Spruce Sprout Sauna Honey
Highlights
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Ingredient name | what-it-does | irr., com. | ID-Rating |
---|---|---|---|
Mel | soothing, moisturizer/humectant, antimicrobial/antibacterial | goodie | |
Titanium Dioxide (C.I.77891) | colorant | 0, 0 | |
Mica (C.I.77019) | colorant | ||
Chromium Oxide Green (C.I.77288) | colorant | ||
Picea Abies |
Metsä/Skogen Spruce Sprout Sauna HoneyIngredients explained
We all know honey as the sweet, gooey stuff that is lovely to sweeten a good cup of tea and we have good news about putting honey all over our skin. It is just as lovely on the skin as it is in the tea.
The great review article about honey in the Journal of Cosmetic Dermatology writes that it is arguably the oldest skincare ingredient and evidence from around 4500 BC mentions honey in some eye cream recipes. Chemically speaking, it is a bee-derived, supersaturated sugar solution. About 95% of honey dry weight is sugar and the other 5% consists of a great number of other minor components including proteins, amino acids, vitamins, enzymes, and minerals.
This unique and complex chemical composition gives honey a bunch of nice skin care properties: it is very moisturizing, has soothing and antioxidant abilities as well as significant antibacterial and antifungal magic powers. There is also a lot of empirical evidence with emerging scientific backup that honey dressing promotes the healing of wounds and burns.
One tricky thing about honey though, is that it can have lots of different floral sources and different types of honey have a somewhat different composition and thus somewhat different properties. For example, the darker the honey the richer it is in antioxidant phenolic compounds. Two special types of honey are acacia and manuka. The former is unique and popular because of its higher than usual fructose content that makes it more water-soluble and easier to stabilize in cosmetic formulas. The latter comes from the Leptospermum Scoparium tree native to New Zeland and its special thing is its extra strong antibacterial power due to a unique component called methylglyoxal.
Overall, honey is a real skin-goodie in pretty much every shape and form, and it is a nice one to spot on the ingredient list.
Ci 77891 is the color code of titanium dioxide. It's a white pigment with great color consistency and dispersibility.
A super versatile and common mineral powder that comes in different particle sizes. It is a multi-tasker used to improve skin feel, increase product slip, give the product light-reflecting properties, enhance skin adhesion or serve as an anti-caking agent.
It is also the most commonly used "base" material for layered composite pigments such as pearl-effect pigments. In this case, mica is coated with one or more metal oxides (most commonly titanium dioxide) to achieve pearl effect via the physical phenomenon known as interference.
An inorganic (as in no carbon in its molecule, it is Cr2O3X(OH), the hydrated version of this guy) pigment that gives blue-green shades. It is not permitted in lip products in the US.
This ingredient name is not according to the INCI-standard. :( What, why?!
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what‑it‑does | soothing | moisturizer/humectant | antimicrobial/antibacterial |
what‑it‑does | colorant |
irritancy, com. | 0, 0 |
what‑it‑does | colorant |
what‑it‑does | colorant |