Bright Eyes
Goldfaden MD

Bright Eyes

This supercharged formula works to reduce the look of dark circles, puffiness and fine lines. The cream is enriched with soy peptide, to increase blood flow and decrease swelling; rice bran extract, to hydrate and firm; organic red tea, a rich antioxidant to help resurface, protect and brighten and jojoba oil to moisturise and leave skin supple and soft. This potent blend of ingredients will help ensure the eye area appears luminous and more youthful looking.
Uploaded by: btbitbt on 28/05/2017

Ingredients

Ingredients Explained

Explained

Ingredients By Function

By Function
Also-called: Aqua | What-it-does: solvent

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. 

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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. 

Hyaluronic Acid - goodie
What-it-does: skin-identical ingredient, antioxidant, moisturizer/humectant
  • It’s naturally in our skin and behaves there like a sponge
  • It can bind up to 1000 times its own weight in water
  • Awesome moisturizer and has other important biological functions
  • Different molecular weight versions exist and that raises questions
  • Skin penetration abilities of high-molecular-weight HA is debated (see geeky details for more info)
  • Usefulness of low-molecular-weight HA is also debated (see geeky details for more info)
Read all the geeky details about Hyaluronic Acid here >>

Seaweed Extract - goodie
Also-called: Carrageenan Extract, Seaweed Extract | What-it-does: moisturizer/humectant

The extract of red seaweed that has nice film-forming, skin smoothing and moisturizing properties.​

The manufacturer claims that thanks to biomimetic properties between skin proteins and carrageenans it has a very long-lasting action and can form a "second skin". It also gives a "slow-release" effect to oil-loving active ingredients and measurably reduces trans-epidermal water loss (that's pretty much a synonym of saying that it moisturizes the skin). 

We don't have description for this ingredient yet.

What-it-does: emulsifying

We don't have description for this ingredient yet.

We don't have description for this ingredient yet.

Jojoba Oil - goodie
Also-called: Jojoba Oil | What-it-does: emollient

Jojoba is a drought resistant evergreen shrub native to Southwestern North America. It's known and grown for jojoba oil, the golden yellow liquid coming from the seeds (about 50% of the weight of the seeds will be oil).  

At first glance, it seems like your average emollient plant oil: it looks like an oil and it's nourishing and moisturizing to the skin. But if we dig a bit deeper, it turns out that jojoba oil is a really special and unique one: technically - or rather chemically - it's not an oil but a wax ester (and calling it an oil is kinda sloppy). 

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So what the heck is a wax ester and why is that important anyway? Well, to understand what a wax ester is, you first have to know that oils are chemically triglycerides, one glycerin + three fatty acids attached to it. The fatty acids attached to the glycerin vary and thus we have lots of kinds of oils, but they are all triglycerides. Mother nature created triglycerides to be easily hydrolyzed (be broken down to a glycerin + 3 fatty acid molecules) and oxidized (the fatty acid is broken down into small parts) - this happens basically when we eat fats or oils and our body generates energy from it.

Mother nature also created wax esters but to a totally different purpose. Chemically a wax ester is a fatty acid + a fatty alcohol, one long molecule. Wax esters are on the outer surface of several plant leaves to give them environmental protection. 25-30% of human sebum is also wax esters to give us, people environmental protection. 

So being a wax ester results in a couple of unique properties: First, jojoba oil is extremely stable. Like crazy stable. Even if you heat it to 370 C (698 F) for 96 hours it does not budge. (Many plant oils tend to go off pretty quickly). If you have some pure jojoba oil at home, you should be fine using it for years. 

Second, jojoba oil is the most similar to human sebum (both being wax esters), and the two are completely miscible. Acne.org has this not fully proven theory that thanks to this, jojoba might be able to "trick" the skin into thinking it has already produced enough sebum, so it might have "skin balancing" properties for oily skin.

Third, jojoba oil moisturizes the skin through a unique dual action. On the one hand it mixes with sebum and forms a thin, non-greasy, semi-occlusive layer, and on the other hand, it absorbs into the skin through pores and hair follicles then diffuses into the intercellular spaces of the outer layer of the skin to make it soft and supple.

All in all, the point is this: in contrast to real plant oils, wax esters were designed by mother nature to stay on the surface and form a protective, moisturizing barrier. And jojoba oil being a wax ester is uniquely excellent at doing that.

Also-called: Apricot Kernel Oil | What-it-does: emollient

The emollient plant oil coming from the kernel (the seed of the seed) of the delicious apricot fruit. Like other plant oils, it contains antioxidant vitamin E and nourishing fatty acids (mostly oleic acid 54-74%, linoleic acid 12-35%).

It's a nice general purpose emollient, has nourishing and moisturizing properties (as a high oleic oil it's ideal for dry skin types) and is quite easily absorbed into the skin.

Squalene - goodie
What-it-does: skin-identical ingredient, emollient

Squalene is a great pick when it comes to skin hydration and emollients. 

It’s an oily natural stuff that originally comes from shark liver but luckily it can also be found in a couple of plant oils. Olive (0.6%), peanut (0.1%) and pumpkin (0.35%) oils contain it, though not in huge amounts. 

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What contains more of it, is the sebum (the oily stuff) that our skin produces. About 13% of human sebum is squalene, which means that it’s an important skin-identical ingredient and NMF (natural moisturizing factor). 

There is also research showing it has antioxidant properties. 

On the negative side, squalene is less stable than its hydrogenated form squalane. If squalene is in the ingredient list look out for tubes and pumps that protect the product from air and light. 

Also-called: CI 77019

We don't have description for this ingredient yet.

This ingredient name is not according to the INCI-standard. :( What, why?!

Read more about Arnica extract here >>

Also-called: Vitamin K1

We don't have description for this ingredient yet.

What-it-does: emulsifying, surfactant/cleansing

A not-very-interesting helper ingredient that is used as an emulsifier and/or surfactant. Comes from a coconut oil derived fatty alcohol, lauryl alcohol.

What-it-does: emollient, viscosity controlling

It's a petroleum derived emollient and thickener. It often comes to the formula as part of an emulsifier, thickener trio (with Polyacrylamide and Laureth-7). This trio is an easy-to-use liquid that helps to create nice, non-tacky gel formulas. 

It's a film-forming polymer (a large molecule composed of many repeated subunits) that comes to the formula usually as part of an emulsifier, thickener trio (with C13-14 Isoparaffin and Laureth-7). This trio is an easy-to-use liquid that helps to create nice, non-tacky gel formulas. 

What-it-does: preservative

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. 

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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.

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. 

Also-called: Grapefruit Peel Oil | What-it-does: perfuming

The essential oil coming from the rind of the grapefruit. In general, the main component of citrus peel oils is limonene (86-95% for grapefruit peel), a super common fragrant ingredient that makes everything smell nice (but counts as a frequent skin sensitizer).

Other than that, citrus peel also contains the problematic compound called furanocoumarin that makes them mildly phototoxic. In general, the more sour-bitter the fruit, the more problematic it is regarding phototoxicity: orange and clementine peel contain less of it while lemon, grapefruit, and bergamot contain some more. Be careful with it if it is in a product for daytime use.  

This ingredient name is not according to the INCI-standard. :( What, why?!

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