skinVacious

Refine & Glow Vitamin C Serum 20%

A multi-functional, silky feeling helper ingredient that can do quite many things. It's used as an emulsion stabilizer, solvent and a broad spectrum antimicrobial. According to manufacturer info, it's also a moisturizer and helps to make the product feel great on the skin. It works synergistically with preservatives and helps to improve water-resistance of sunscreens. 

Tetrahexyldecyl Ascorbate is a stable, oil-soluble form of skincare big shot Vitamin C. If you do not know, why Vitamin C is such a big deal in skincare, click here and read all about it. We are massive vitamin C fans and have written about it in excruciating detail.

So now, you know that Vitamin C is great and all, but it's really unstable and gives cosmetics companies many headaches. To solve this problem they came up with vitamin C derivatives, and one of them is Tetrahexyldecyl Ascorbate (let's call it THDA in short).

Expand to read more

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 the most commonly used version of pure vitamin E in cosmetics. You can read all about the pure form here. This one is the so-called esterified version. 

According to famous dermatologist, Leslie Baumann while tocopheryl acetate is more stable and has a longer shelf life, it’s also more poorly absorbed by the skin and may not have the same awesome photoprotective effects as pure Vit E. 

Ferulic Acid (FA) is a goodie that can be found naturally in plant cell walls. There is a lot of it especially in the bran of grasses such as rice, wheat and oats. 

FA - whose main job is to be an antioxidant - owes its fame to a 2005 research that discovered that adding in 0.5% FA to a 15% Vitamin C + 1% Vitamin E solution not only stabilizes the highly unstable, divaish Vit C, but it also doubles the photoprotection abilities of the formula. 

Expand to read more

The emollient plant oil coming from the seeds of Pomegranate. The red fruit has lots of seeds (100-200 per fruit), but 7 kg of them are needed for 1 kg of oil. Among the many similar plant oils, Pomegranate oil is a really unique one, as its main fatty acid (60%) is a rare one called punic acid, a so-called conjugated fatty acid with three double bonds. It also contains the common linoleic (2-10%) and oleic acids (3-12%), but only in small amounts.

Punic acid is thought to be a biologically active compound, a powerful anti-inflammatory, and antioxidant agent. The oil itself is also claimed to have strong antioxidant properties as well as having excellent nourishing and moisturizing abilities. On top of that, we also found a research that examined Pomegranate as a cosmeceutical source and it concluded that the seed oil can nicely promote the regeneration of the epidermis (the top layer of the skin).

An oil-loving, red-orange colored pigment that is becoming more and more well-known as a potent antioxidant.

If being an orange-colored pigment reminds you of beta-carotene from carrots, that is no coincidence: astaxanthin also belongs to the chemical group called carotenoids known for giving yellow, orange, or red color to plants. Our guy comes mostly from microalgae, a well-known and often used source is Haematococcus Pluvialis. 

Expand to read more

Alpha-Lipoic Acid (ALA) is a great antioxidant that's also part of the body's natural antioxidant system. It's soluble both in water-rich and lipid-rich environments so it's versatile and can interact with many types of evil oxidants as well as other nice antioxidants. 

ALA seems to be a great choice for topical use as studies show it can penetrate the skin rapidly where it's converted to DHLA (dihydrolipoic acid), an even more potent antioxidant molecule.  A nicely designed (we mean double-blind, placebo-controlled) 12-week study from 2003 confirmed that 5% ALA cream can decrease skin roughness and improve general signs of photoaging statistically significantly.  A slight catch, though, is that burning and warmth in the skin was quite a common side effect, especially in the first 4 weeks. 

Expand to read more

A fat-soluble carotenoid pigment that can be found in dark green vegetables such as spinach, cabbage or broccoli, as well as in colorful vegetables and fruits such as corn, oranges, or peaches. It has significant antioxidant properties when taken orally or applied topically.  

According to the manufacturer's claims, Lutein is much more than just a simple antioxidant. It also increases skin hydration and elasticity and absorbs potentially harmful blue light (the one at 400-500 nm also called high energy visible light, aka HEV light). Whether HEV light is bad for the skin or not remains to be seen, but Lutein, being an awesome antioxidant, is a nice addition to any cosmetic product even if HEV-protection turns out to be a fad. 

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.

• 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 semi-essential (infants cannot synthesize it, but adults can) amino acid that is one of the primary building blocks of hair keratin and skin collagen. It's a natural moisturizing factor, a skin hydrator and might also help to speed up wound healing. 

Arginine usually has a positive charge (cationic) that makes it substantive to skin and hair (those are more negatively charged surfaces) and an excellent film former.  Thanks to the positive charge, it also creates a complex with AHAs (AHAs like to lose a hydrogen ion and be negatively charged, so the positive and the negative ions attract each other) that causes a "time-release AHA effect" and reduces the irritation associated with AHAs. 

Though its name says acid, it's not really an exfoliant. It's a plant extract with some antioxidant properties. Its main thing in cosmetic products is to neutralize the metal ions in the formula (that usually get into there from water) that would otherwise cause some not so nice changes.  It's a natural alternative to sometimes bad-mouthed chelating agents, EDTAs.

An abbreviation that pops up on a lot of ingredient lists. It stands for EthyleneDiamineTetraacetic Acid and it's a famous molecule for being an excellent chelating agent, i.e. a molecule that can bind to metal ions (coming usually from water) and make them harmless in a cosmetic formula. With a chelating agent, cosmetic formulas stay nice longer.

EDTA is an acid molecule and its salt versions are even more often used, such as the super common Disodium EDTA. 

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. 

Expand to read more