Face Soap - Moisture
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Muji Face Soap - MoistureIngredients 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 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
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 12 carbon length fatty acid that can be found naturally in coconut milk, coconut oil, laurel oil, and palm kernel oil. It's also in breast milk. As a skincare ingredient, it can be used as an emulsifier or as a cleansing agent.
What's more, there is emerging research about lauric acid being a good anti-acne ingredient. A 2009 study found that the lowest concentration to prevent evil acne-causing P. acnes growth of lauric acid is over 15 times lower than that of gold standard anti-acne ingredient benzoyl peroxide.
Though the studies are only in-vitro (made in the lab, not on real people), and it also has a high comedogenicity index, it might be worth a try if you are prone to inflamed acne (the type that's caused by P. acnes bacteria).
It's a very alkaline stuff that helps to set the pH of the cosmetic formula to be just right. It's similar to the more often used sodium hydroxide and pretty much the same of what we wrote there applies here too.
A fatty acid that can be found naturally in the skin. In fact, it's the most common saturated fatty acid found in animals and plants.
As for skincare, it can make the skin feel nice and smooth in moisturizers (emollient) or it can act as a foam building cleansing agent in cleansers. It's also a very popular ingredient in shaving foams.
We don't have description for this ingredient yet.
A so-called diester created from two stearic acid molecules and an ethylene glycol molecule. Its main thing is being an opacifier and pearling agent in cleansing products making them white and glossy. It can also give body to creams and emulsions.
We don't have description for this ingredient yet.
A biocompatible copolymer (a big molecule that consists of more than one type of building blocks) that has the same structure as important cell membrane ingredient, phospholipid. Polyquaternium-51 is a good skin moisturizer, leaves a silky, smooth feel on the skin and can help to reduce irritation caused by some not-so-nice ingredients (like surfactants).
We don't have description for this ingredient yet.
We don't have description for this ingredient yet.
We don't have description for this ingredient yet.
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.
A super common, waxy, white, solid stuff that helps water and oil to mix together, gives body to creams and leaves the skin feeling soft and smooth.
Chemically speaking, it is the attachment of a glycerin molecule to the fatty acid called stearic acid. It can be produced from most vegetable oils (in oils three fatty acid molecules are attached to glycerin instead of just one like here) in a pretty simple, "green" process that is similar to soap making. It's readily biodegradable.
It also occurs naturally in our body and is used as a food additive. As cosmetic chemist Colins writes it, "its safety really is beyond any doubt".
A popular, vegetable-derived oil-loving emulsifier that helps water to mix with oil. In itself, it is suitable for water-in-oil emulsions (where water droplets are dispersed in oil), but it is more often used as a co-emulsifier next to other, water-loving emulsifiers.
Chemically speaking, it comes from the attachment of sorbitan (a dehydrated sorbitol (sugar) molecule) with the fatty acid Stearic Acid, that creates a partly water (the sorbitan part) and partly oil soluble (stearic part) molecule.
We don't have description for this ingredient yet.
A handy 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.
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| what‑it‑does | solvent |
| what‑it‑does | skin-identical ingredient | moisturizer/humectant |
| irritancy, com. | 0, 0 |
| what‑it‑does | surfactant/cleansing | emulsifying | perfuming |
| irritancy, com. | 0, 3 |
| what‑it‑does | anti-acne | surfactant/cleansing | emulsifying |
| irritancy, com. | 1, 4 |
| what‑it‑does | buffering |
| what‑it‑does | skin-identical ingredient | emollient | emulsifying |
| irritancy, com. | 0, 2 |
| what‑it‑does | surfactant/cleansing |
| what‑it‑does | emollient | emulsifying | viscosity controlling |
| what‑it‑does | surfactant/cleansing |
| what‑it‑does | moisturizer/humectant |
| what‑it‑does | moisturizer/humectant |
| what‑it‑does | emollient | moisturizer/humectant |
| what‑it‑does | moisturizer/humectant | solvent |
| irritancy, com. | 0, 1 |
| what‑it‑does | emollient | emulsifying |
| irritancy, com. | 0, 1 |
| what‑it‑does | emulsifying |
| irritancy, com. | 1, 0 |
| what‑it‑does | surfactant/cleansing | viscosity controlling |
| what‑it‑does | chelating |
| what‑it‑does | chelating |