Ingredients overview
Highlights
Key Ingredients
Skim through
Peurri Acne 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.
- It's a helper ingredient that improves the freeze-thaw stability of products
- It's also a solvent, humectant and to some extent a penetration enhancer
- It has a bad reputation among natural cosmetics advocates but cosmetic scientists and toxicology experts do not agree (read more in the geeky details section)
- It's one of the gold standard ingredients for treating problem skin
- It can exfoliate skin both on the surface and in the pores
- It's a potent anti-inflammatory agent
- It's more effective for treating blackheads than acne
- For acne combine it with antibacterial agents like benzoyl peroxide or azelaic acid
A big molecule created from repeated subunits (a polymer of acrylic acid) that magically converts a liquid into a nice gel formula. It usually has to be neutralized with a base (such as sodium hydroxide) for the thickening to occur and it creates viscous, clear gels that also feel nice and non-tacky on the skin. No wonder, it is a very popular and common ingredient. Typically used at 1% or less in most formulations.
- 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
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.
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.
We don't have description for this ingredient yet.
A mildly viscous, amber-colored liquid with fatty odor, made from Castor Oil and polyethylene glycol (PEG).
If it were a person, we’d say, it’s agile, diligent & multifunctional. It’s mostly used as an emulsifier and surfactant but most often it is used to solubilize fragrances into water-based formulas.
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.
Aloe Vera is one of today’s magic plants. It does have some very nice properties indeed, though famous dermatologist Leslie Baumann warns us in her book that most of the evidence is anecdotal and the plant might be a bit overhyped.
What research does confirm about Aloe is that it’s a great moisturizer and has several anti-inflammatory (among others contains salicylates, polysaccharides, magnesium lactate and C-glucosyl chromone) as well as some antibacterial components. It also helps wound healing and skin regeneration in general. All in all definitely a goodie.
You probably meet this guy more often in your kitchen than in the bathroom, but yes, onion extract is also used as a skincare ingredient. Its major skin benefit seems to be that it can improve the cosmetic appearance of postsurgical scars (there is also a scar-fading gel called Mederma, that has hardly anything else in it but onion extract).
We also saw some manufacturer claims that onion is not only a scar healer, but it has also antibacterial and antifungal activity, it can help to reduce acne and stimulate hair growth.
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.
Read more about licorice and why it's a skincare superstar here.
We don't have description for this ingredient yet.
We don't have description for this ingredient yet.
The chemically chopped up version of the big protein molecule, collagen. It is often derived from fish or bovine sources and works as a nice moisturizer and humectant that helps the skin to hold onto water.
To understand a bit more what Hydrolyzed Collagen is, you have to know that proteins are large chains of amino acids connected with so-called peptide bonds. These bonds can be broken up when a water molecule is added and the resulting thing is a mix of shorter length amino acids, also called peptides. So Hydrolyzed Collagen is not really collagen, it is rather an undefined and varying mix of largish peptides. Based on a manufacturer's data, the whole, soluble collagen has an average molecular weight of 300 000 Da, while this chopped up mixture has an average MW of 12 000 Da (still pretty big).
The main thing of these largish peptides is to act as water-binding agents, and to make the skin nice and smooth (aka emollient). Hydrolyzed Collagen is also often used in cleansers as it can make harsh surfactants milder and in hair conditioners as it improves the flexibility and manageability of hair.
If you wanna know more about collagen in cosmetics, we have a shiny explanation about soluble collagen here >>
We don't have description for this ingredient yet.
If you are into the K-Beauty trend, you must have bumped into snail slime like a thousand times. Korean brands love the ingredient and tout it for its miraculous repair and hydration properties. It's claimed to be able to repair everything from dry patches, acne breakouts to signs of aging and we are happy to say that it might be just true.
So snail slime is the yucky stuff that snails (in cosmetics the secretion of Cornu Aspersum, the garden snail is used) produce when they are in stress (it's not the same as the one they secret to be able to move nicely and smoothly). As the cosmetic chemists at the Beauty Brains blog write, "chemically speaking, snail slime is a complex mixture of proteoglycans, glycosaminoglycans, glycoprotein enzymes, hyaluronic acid, copper peptides, antimicrobial peptides and trace elements including copper, zinc, and iron." English translation equals it's loaded with a bunch of good-for-the-skin stuff.
As for scientific proof that snail slime does something for the skin, we did find a couple of studies to go by. A Spanish radiation oncologist, Rafael Abad Iglesias MD discovered for the first time that snail mucin can be used to treat radiation dermatitis (skin irritation caused by radiotherapy, a form of cancer treatment). He did a clinical study with 100 patients and reported a "statistically significant clinical improvement in erythema, itching and burning pain" in the group treated with snail slime.
A 2007 study examined the molecular basis for the great regeneration properties of the ingredient. It found that snail slime (SS) indeed does a bunch of positive things that could be the reason for its great repair abilities. First, it has serious antioxidant properties thanks to two great antioxidant enzymes, superoxide dismutase and glutathione s-transferase. Second, SS induces fibroblast proliferation, that's particularly important during wound healing. Third SS was also found to downregulate MMP, an evil enzyme that's out there to destroy skin-firming collagen. These properties add up to give SS not only wound healing and regenerative properties but also serious anti-aging potential.
Regarding anti-aging, a 2013 study in the Journal of Drugs in Dermatology examined the effect of SS on photoaged skin. The 14-week, double-blind, 25 participant study found that "there was a significant degree of improvement in fines lines", though the participants did not report a significant difference in the quality of their skin.
All in all, we think that snail slime definitely deserves the skin goodie status it already enjoys in the K-beauty space. If you have no problem with somewhat strange, yucky things or animal derived ingredients in your products, it's worth a try.
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 sponge helping the skin to hold onto water, being plump and elastic. 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".
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, easier to formulate and 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 penetration-questions, differences between high and low molecular weight versions and a bunch of references to scientific literature).
A little helper ingredient that works as a preservative. It works against bacteria and some species of fungi and yeast. It's often combined with IT-preservative, phenoxyethanol.
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
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.
You may also want to take a look at...
| what‑it‑does | solvent |
| what‑it‑does | moisturizer/humectant | solvent |
| irritancy, com. | 0, 0 |
| what‑it‑does | exfoliant | anti-acne | soothing | preservative |
| what‑it‑does | viscosity controlling |
| irritancy, com. | 0, 1 |
| what‑it‑does | cell-communicating ingredient | skin brightening | anti-acne | moisturizer/humectant |
| what‑it‑does | moisturizer/humectant | solvent |
| irritancy, com. | 0, 1 |
| what‑it‑does | preservative |
| what‑it‑does | abrasive/scrub |
| what‑it‑does | emulsifying | surfactant/cleansing |
| what‑it‑does | buffering |
| what‑it‑does | soothing | moisturizer/humectant |
| what‑it‑does | antimicrobial/antibacterial |
| what‑it‑does | soothing | moisturizer/humectant |
| what‑it‑does | emollient | moisturizer/humectant |
| what‑it‑does | antioxidant | moisturizer/humectant |
| what‑it‑does | skin-identical ingredient | moisturizer/humectant |
| irritancy, com. | 0, 0 |
| what‑it‑does | solvent |
| what‑it‑does | buffering |
| what‑it‑does | preservative | antimicrobial/antibacterial |
| what‑it‑does | solvent | moisturizer/humectant |
| what‑it‑does | skin-identical ingredient | moisturizer/humectant |
| irritancy, com. | 0, 0 |
| what‑it‑does | chelating |
| what‑it‑does | colorant |