Handmade Heroes

The Ultimate Bakuchiol Booster Oil

The Ultimate Bakuchiol Booster Oil with 2.5% bakuchiol extract with powerful anti-aging properties. Bakuchiol is a superstar ingredient that is clinically proven to stimulate collagen production and boost skin-cell turnover to visibly smooth out fine lines and maintain youthful, glowing skin.

Uploaded by: halie2406 on 10/05/2020

Ingredients overview

Squalane, Bakuchiol (2.5%), Melia Azadirachta Leaf Extract, Melia Azadirachta Flower Extract, Coccinia Indica Fruit Extract, Corallina Officinalis Extract, Solanum Melongena (Eggplant) Fruit Extract, Aloe Barbadensis Flower Extract, Ocimum Sanctum Leaf Extract, Ocimum Basilicum (Basil) Flower/Leaf Extract, Curcuma Longa (Tumeric) Root Extract

Read more on how to read an ingredient list >>

Highlights

Key Ingredients

Antioxidant: Bakuchiol (2.5%), Curcuma Longa (Tumeric) Root Extract

Cell-communicating ingredient: Bakuchiol (2.5%)

Skin brightening: Curcuma Longa (Tumeric) Root Extract

Skin-identical ingredient: Squalane

Soothing: Curcuma Longa (Tumeric) Root Extract

Skim through

Ingredient name	what-it-does	irr., com.	ID-Rating
Squalane	skin-identical ingredient, emollient	0, 1	goodie
Bakuchiol (2.5%)	cell-communicating ingredient, antioxidant, antimicrobial/antibacterial		goodie
Melia Azadirachta Leaf Extract
Melia Azadirachta Flower Extract
Coccinia Indica Fruit Extract
Corallina Officinalis Extract
Solanum Melongena (Eggplant) Fruit Extract
Aloe Barbadensis Flower Extract	emollient
Ocimum Sanctum Leaf Extract
Ocimum Basilicum (Basil) Flower/Leaf Extract
Curcuma Longa (Tumeric) Root Extract	antioxidant, soothing, skin brightening, perfuming		goodie

Handmade Heroes The Ultimate Bakuchiol Booster Oil
Ingredients explained

Squalane - 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.

Bakuchiol (2.5%) - goodie

Also-called: Sytenol A, Phyto Retinol | What-it-does: cell-communicating ingredient, antioxidant, antimicrobial/antibacterial

At first glance, you could think that Bakuchiol is your average plant extract. It is derived from the seeds of Psoralea Corylifolia, aka Babchi, a plant important in Indian and Chinese medicine. The molecule was first isolated in 1973 and several anti-something properties are known about it: it has anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, anti-tumor, anti-bacterial and hepatoprotective magical abilities like plenty of other Ayurvedic plant extracts.

What makes Bakuchiol a special snowflake is the recent discovery that it behaves on the skin in a way very similar to well-known skincare superstar, retinol. While chemically, it has nothing to do with the vitamin-A family, aka retinoids, comparative gene expression profiling (a fancy way of saying that they compared how retinol and bakuchiol modify the way skin cells behave and produce important skin proteins such as collagen) shows that retinol and bakuchiol regulate skin cell behavior in a similar way.

To be more specific, both Bakuchiol and retinol upregulate collagen I, III and IV production and downregulate MMP, the evil collagen attacking enzyme in our skin. This means more collagen stays in our skin and we all know that more collagen equals firmer, more wrinkle-free skin. A 12-week clinical study using a 0.5% Bakuchiol formula with 17 people using it twice a day confirmed a significant improvement in lines and wrinkles, elasticity, firmness and an overall reduction in photo-damage. Also, the test formula was very well tolerated, without any retinol-like side effects.

What's more, a 2018 double-blind study with 44 people compared 0.5% Bakuchiol with 0.5% retinol cream and found that "bakuchiol is comparable to retinol in its ability to improve photoaging and is better tolerated than retinol". A super promising result after 12 weeks.

If you are not a daredevil-type who doesn't want to stop using a super well-proven retinol for a newbie like Bakuchiol, we have good news. The two also work very nicely together and Bakuchiol can actually help to stabilize the otherwise unstable and hard to formulate retinol.

And we are still not done, as Bakuchiol shows not only anti-aging properties but also nice anti-acne effects. 1% Bakuchiol seems to be very effective in itself (57% reduction in acne after 6 weeks treatment) and even better when combined with 2% salicylic acid (67% reduction in acne after 6 weeks). We like that Bakuchiol is such a good team player! The molecule works against acne in multiple ways: It downregulates 5α-reductase (a sebum-controlling enzyme), it is antibacterial (including P. acnes), anti-inflammatory and it inhibits lipid-peroxidation, an evil oxidative process that is recently thought to be a very early trigger in the acne process.

We feel that this description is becoming very long so we will just mention that Bakuchiol also seems to positively regulate hydration-related genes such as Aquaporin 3 and also shows some melanin-inhibiting properties.

Overall, we think Bakuchiol is an awesome molecule with lots of promise both for anti-aging and anti-acne. But the proof compared to the well-established superstars is far from solid, so in a skincare routine, we would rather add Bakuchiol next to retinol than straight up replace it. Unless you are a gimme-the-newest-shiny-thing-under-the-sun-type.

Melia Azadirachta Leaf Extract