Even And Radiant Face Pads
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Shea Moisture Even And Radiant Face PadsIngredients 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.
The distillate created from different parts of the hazelnut-bush-like magic tree, commonly called Witch Hazel. Hamamelis Virginiana Water is a bit of a sloppy ingredient name as the leaves, the twigs and the bark can be used to create extracts or distillates and the different parts contain different amounts of biologically active components. But what you are getting is probably a nice water with astringent, soothing, antioxidant and antibacterial magic properties.
We went into great detail about Witch Hazel in cosmetics here, detailing the main biologically active components and how they are different in different parts of the plant. Click here and read more >>
- 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 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
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.
A common little helper ingredient that helps water and oil to mix together, aka emulsifier.
- It’s a polyhydroxy acid (PHA), that is often referred to as next generation AHA
- It gently lifts off dead skin cells form the skin surface making skin smooth and even
- In the long term it provides anti-aging benefits, like increased skin thickness and decreased wrinkles (though a tad less than even more proven superstar AHAs)
- It’s a great moisturizer and even helps to repair impaired skin barrier
- It’s antioxidant, and does not make your skin more sensitive to the sun
- It can be used even if your skin is very sensitive, rosacea prone or if you are post cosmetic procedure
Unless you live under a rock you must have heard about shea butter. It's probably the most hyped up natural butter in skincare today. It comes from the seeds of African Shea or Karite Trees and used as a magic moisturizer and emollient.
But it's not only a simple emollient, it regenerates and soothes the skin, protects it from external factors (such as UV rays or wind) and is also rich in antioxidants (among others vitamin A, E, F, quercetin and epigallocatechin gallate). If you are looking for rich emollient benefits + more, shea is hard to beat.
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.
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.
- 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
- Primary fat-soluble antioxidant in our skin
- Significant photoprotection against UVB rays
- Vit C + Vit E work in synergy and provide great photoprotection
- Has emollient properties
- Easy to formulate, stable and relatively inexpensive
A molecule that is naturally present in the bran of rye and other cereals. It has been used for a long time in the food industry as an "anti-browning agent" for fresh-cut fruits or shrimps.
It turns out that Hexylresorcinol works as an "anti-browning agent" also in cosmetic products. It is a pretty well-researched molecule with significant tyrosinase (the famous enzyme needed to produce melanin) inhibiting abilities. The clinical study of the manufacturer showed that 0.5% Hexylresorcinol has a comparable skin-lightening effect to gold-standard, 2% Hydroquinone.
Even better, a 12-weeks, double-blind, placebo-controlled study with 65 volunteers confirmed the effectiveness of our skin-lightening molecule and it measured an average of 88% skin-lightening improvement. The study also included before and after photos (always a good sign!) and the skin-lightening was indeed visible and significant (though the pigmentation spots did not completely disappear, just so you have realistic expectations).
Retinyl Propionate (RP) is a less well-known, but pretty interesting member of the retinoids, aka the "royal family of skincare". You can read the who's who here but the TL;DR version is that tretinoin is the king himself (the FDA-proven anti-aging active molecule), retinol is like Prince George (two conversion steps needed to be active) and Retinyl Palmitate is like Prince Charlotte (George's little sister), 3 steps away from the throne.
Similar to Retinyl Palmitate, Retinyl Propionate is also a retinol ester with retinol and propionic acid being attached together. This puts our molecule in the place of little Princess Charlotte on the family tree, quite far away from the throne. However, not all retinol ester molecules are made equal when it comes to being transformed and being effective on the skin.
As Dr. Fulton (the scientist behind both Retin-A and RP) puts it in his patent paper, "Other esters of vitamin A obtained from, for example, palmitic acid and acetic acid do not have the therapeutic advantages found with vitamin A propionate ..... Presumably, the [Retinyl Palmitate] molecule is so large, it is not able to transdermally reach the necessary part of the skin for activity. Similarly, vitamin A acetate is too small molecularly and therefore easily recrystallizes from any solution.....vitamin A propionate is the appropriate molecular weight and configuration to both remain in a stable solution and to be transdermally delivered to a site where it is active." So while the effectiveness of other retinol esters is highly questionable, Retinyl Propionate seems to be the most effective retinol ester molecule, and it "unexpectedly provides all the benefits of vitamin A acid but minimizes the negative side effects", at least according to Dr. Fulton, the inventor of the molecule.
We know what you are thinking! This sounds great and all, but what about some proof? Some backup data not from the inventor himself? We looked into it and found three studies working with Retinyl Propionate.
In a 2007 study by Dr. Draelos, she references a 12-week, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial that compared the effectiveness of 0.15% retinol with 0.3% Retinyl Propionate. Both actives were effective in reducing the appearance of facial wrinkles and hyperpigmentation and the 0.3% RP worked a bit better.
Another research that was done by Procter & Gamble combined multiple anti-aging actives including niacinamide, peptides and 0.3% of Retinyl Propionate and they compared this regimen with a 0.02% tretinoin regimen. They found that the cosmetic regimen was tolerated better, worked faster and gave comparable results. All this sounds very promising for RP, however, it is hard to know how much the other actives contributed to the positive results.
Last, but not least there is a study from 1998 that tested a 0.15% Retinyl Propionate cream and after 24 weeks found no statistically significant difference between the effects of the retinyl propionate cream and the placebo preparation for any of the clinical parameters of skin photoaging. However, after 48 weeks, the 0.15% RP worked wonders for actinic keratoses, a rough, scaly patch caused by UV damage (its name contains actinic, but it is not acne, has nothing to do with it (!)).
So, it seems that the minimum effective dose of Retinyl Propionate is larger than 0.15% which is not surprising given that it has to do three conversion steps to reach the active form, retinoic acid. But 0.3% RP (or more, obvs) seems to be an effective dose, and even though the proof is not as solid as it is for retinol itself, if you are looking for a more gentle alternative, or if you are in the mood for experimentation, Retinyl Propionate looks like a noteworthy alternative and the most promising option among retinol esters.
We don't have description for this ingredient yet.
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. It is compatible with most co-ingredients and gives a very good slip to the formulas.
The emollient plant oil coming from the soybean. It is considered to be a nice, cost-effective base oil with moisturizing properties. As for its fatty acid profile, it contains 48-59% barrier-repairing linoleic acid, 17-30% nourishing oleic acid and also some (4.5-11%) potentially anti-inflammatory linolenic acid.
Pentaerythrityl Tetra-Di-T-Butyl Hydroxyhydrocinnamate is an antioxidant molecule used in small amounts (less than 0.8%) to help products stay nice longer. More specifically, it is great at preventing discoloration or other types of oxidative degradation. It is a trendy alternative to often bad-mouthed synthetic antioxidant and stabilizer, BHT.
A helper ingredient that helps to make the products stay nice longer, aka preservative. It works mainly against fungi.
It’s pH dependent and works best at acidic pH levels (3-5). It’s not strong enough to be used in itself so it’s always combined with something else, often with potassium sorbate.
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.
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| what‑it‑does | solvent |
| what‑it‑does | soothing |
| what‑it‑does | skin-identical ingredient | moisturizer/humectant |
| irritancy, com. | 0, 0 |
| what‑it‑does | cell-communicating ingredient | skin brightening | anti-acne | moisturizer/humectant |
| what‑it‑does | emollient |
| what‑it‑does | emulsifying | surfactant/cleansing |
| what‑it‑does | exfoliant | chelating |
| what‑it‑does | emollient |
| what‑it‑does | soothing | moisturizer/humectant | antimicrobial/antibacterial |
| what‑it‑does | soothing | moisturizer/humectant |
| what‑it‑does | exfoliant | anti-acne | soothing | preservative |
| what‑it‑does | antioxidant |
| irritancy, com. | 0-3, 0-3 |
| what‑it‑does | skin brightening | antimicrobial/antibacterial |
| what‑it‑does | cell-communicating ingredient |
| what‑it‑does | moisturizer/humectant |
| what‑it‑does | viscosity controlling |
| what‑it‑does | emollient | perfuming |
| irritancy, com. | 0, 3 |
| what‑it‑does | antioxidant | preservative |
| what‑it‑does | preservative |
| what‑it‑does | preservative |