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Hidrabene ResveratrolIngredients 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.
- A multi-functional skincare superstar with several proven benefits for the skin
- Great anti-aging, wrinkle smoothing ingredient used at 4-5% concentration
- Fades brown spots alone or in combination with amino sugar, acetyl glucosamine
- Increases ceramide synthesis that results in a stronger, healthier skin barrier and better skin hydration
- Can help to improve several skin conditions including acne, rosacea, and atopic dermatitis
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.
A superabsorbent polymer (big molecule from repeated subunits) that has crazy water binding abilities. Sometimes its referred to as "waterlock" and can absorb 100 to 1000 times its mass in water.
As for its use in cosmetic products, it is a handy multi-tasker that thickens up water-based formulas and also has some emulsifying and emulsion stabilizing properties.
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.
Probably the most common silicone of all. It is a polymer (created from repeating subunits) molecule and has different molecular weight and thus different viscosity versions from water-light to thick liquid.
As for skincare, it makes the skin silky smooth, creates a subtle gloss and forms a protective barrier (aka occlusive). Also, works well to fill in fine lines and wrinkles and give skin a plump look (of course that is only temporary, but still, it's nice). There are also scar treatment gels out there using dimethicone as their base ingredient. It helps to soften scars and increase their elasticity.
As for hair care, it is a non-volatile silicone meaning that it stays on the hair rather than evaporates from it and smoothes the hair like no other thing. Depending on your hair type, it can be a bit difficult to wash out and might cause some build-up (btw, this is not true to all silicones, only the non-volatile types).
A clear, colorless liquid that works as a solvent and viscosity decreasing ingredient. It also has great skin-moisturizing abilities.
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.
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.
The famous omega-6 fatty acid, the mother of all ω-6 fatty acids in our body. It is a so-called polyunsaturated fatty acid meaning it has more than one (in this case two) double bonds and a somewhat kinky structure that makes LA and LA-rich oils a thin liquid.
It is also an essential fatty acid meaning our body cannot synthesize it and has to take it from food. This is not hard at all as plenty of nuts (such as flax, poppy or sesame seeds) and vegetable oils (such as sunflower or safflower) are rich in LA. The hard thing seems to be eating enough omega-3-s, more specifically eating a healthy ratio of omega-6 to omega-3, but that is a topic for a what-is-good-to-eat-site and not for us.
As for linoleic acid and the skin, LA is a really important little guy found naturally in our skin. It is the most abundant fatty acid in the epidermis and it serves as a structural precursor for important skin lipids called ceramides. Knowing this, it will not come as a surprise that Linoleic acid has a central role in the structure and function of stratum corneum permeability, aka healthy skin barrier. LA deficiency leads to an impaired more permeable skin barrier and the topical application of LA-rich sunflower oil can fix this issue rapidly (while oleic-rich olive oil did not have the same barrier repairing effect).
LA is not only important for dry, barrier damaged skin types but also for acne-prone skin. Research shows that problem skin has lower levels of linoleic acid (and higher levels of oleic acid) than normal skin. So LA-deficiency in the skin seems to be connected not only to an impaired skin barrier but also to acne and smearing LA all over your face might help with your problem skin. A double-blind study using a 2.5% LA gel for 4 weeks found a 25% reduction in the size of microcomedones, the tiny blocked pores that can later lead to acne.
If that was not enough, we have one more thing to report about LA. It lightens hyperpigmentation (aka UVB caused sun spots) both by blocking the melanin production of melanocytes (the skin cells that make the pigment melanin) and by enhancing the desquamation of melanin pigment from the upper layers of the skin.
Overall, linoleic acid is a multi-functional skin goodie with barrier repairing, acne-reducing, and skin-lightening magic abilities. It's a nice one to spot on the ingredient list pretty much for any skin type.
A 14 carbon length fatty acid that can be naturally found in nutmeg, palm kernel oil, coconut oil and butter fat. It's used as a foam building cleansing agent. Paula Begoun writes that it can be a bit drying to the skin.
A common fatty acid that can be found in lots of plant oils. Its name, "oleic", means derived from olive oil, a plant oil rich in oleic acid, but avocado, macadamia and marula oils, just to name a few, are also oleic rich.
Its chemical structure is monounsaturated, meaning it has one double bond (cis-9) that makes it less kinky than polyunsaturated fatty acids with multiple double bonds. Less kinkiness means that oleic acid and OA-rich oils are a bit thicker and heavier than their LA-rich siblings.
Maybe this thickness is the reason that Oleic acid is considered comedogenic, and if you have acne-prone skin avoid OA-rich plant oils, and choose linoleic acid-rich versions instead.
The thickness of OA also means that OA-rich oils are considered more nourishing and moisturizing than their LA-rich counterparts, and are generally considered to be more suitable for dry, mature skin types.
As for oleic acid in its free form (and by free we mean that it is not bound up in a triglyceride structure like it is in oils), it mostly serves as an emulsifier or emulsion stabilizer in small amounts in regular cosmetic products. It is also quite well researched and is used in the pharmaceutical industry as a penetration enhancer.
A super commonly used 5 unit long, cyclic structured silicone that is water-thin and does not stay on the skin but evaporates from it (called volatile silicone). Similar to other silicones, it gives skin and hair a silky, smooth feel.
It's often combined with the non-volatile (i.e. stays on the skin) dimethicone as the two together form a water-resistant, breathable protective barrier on the skin without a negative tacky feel.
The emollient plant oil coming from the seeds of Pomegranate. The red fruit has lots of seeds (100-200 per fruit), but 7 kg of them are needed for 1 kg of oil. Among the many similar plant oils, Pomegranate oil is a really unique one, as its main fatty acid (60%) is a rare one called punic acid, a so-called conjugated fatty acid with three double bonds. It also contains the common linoleic (2-10%) and oleic acids (3-12%), but only in small amounts.
Punic acid is thought to be a biologically active compound, a powerful anti-inflammatory, and antioxidant agent. The oil itself is also claimed to have strong antioxidant properties as well as having excellent nourishing and moisturizing abilities. On top of that, we also found a research that examined Pomegranate as a cosmeceutical source and it concluded that the seed oil can nicely promote the regeneration of the epidermis (the top layer of the skin).
A synthetic big copolymer molecule that is used mainly as a solubilizer (make small amounts of oil-loving things soluble in water-based formulas) and gelling agent.
In general, poloxamers are interesting big molecules composed of three blocks: the middle block is an oil-loving part (from propylene oxide units, if you're into chemistry), while the left and right blocks are two water-loving parts (from ethylene oxide units). This means that poloxamers are partly water and partly oil soluble and thus they are surface active agents acting as emulsifiers and/or cleansers. The size of both the oil and water-soluble part can vary, and the numbers in the name of the molecule refer to both the overall size of the whole molecule and to the ratio of the water-soluble part.
This particular guy, Poloxamer 407, is a big one with significant water-soluble part (70%) hence it works as a solubilizer to make small amounts of oil-loving ingredients (such as essential oils) soluble in water-based formulas. It is also the best gelling and body giving agent out of the poloxamers commonly used in cosmetic products.
A common little helper ingredient that helps water and oil to mix together, aka emulsifier.
The number at the end refers to the oil-loving part and the bigger the number the more emulsifying power it has. 20 is a weak emulsifier, rather called solubilizer used commonly in toners while 60 and 80 are more common in serums and creams.
A waxy solid material that helps oil and water to mix together, aka emulsifier. It is derived from the fatty alcohol, stearyl alcohol by ethoxylating it and thus making the molecule a little water-soluble. This version has only a small amount of ethoxylation and thus the molecule is still largely oil soluble. It is often mixed with more water-soluble emulsifiers (such as Steareth-20) to create stable emulsion systems.
A waxy solid material that helps oil and water to mix together, aka emulsifier. It is super similar to Steareth-20 with just a little more ethoxylation and thus a little more water solubility. It works very well when combined with mostly oil-soluble emulsifiers such as Steareth-2 and the two together can form exceptionally stable emulsions.
Hello, our favorite molecule that helps us wake up in the morning and then keeps us going through the day. As a super well-known stimulant from coffee, tea and plenty of other soft drinks, Caffeine needs no introduction. So we will skip right to the part where we talk about what the hell it does in so-so many cosmetic products.
Looking at the research, we were surprised to find how versatile Caffeine is. It is a small, water-loving molecule with pretty good skin penetration abilties. Once in the skin, it has nice antioxidant properties, meaning that it reduces the formation of evil free radicals and it might even be useful in preventing UV-induced skin cancers.
A well-known thing about Caffeine is that it improves the microcirculation of the blood vessels. Though conventional wisdom and anecdotal evidence says that this property is helpful for dark under-eye circles and puffy eyes, we have to mention that the double-blind research we have found about a 3% caffeine gel concluded that "the overall efficacy of the selected caffeine gel in reducing puffy eyes was not significantly different from that of its gel base." But you know, the proof is in the pudding.
Another thing Caffeine is used for in body care products is its anti-cellulite effects. In theory, it can speed up the lipolysis process (the "fat burning" by our cells) and stimulate the draining lymph system that might lead to the improvement of cellulite. But here again, the evidence that it actually makes a measurable, let alone visible, improvement on actual human beings is limited (we could find only some animal skin studies or caffeine being combined with other actives).
Last, but not least, we have to write about caffeine and hair growth. The theory is that it can inhibit the activity of the 5-α-reductase enzyme that plays an important role in hair loss and allows a renewed growth phase of the hair. We have found some recent and promising research to back this up. A 2017 study compared a 0.2% caffeine liquid with a 5% Minoxidil (an FDA approved active to treat baldness) solution and found that "a caffeine-based topical liquid should be considered as not inferior to minoxidil 5% solution in men with androgenetic alopecia", or English translation means that the caffeine liquid was pretty much as good as the FDA-approved Minoxidil stuff. Not bad!
Overall, we think that caffeine is a very versatile and biologically active ingredient. Even though some of its effects are more hyped up than backed up, it is still a nice to have on many ingredient lists.
A silicone emulsifier that helps to create water in silicone emulsions.
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.
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!).
If you are looking for a reason why red wine is good for you, good news, you have found it! Resveratrol, aka the "red grape antioxidant" is the thing that's suspected to keep the French from coronary heart disease despite their not so healthy eating habits (such as high saturated fat intake).
So resveratrol, found in the seed and skin of the red grape (and berries), is a pretty well-known and well-studied molecule that has potent antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and anticarcinogenic abilities. Most of the studies were done examining resveratrol's promising anti-cancer properties, but as for skin care, it shows a potent protective effect against UV-caused oxidative stress as well as promising effects against multiple types of skin cancer including the most severe one, melanoma (as an adjuvant therapy).
When it comes to skincare and antioxidants, "the more the merrier", so resveratrol is definitely a nice addition to any skincare routine.
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.
As you may guess, if something is only recommended in products that you rinse off (cleansers and shampoos), then it’s probably not the best ingredient for the skin.
Methylisothiazolinone (MI) is a preservative that' super efficient against bacteria at surprisingly low concentrations. The problem with it though is that it can also sensitize and irritate the skin quite easily when it comes in leave-on formulas.
Currently, some countries are considering to ban it entirely (like Denmark) and the permitted use level is very low (under 0.01%). Luckily there are plenty of products on the market with other preservative options so if you are a better safe than sorry type it's probably best to avoid it.
A traditional Chinese herbal medicine loaded with potent antioxidant and anti-inflammatory flavonoids such as baicalin, baicalein, and wogonin.
If that would not be enough, Skullcap Root is also claimed to have antimicrobial and antifungal properties (also against P.acnes and Malassezia furfur) as well as some skin-brightening activity. A multi-functional skin-goodie.
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| what‑it‑does | solvent |
| what‑it‑does | cell-communicating ingredient | skin brightening | anti-acne | moisturizer/humectant |
| what‑it‑does | antioxidant |
| irritancy, com. | 0, 0 |
| what‑it‑does | viscosity controlling |
| what‑it‑does | moisturizer/humectant | solvent |
| irritancy, com. | 0, 1 |
| what‑it‑does | emollient |
| irritancy, com. | 0, 1 |
| what‑it‑does | solvent |
| what‑it‑does | preservative |
| what‑it‑does | emollient |
| what‑it‑does | skin-identical ingredient | emollient | surfactant/cleansing |
| what‑it‑does | surfactant/cleansing | emulsifying | perfuming |
| irritancy, com. | 0, 3 |
| what‑it‑does | emollient | emulsifying |
| what‑it‑does | emollient |
| what‑it‑does | emollient | solvent |
| what‑it‑does | antioxidant | emollient |
| what‑it‑does | emulsifying | viscosity controlling | surfactant/cleansing |
| what‑it‑does | emulsifying | surfactant/cleansing |
| irritancy, com. | 0, 0 |
| what‑it‑does | emulsifying | surfactant/cleansing |
| irritancy, com. | 2, 2 |
| what‑it‑does | emulsifying | surfactant/cleansing |
| what‑it‑does | antioxidant | perfuming |
| what‑it‑does | emulsifying |
| what‑it‑does | emulsifying | surfactant/cleansing |
| what‑it‑does | chelating |
| what‑it‑does | antioxidant | preservative |
| what‑it‑does | perfuming |
| what‑it‑does | antioxidant |
| what‑it‑does | moisturizer/humectant | emollient |
| what‑it‑does | preservative |
| what‑it‑does | soothing | antioxidant | antimicrobial/antibacterial | moisturizer/humectant |