Vitamin C Serum
Highlights
Key Ingredients
Other Ingredients
Skim through
Ingredient name | what-it-does | irr., com. | ID-Rating |
---|---|---|---|
Glycerin | skin-identical ingredient, moisturizer/humectant | 0, 0 | superstar |
Butylene Glycol | moisturizer/humectant, solvent | 0, 1 | |
Polyglutamic Acid | moisturizer/humectant | goodie | |
Corn Gluten Amino Acids | |||
Xanthan Gum | viscosity controlling | ||
Niacinamide | cell-communicating ingredient, skin brightening, anti-acne, moisturizer/humectant | superstar | |
Dextran | viscosity controlling | ||
Hydrolyzed Silk | moisturizer/humectant | ||
Ascorbic Acid (20%) | antioxidant, skin brightening, buffering | superstar | |
Folic Acid | |||
Aloe Barbadensis Extract | soothing, emollient, moisturizer/humectant | goodie | |
Yeast Extract | moisturizer/humectant | goodie | |
Allantoin | soothing | 0, 0 | goodie |
Panthenol | soothing, moisturizer/humectant | 0, 0 | goodie |
Hexylene Glycol | solvent, emulsifying, perfuming, surfactant/cleansing | 0-1, 0-2 | |
Deionized Water | solvent |
Skin V.2.0 Vitamin C SerumIngredients explained
- 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
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.
We don't have description for this ingredient yet.
It's one of the most commonly used thickeners and emulsion stabilizers. If the product is too runny, a little xanthan gum will make it more gel-like. Used alone, it can make the formula sticky and it is a good team player so it is usually combined with other thickeners and so-called rheology modifiers (helper ingredients that adjust the flow and thus the feel of the formula). The typical use level of Xantha Gum is below 1%, it is usually in the 0.1-0.5% range.
Btw, Xanthan gum is all natural, a chain of sugar molecules (polysaccharide) produced from individual sugar molecules (glucose and sucrose) via fermentation. It’s approved by Ecocert and also used in the food industry (E415).
- 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
We don't have description for this ingredient yet.
- Works best between a concentration of 5-20%
- Boosts the skin’s own collagen production
- Fades pigmentation and brown spots
- If used under sunscreen it boosts its UV protection
- Extremely unstable and oxidizes very easily in presence of light or air
- Stable in solutions with water only if pH is less than 3.5 or in waterless formulations
- Vit E + C work in synergy and provide superb photoprotection
- Ferulic acid doubles the photoprotection effect of Vit C+E and helps to stabilize Vit C
- Potent Vit. C serums might cause a slight tingling on sensitive skin
We don't have description for this ingredient yet.
The extract coming from the juice containing leaves of the Aloe vera plant. It's usually a hydroglycolic extract (though oil extract for the lipid parts also exists) that has similar moisturizing, emollient and anti-inflammatory properties as the juice itself. We have written some more about aloe here.
You probably know yeast from the kitchen where you put it into milk with a little sugar and then after a couple of minutes brownish bubbles form. That is the fungi fermenting the sugar.
As for skin care, yeast contains beta-glucan that is a great soothing ingredient and also a mild antioxidant. The yeast extract itself is a silky clear liquid that has some great moisturizing, skin protecting and film-forming properties on the skin.
Super common soothing ingredient. It can be found naturally in the roots & leaves of the comfrey plant, but more often than not what's in the cosmetic products is produced synthetically.
It's not only soothing but it' also skin-softening and protecting and can promote wound healing.
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.
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.
Similar to other glycols, it's a helper ingredient used as a solvent, or to thin out thick formulas and make them more nicely spreadable.
Hexylene Glycol is also part a preservative blend named Lexgard® HPO, where it helps the effectiveness of current IT-preservative, phenoxyethanol.
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.
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what‑it‑does | skin-identical ingredient | moisturizer/humectant |
irritancy, com. | 0, 0 |
what‑it‑does | moisturizer/humectant | solvent |
irritancy, com. | 0, 1 |
what‑it‑does | moisturizer/humectant |
what‑it‑does | viscosity controlling |
what‑it‑does | cell-communicating ingredient | skin brightening | anti-acne | moisturizer/humectant |
what‑it‑does | viscosity controlling |
what‑it‑does | moisturizer/humectant |
what‑it‑does | antioxidant | skin brightening | buffering |
what‑it‑does | soothing | emollient | moisturizer/humectant |
what‑it‑does | moisturizer/humectant |
what‑it‑does | soothing |
irritancy, com. | 0, 0 |
what‑it‑does | soothing | moisturizer/humectant |
irritancy, com. | 0, 0 |
what‑it‑does | solvent | emulsifying | perfuming | surfactant/cleansing |
irritancy, com. | 0-1, 0-2 |
what‑it‑does | solvent |