Vita Propolis Ampoule
LJH

Vita Propolis Ampoule

A multi-tasking, glow-creating serum ampoule packed with 50% Propolis extract and 20% Multi-vitamins. Perfect for giving an instant dewy glow to skin.
Uploaded by: dariak on 31/07/2017

Ingredients

Ingredients Explained

Explained

Ingredients By Function

By Function

We don't have description for this ingredient yet.

Also-called: Purslane Extract | What-it-does: soothing, antioxidant

A nice succulent with bright yellow flowers and edible nutritious vegetables. It's a famous plant in Korean traditional medicine to treat infection and irritated skin.

Modern research confirms that it's loaded with skin-goodies: it's the richest green plant source of omega-3 fatty acids (α-linolenic acid), contains NMFs (polysaccharides and amino acids),  vitamins (β-carotene), minerals, and antioxidants (yellow betaxanthins and reddish betacyanins). Thanks to all its beneficial components, Purslane Extract has several magic properties: it's a great anti-inflammatory and antioxidant agent and also has wound healing abilities. 

Also-called: Sea Buckthorn Berry Extract

We don't have description for this ingredient yet.

Panthenol - goodie
Also-called: Pro-Vitamin B5 | What-it-does: vitamins, soothing, moisturizer/humectant

An easy-to-formulate, commonly used, nice to have ingredient that’s also called pro-vitamin B5. As you might guess from the “pro” part, it’s a precursor to vitamin B5 (whose fancy name is pantothenic acid). 

Its main job in skincare products is to moisturise the skin. It’s a humectant meaning that it can help the skin to attract water and then hold onto it. There is also research showing that panthenol can help our skin to produce more lovely lipids that are important for a strong and healthy skin barrier. 

Expand to read more

Another great thing about panthenol is that it has anti-inflammatory and skin protecting abilities. A study shows that it can reduce the irritation caused by less-nice other ingredients (e.g. fragrance, preservatives or chemical sunscreens) in the product.

Research also shows that it might be useful for wound healing as it promotes fibroblast (nice type of cells in our skin that produce skin-firming collagen) proliferation. 

If that wasn’t enough panthenol is also useful in nail and hair care products. A study shows that a nail treatment liquide with 2% panthenol could effectively get into the nail and significantly increase the hydration of it.

As for the hair the hydration effect is also true there. Panthenol might make your hair softer, more elastic and helps to comb your hair more easily. 

We don't have description for this ingredient yet.

Niacinamide - superstar
Also-called: vitamin B3, nicotinamide | What-it-does: cell-communicating ingredient, vitamins, skin brightening, anti-acne, moisturizer/humectant
  • 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
Read all the geeky details about Niacinamide here >>

What-it-does: solvent

A really multi-functional helper ingredient that can do several things in a skincare product: it can bring a soft and pleasant feel to the formula, it can act as a humectant and emollient, it can be a solvent for some other ingredients (for example it can help to stabilize perfumes in watery products) and it can also help to disperse pigments more evenly in makeup products. And that is still not all: it can also boost the antimicrobial activity of preservatives. 

Also-called: Form of Vitamin C, 3-O-Ethyl Ascorbate, EAC | What-it-does: antioxidant, skin brightening, vitamins

A very stable and promising form of the skincare superstar, Vitamin C. If you do not know why Vitamin C is such a big deal in skin care, you can catch up here. In short, Vitamin C has three proven magic abilities: antioxidant, collagen booster, and skin brightener. The problem, though, is that it's very unstable, turns brown and becomes ineffective in no time (after a few month) and the cosmetics industry is trying to come up with smart derivatives that are stable and have the magic properties of pure Vitamin C. 

Ethyl Ascorbic Acid or EAC for short is an "etherified derivative of ascorbic acid" that consists of vitamin C and an ethyl group bound to the third carbon position. This makes Vitamin C very stable and soluble in both water and oil.

Expand to read more

However, for a Vitamin C derivative to work it's not enough just to be stable, they also have to be absorbed into the skin and be converted there to pure Vitamin C. We have good news regarding the absorption: on top of manufacturer claims, there is some data (animal study) demonstrating in can get into the skin, and it seems to be better at it than Ascorbyl Glucoside, another vitamin C derivative.

Regarding conversion, we can cite only a manufacturers claim saying that EAC is metabolized in the skin into pure ascorbic acid (and the ascorbic acid content of EAC is very high - 86,4% - compared to the usual 50-60% Vitamin C content of other derivatives). 

As for the three magic abilities of Vitamin C, we again mostly have only the manufacturer's claims, but at least those are very promising. EAC seems to have both an antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effect, and it's claimed to be able to boost the skin's collagen production. The strong point of EAC though is skin brightening. On top of manufacturer claims, there is also clinical in-vivo (tested on real people) data showing that 2% EAC can improve skin tone and whiten the skin. 

Overall, Ethyl Ascorbic Acid is a very promising but not a fully proven Vitamin C derivative. It's worth a try, especially if you are after Vitamin C's skin-brightening effects. 

What-it-does: astringent

We don't have description for this ingredient yet.

Also-called: Gotu Kola, Tiger Grass | What-it-does: soothing

Centella Asiatica - or gotu kola as normal people call it  - has been used in folk medicine for hundreds of years. It’s traditionally used to improve small wounds, burns and scratches and it’s also a well known anti-inflammatory agent for eczema.

Recently science has taken an interest in gotu kola as well and it turns out it really has many active compounds with interesting benefits. Just for hard-core geeks, active compounds include pentacyclic triterpenoid saponins, asiaticoside and madecassoside, asiatic and madecassic acid.

Expand to read more

The triterpenoid components are interesting because they are shown to be able to stimulate GAGs  (glycosaminoglycans - polysaccharides that are part of the liquidy stuff between our skin cells), and especially hyaluronic acid synthesis in our skin. 

Madecassoside can help in burn wound healing through increasing antioxidant activity and enhancing collagen synthesis. Asiaticoside was shown to increase antioxidant levels on rats skin when applied at 0.2%. 

Centella Asiatica also often shows up in products that try to treat cellulite or striae. Of course it cannot make a miracle but it might have some effect via regulating microcirculation and normalizing the metabolism in the cells of connective tissues. 

Bottom line: Gotu Kola is a great plant ingredient with proven wound healing, anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties. Be happy if you spot it on the INCI list.  

What-it-does: viscosity controlling

It’s a handy white powder that magically converts a product into a nice gel formula. If you see gel in the name of a moisturiser type thing, chances are carbomer will be in the ingredient list. 

It’s not too common, but sometimes there is also a number after it. The reason for it is that carbomer in itself actually refers to a group of stuff and the number shows the weight and type of the molecule. 

Arginine - goodie
What-it-does: skin-identical ingredient

A semi-essential (infants cannot synthesize it, but adults can) amino acid that is one of the primary building blocks of hair keratin and skin collagen. It's a natural moisturizing factor, a skin hydrator and might also help to speed up wound healing. 

We don't have description for this ingredient yet.

What-it-does: viscosity controlling

A nice little helper ingredient that can thicken up cosmetic products and create beautiful gel formulas. It's derived from cellulose, the major component of the cell wall of green plants. 

Also-called: Licorice | What-it-does: soothing

The salt form of one of the main anti-inflammatory ingredients in the licorice plant, monoammonium glycyrrhizinate. It’s a yellowish powder with a nice sweet smell. 

It’s used mainly for its soothing and anti-inflammatory properties, but according to manufacturer info, it’s also sebum regulating so it's a perfect ingredient for problem skin products. 

Expand to read more

Read more about licorice and why it's a skincare superstar here. 

Adenosine - goodie
What-it-does: cell-communicating ingredient

Adenosine is an important little compound in our body that has a vital cell-signalling role. Research on smearing it on our face is also promising and shows so far a couple of things:

  • It can help with wound healing
  • It’s a good anti-inflammatory agent
  • It might even help with skin’s own collagen production and improve skin firmness and elasticity
  • It helps with barrier repair and protection
  • It might be even useful for the hair helping with hair thickness and hair growth
What-it-does: skin-identical ingredient, moisturizer/humectant | Irritancy: 0 | Comedogenicity: 0

It’s the - sodium form - cousin of the famous NMF, hyaluronic acid (HA). If HA does not tell you anything we have a super detailed, geeky explanation about it here.  The TL; DR version of HA is that it's a huge polymer (big molecule from repeated subunits) found in the skin that acts as a cushioning and lubrication agent. HA is famous for its crazy water holding capacity as it can bind up to 1000 times its own weight in water.

As far as skincare goes, sodium hyaluronate and hyaluronic acid are pretty much the same and the two names are used interchangeably. As cosmetic chemist kindofstephen writes on reddit  "sodium hyaluronate disassociates into hyaluronic acid molecule and a sodium atom in solution". 

Expand to read more

In spite of this, if you search for "hyaluronic acid vs sodium hyaluronate" you will find on multiple places that sodium hyaluronate is smaller and can penetrate the skin better. Chemically, this is definitely not true, as the two forms are almost the same, both are polymers and the subunits can be repeated in both forms as much as you like. (We also checked Prospector for sodium hyaluronate versions actually used in cosmetic products and found that the most common molecular weight was 1.5-1.8 million Da that absolutely counts as high molecular weight).

What seems to be a true difference, though, is that the salt form is more stable and much cheaper so it pops up more often on the ingredient lists. 

If you wanna become a real HA-and-the-skin expert you can read way more about the topic at hyaluronic acid (including some questions around penetration, the usefulness of low molecular weight versions and a bunch of references to scientific literature).

Embed ingredient list into your blog
Fancy
Ingredient list with short explanations (comes up on mouse hover), functions, INCIDecoder rating, comedogenicity and irritancy index.

Simple
Ingredient list only with short explanations on mouse hover.

Copy and paste into your blog
INCIDecoder is a newborn baby. We are hard at work to make it an awesome site to geek out over skincare. Leave your email and we will notify you once it's more of a grown-up.
Great, thanks a lot! You will hear from us soon. :)
Copyright 2016