911 Pro Gel
Ingredients overview
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Hey Honey 911 Pro GelIngredients 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.
Propanediol is a natural alternative for the often used and often bad-mouthed propylene glycol. It's produced sustainably from corn sugar and it's Ecocert approved.
It's quite a multi-tasker: can be used to improve skin moisturization, as a solvent, to boost preservative efficacy or to influence the sensory properties of the end formula.
- 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
Simply alcohol refers to ethanol and it's a pretty controversial ingredient. It has many instant benefits: it's a great solvent, penetration enhancer, creates cosmetically elegant, light formulas, great astringent and antimicrobial. No wonder it's popular in toners and oily skin formulas.
The downside is that it can be very drying if it's in the first few ingredients on an ingredient list.
Some experts even think that regular exposure to alcohol damages skin barrier and causes inflammation though it's a debated opinion. If you wanna know more, we wrote a more detailed explanation about what's the deal with alcohol in skincare products at alcohol denat. (it's also alcohol, but with some additives to make sure no one drinks it).
A flavonoid-rich plant extract coming from knotgrass that is claimed to protect the skin from both UV and Infrared damage. By now it's pretty well-known that UV-light is the number one external skin-aging factor, however, *sigh* it looks like UV is not the only kind of light that causes bad things to happen to the skin.
Infrared light (760 nm to 1 mm) is the spectral band above visible light and there is some research concluding that it can accelerate skin aging via multiple mechanisms, one of them being the stimulation of the production of evil collagen-destroying enzymes called matrix metalloproteinases (MMP).
Therefore, protecting the skin from infrared light is probably a meaningful thing to do even though there are currently no proven ways to do so. As for Knotgrass Extract, we only have the manufacturer's claim that says it can inhibit Cathepsin G, an enzyme involved in photoaging and thus modulating the origin of sun and infrared induced MMP production.
The manufacturer also did in-vivo tests to show that a 2% Elix-IR lotion, used twice a day for 28 days can increase skin firmness (by 11.9%) and elasticity (by 4.8%) and visibly reduce the appearance of wrinkles (by 20%) and smoothes the surface of the skin.
A sugar beet-derived amino acid derivative with nice skin protection and moisturization properties. Betaine's special thing is being an osmolyte, a molecule that helps to control cell-water balance. It is also a natural osmoprotectant, meaning that it attracts water away from the protein surface and thus protects them from denaturation and increases their thermodynamic stability.
It also gives sensorial benefits to the formula and when used in cleansers, it helps to make them milder and gentler.
A spray-dried or freeze-dried version of Aloe Leaf Juice. The point of both drying methods is to make water evaporate from the juice and leave just the "useful" components behind.
So the aloe powder has similar soothing, emollient and moisturizing properties as the juice. You can read a bit more about the juice here.
The extract created from the leaves of the hazelnut-bush-like-magic-tree, commonly called Witch Hazel. We have gone into detail about Witch Hazel in cosmetic products here (it's astringent, soothing, antioxidant and antibacterial), but the important part to know about the leaves is that they contain much, much less active components than the bark. In fact, it contains hardly any tannins (only 0.04%) and the most active component in the leaves is the antibacterial gallic acid.
Too many tannins can be very astringent and irritating to the skin, so this is not necessarily a bad thing. Even the small amount of active components in the leaves seem to give it nice soothing, astringent, and antibacterial properties.
- 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
The extract coming from the Italian Honeysuckle that has beautiful, very fragrant cream and pink colored flowers. Coupled with Japanese Honeysuckle, the reason this plant duo is in cosmetic products is not the usual one.
It's not there to be an antioxidant or soothing agent or to give a nice scent but because it contains a natural form of paraben called parahydroxy benzoic acid (PHBA) and serves as a broad-spectrum antimicrobial preservative.
Though PHBA is not identical to well-known parabens (like methylparaben), it also contains the same benzene ring that is the problematic part of parabens (read more here). If you are someone who avoids parabens, Honeysuckle has to be on your "NO list" as well.
Lonicera Japonica, or Japanese Honeysuckle as normal people call it, is a white-flowered honeysuckle known for being a traditional Chinese medicine. Modern research confirms that the plant has a super complex chemical composition with more than 140 compounds identified with possible anti-inflammatory, antibacterial, antiviral, antioxidative and hepatoprotective activities.
As for Lonicera Japonica Flower Extract in skin care, it can have two main roles. The first one is being an anti-inflammatory and soothing ingredient, probably due to chlorogenic acid, a polyphenol thought to be the main bioactive component of the flower.
The other possible role is being a natural preservative. If this is the case, it is coupled with its Italian Honeysuckle cousin to form a broad spectrum antimicrobial preservative blend. You can read about this more here.
Though its long name does not reveal it, this polymer molecule (big molecule from repeated subunits or monomers) is a relative to the super common, water-loving thickener, Carbomer. Both of them are big molecules that contain acrylic acid units, but Acrylates/C10-30 Alkyl Acrylate Crosspolymer also contains some other monomers that are hydrophobic, i.e. water-hating.
This means that our molecule is part water- and part oil-loving, so it not only works as a thickener but also as an emulsion stabilizer. It is very common in gel-type formulas that also contain an oil-phase as well as in cleansers as it also works with most cleansing agents (unlike a lot of other thickeners).
We don't have description for this ingredient yet.
A yellow-brown viscous liquid with a balsamic smell. It's a natural antiseptic, astringent and disinfectant. As an antibacterial, it might help acne prone skin and greasy hair. As a strong fragrant gum, it is also a potential skin irritant.
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.
The unfancy name for it is lye. It’s a solid white stuff that’s very alkaline and used in small amounts to adjust the pH of the product and make it just right.
For example, in case of AHA or BHA exfoliants, the right pH is super-duper important, and pH adjusters like sodium hydroxide are needed.
BTW, lye is not something new. It was already used by ancient Egyptians to help oil and fat magically turn into something else. Can you guess what? Yes, it’s soap. It still often shows up in the ingredient list of soaps and other cleansers.
Sodium hydroxide in itself is a potent skin irritant, but once it's reacted (as it is usually in skin care products, like exfoliants) it is totally harmless.
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| what‑it‑does | solvent |
| what‑it‑does | solvent | moisturizer/humectant |
| what‑it‑does | skin-identical ingredient | moisturizer/humectant |
| irritancy, com. | 0, 0 |
| what‑it‑does | emollient |
| what‑it‑does | antimicrobial/antibacterial | solvent | viscosity controlling |
| what‑it‑does | antioxidant | emollient |
| what‑it‑does | moisturizer/humectant |
| what‑it‑does | soothing | moisturizer/humectant |
| what‑it‑does | soothing | antimicrobial/antibacterial |
| what‑it‑does | antioxidant | soothing |
| what‑it‑does | preservative |
| what‑it‑does | soothing | antimicrobial/antibacterial |
| what‑it‑does | viscosity controlling |
| what‑it‑does | antimicrobial/antibacterial |
| what‑it‑does | moisturizer/humectant | solvent |
| irritancy, com. | 0, 1 |
| what‑it‑does | buffering |