It occurs naturally in certain fish and plant oils (e.g. olive), and in the sebum (the oily stuff our skin produces) of the human skin. As f.c. puts it in his awesome blog post, squalane's main things are "emolliency, surface occlusion, and TEWL prevention all with extreme cosmetic elegance". In other words, it's a superb moisturizer that makes your skin nice and smooth, without being heavy or greasy.

Another advantage of squalane is that it is pretty much compatible with all skin types and skin conditions. It is excellent for acne-prone skin and safe to use even if you have fungi-related skin issues, like seborrhea or fungal acne.

The unsaturated (with double bonds) and hence less stable version of Squalane is Squalene, you can read about it here >>

Vitamin A - superstar

Also-called: Vitamin A, Form of Retinoids;Retinol | What-it-does: cell-communicating ingredient

Retinol (pure Vitamin A) is probably the most proven anti-aging ingredient available OTC
It has to be converted in the skin to retinoic acid to work its magic
Once converted, it has the same effect as all-trans-retinoic acid, aka tretinoin
A generally accepted ballpark number is that retinol is 10-to-20 times less potent than retinoic acid
It makes skin less wrinkled, smoother, firmer and tighter
It might also be helpful for acne prone skin as it normalizes keratinization and makes the pores produce less sebum
Possible side effects and irritation are also much less than with retinoic acid
Do not use whilst pregnant

Read all the geeky details about Retinol here >>

Oil-Soluble Vitamin C - goodie

Also-called: Form of Vitamin C, THDA;Tetrahexyldecyl Ascorbate | What-it-does: antioxidant, skin brightening

Tetrahexyldecyl Ascorbate is a stable, oil-soluble form of skincare big shot Vitamin C. If you do not know, why Vitamin C is such a big deal in skincare, click here and read all about it. We are massive vitamin C fans and have written about it in excruciating detail.

So now, you know that Vitamin C is great and all, but it's really unstable and gives cosmetics companies many headaches. To solve this problem they came up with vitamin C derivatives, and one of them is Tetrahexyldecyl Ascorbate (let's call it THDA in short).

It's a really promising candidate (see below), but while reading all the goodness about it in a minute, do not forget that derivatives not only have to be absorbed into the skin but also have to be converted to pure vitamin C (ascorbic acid or AA) and the efficacy of the conversion is often unknown. In addition, vitamin C's three magic properties (antioxidant, collagen booster, skin brightener) are all properly proven in-vivo (on real people), but for the derivatives, it's mostly in-vitro studies or in the case of THDA, it's in-vitro and done by an ingredient supplier.

With this context in mind let's see what THDA might be able to do. First, it is stable (if pH < 5), easy to formulate, and a joy to work with for a cosmetic chemist.

Second, because it's oil-soluble, its skin penetration abilities seem to be great. So great in fact, that it surpasses the penetration of pure vitamin C threefold at the same concentration and it penetrates successfully into the deeper layers of the skin (that is usually important to do some anti-aging work). There is also in-vitro data showing that it converts to AA in the skin.

Third, THDA seems to have all three magic abilities of pure vitamin C: it gives antioxidant protection from both UVB and UVA rays, it increases collagen synthesis (even more than AA) and it has a skin brightening effect by reducing melanogenesis by more than 80% in human melanoma cell cultures.

So this all sounds really great, but these are only in-vitro results at this point. We could find Tetrahexyldecyl Ascorbate mentioned only in one published in-vivo study that examined the anti-aging properties of a silicone formula containing 10% AA and 7% THDA. The authors theorized that the 10% AA is released slowly from the silicon delivery system and probably stays in the upper layer of the skin to give antioxidant benefits, while THDA penetrates more rapidly and deeply and gives some wrinkle-reducing benefits. The study was a small (10 patients), double-blind experiment, and the formula did show some measurable anti-aging results. However, it is hard to know how much pure vitamin C or THDA can be thanked.

Bottom line: a really promising, but not well-proven vitamin C derivative that can be worth a try especially if you like experimenting (but if you like the tried and true, pure vitamin C will be your best bet).

Vitamin D

Also-called: Cholecalciferol

We don't have description for this ingredient yet.