You Sunbrella Intensive Care Aqua Sunscreen SPF 50+ Pa++++
Ingredients overview
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Y.O.U. You Sunbrella Intensive Care Aqua Sunscreen SPF 50+ Pa++++Ingredients 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
- 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)
A so-called polymer microsphere, i.e. little spherical shaped particles from repeated subunits. Similar to other microsphere powders, it can scatter the light to give products a soft focus or blurring effect. It also works as a texture enhancer giving formulas an exceptional smoothness and a velvet touch.
We don't have description for this ingredient yet.
The famous Avobenzone. It is a special snowflake as it is the only globally available chemical sunscreen agent that provides proper UVA protection (in the US, new generation sunscreen agents are not approved because of impossible FDA regulations). It is the global gold standard of UVA protection and is the most used UVA sunscreen in the world.
It gives very good protection across the whole UVA range (310-400 nm that is both UVA1 and UVA2) with a peak protection at 360 nm. The problem with it, though, is that it is not photostable and degrades in the sunlight. Wikipedia says that avobenzone loses 36% of its UV-absorption capacity after just one hour of sunlight (yep, this is one of the reasons why sunscreens have to be reapplied after a few hours).
The cosmetic's industry is trying to solve the problem by combining avobenzone with other UV filters that enhance its stability (like octocrylene, Tinosorb S or Ensulizole) or by encapsulating it and while both solutions help, neither is perfect. Interestingly, the combination of avobenzone with mineral sunscreens (that is titanium dioxide and zinc oxide) is not a good idea. In the US, it is flat out prohibited as avobenzone becomes unstable when combined with mineral sunscreens.
As for safety, avobenzone has a pretty good safety profile. It counts as non-irritating, and unlike some other chemical sunscreens, it shows no estrogenic effect. The maximum concentration of avobenzone permitted is 5% in the EU and 3% in the US.
Ethylhexyl Triazone is a new generation, chemical sunscreen (not available in the US due to impossible FDA regulations) that gives the highest photo-stable absorption of all available UVB filters today. It protects in the UVB range (280-320nm) with a peak protection of 314nm. It is an oil soluble, odorless, colorless powder that works well in fragrance-free formulas. It can be used up to 5% worldwide except for the US and Canada.
Though its long name does not reveal it, this polymer molecule (big molecule from repeated subunits or monomers) is a relative to the super common, water-loving thickener, Carbomer. Both of them are big molecules that contain acrylic acid units, but Acrylates/C10-30 Alkyl Acrylate Crosspolymer also contains some other monomers that are hydrophobic, i.e. water-hating.
This means that our molecule is part water- and part oil-loving, so it not only works as a thickener but also as an emulsion stabilizer. It is very common in gel-type formulas that also contain an oil-phase as well as in cleansers as it also works with most cleansing agents (unlike a lot of other thickeners).
An alkaline (high pH, aka basic) material that is used to set the pH of the cosmetic formula to the right value.
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.
A handy multifunctional ingredient that works as a preservative booster, as well as an antioxidant and soothing agent.
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.
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 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).
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.
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.
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).
We don't have description for this ingredient yet.
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.
Ectoin is a surprisingly well-researched, multi-functional active that can do from pollution & light protection to skin hydration, soothing, and barrier repair, several things to your skin.
It is an extremolyte, a small stress-protection molecule that protects microorganisms living under extreme conditions such as salt lakes, hot springs, arctic ice, the deep sea, or deserts. It was discovered in 1985 in a microorganism living in a salt lake in the Egyptian desert.
The key skill of Ectoin is protection that applies also to the skin. Its main mode of action is binding water molecules (aka kosmotropic) and creating hydro complexes. These complexes then surround important biomolecules (e.g. cells, proteins, enzymes) and form a stabilizing hydration shell around them.
This protection mechanism means good things when it comes to our skin: Ectoin has antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, pollution& light protecting, skin hydrating, barrier repairing as well as anti-aging properties.
A placebo-controlled 10-person study examined a four-week treatment with 0.5% Ectoin in the crow's feet area and found a significant anti-wrinkle effect (-19% mean wrinkle depth) in 100% of the participants. Another double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical study with 24 participants used a 2% Ectoin cream twice a day for 4 weeks and found an improvement in all of the measured parameters, such as wrinkle volume, skin scaling, roughness, and elasticity.
Another remarkable property of Ectoin is protecting the epidermal immune cells called Langerhans cells from UV damage. 0.3% and 0.5% Ectoin cream was used twice a day for 14 days on the forearm and then irradiated with 1.5 MED UV (one and a half times the UV dose that causes detectable redness). While the untreated, UV-stressed area showed a 40% decrease in viable Langerhans cells, 0.5% Ectoin showed 100% protection (and 0.3% showed ~95% protection).
The soothing efficacy is also backed up by multiple in-vivo studies. A 20-person study compared 1% Ectoin cream to 0.25% hydrocortisone treatment on surfactant irritated skin and found similar effectiveness in reducing skin redness. Another study with 23 females with sensitive skin found that a 1% Ectoin cream helped to tolerate a 0.5% or 1% retinol treatment much better.
A tiny, 5-person study examined the long-term (7 days) skin hydration effect of 1% Ectoin. During the study, hydration levels increased up to 200% compared to placebo, and even 7 days after stopping the treatment hydration status was largely preserved. Higher concentration (5-7%) Ectoin treatments are also used as OTC medical products for the treatment of eczema or atopic skin.
The anti-pollution magic properties are also well-established and Ectoin is currently the only anti-pollution active ingredient approved for use in medical products (e.g. inhalation solutions) in Europe. Clinical studies showed a reduction of inflammations in human lungs of patients with COPD (a pulmonary disease) and pollution-induced asthma. But coming back to the skin, Ectoin protects both from PMs (Particulate Matters, including ultrafine) as well as PAHs (Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons) and heavy metals.
If that weren't enough, Ectoin is also shown to protect the skin from blue and visible light, and pigmentation resulting from environmental stress (think UV, pollution, oxidative stress).
All in all, we think Ectoin is one of those under-the-radar actives that deserves more hype than it is currently getting. As an amazing all-around skin protectant, it is a useful addition to any skincare routine.
This ingredient name is not according to the INCI-standard. :( What, why?!
A corn-derived, white to yellowish, floury powder that works as a handy helper ingredient to create nice feeling emulsions.
It gives a generally pleasant skin feel, has some mattifying effect (though rice starch is better at that), it reduces greasiness and tackiness and helps the formula to spread easily without whitening or shininess.
It's the chemically chopped up version of normal lecithin. Most often it's used to create liposomes and to coat and stabilize other ingredients.
It's the chemically chopped up version of corn starch. According to manufacturer info it helps to keep formulas together (binding), and improves foam quality (makes nice, creamy foam :)). It's also a blend of poly- and monosaccharides and works as a skin moisturizer giving products a nice soft feel.
We don't have description for this ingredient yet.
We don't have description for this ingredient yet.
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.
A surfactant with a positively charged head that has good foaming properties and can be used in cleansing products both for the skin and the hair.
If you see this guy in a non-cleansing product then it's probably combined with salicylic acid. The two together go by the trade name Curcylic 40, and cocamidopropyl dimethylamine works there to make salicylic acid water soluble and stable.
We don't have description for this ingredient yet.
A skin-lightening and antioxidant active ingredient derived from a molecule that exists naturally in Pine tree. According to the clinical results of the manufacturer, 0.5% of phenylethyl resorcinol is more effective than 1% of well-known skin-lightener kojic acid.
Though the results from the manufacturer sound quite promising, a skin-lightening study from 2013 involving phenylethyl resorcinol shows quite moderate results. In the 80 participants, 12-week study, phenylethyl resorcinol was combined with three other actives (disodium glycerophosphate, L-leucine, and undecylenoyl phenylalanine) and only 57% of the participants showed at least a moderate response and 17% did not improve at all.
We don't have description for this ingredient yet.
One of the many types of ceramides that can be found naturally in the upper layer of the skin. Ceramides make up about 50% of the goopy stuff that's between our skin cells and play a super important role in having a healthy skin barrier and keeping the skin hydrated. It works even better when combined with its pal, Ceramide 1.
We wrote way more about ceramides at ceramide 1, so click here to know more.
- It’s the second most researched AHA after glycolic acid
- It gently lifts off dead skin cells to reveal newer, fresher, smoother skin
- It also has amazing skin hydrating properties
- In higher concentration (10% and up) it improves skin firmness, thickness and wrinkles
- Choose a product where you know the concentration and pH value because these two greatly influence effectiveness
- Don’t forget to use your sunscreen (in any case but especially so next to an AHA product)
A really multi-functional helper ingredient that can do several things in a skincare product: it can bring a soft and pleasant feel to the formula, it can act as a humectant and emollient, it can be a solvent for some other ingredients (for example it can help to stabilize perfumes in watery products) and it can also help to disperse pigments more evenly in makeup products. And that is still not all: it can also boost the antimicrobial activity of preservatives.
We don't have description for this ingredient yet.
A tripeptide (three amino acids attached to each other: Lys-Val-Lys) that's claimed to protect and boost collagen and improve skin texture.
The manufacturer did an in-vivo (made on real people) study with 45 volunteers and found that used twice daily for 84 days 1% and 2.5% Syn-Coll reduces the appearance of wrinkles by 7 and 12% respectively. In another study (also by the manufacturer) with 33 female Chinese volunteers, 77% of the participants felt that Syn-Coll visibly improved the firmness and elasticity of the skin after 4 weeks. What's more, 60% of the participants also noticed a reduction in the look of the pore size also after 4 weeks of treatment.
We don't have description for this ingredient yet.
We don't have description for this ingredient yet.
One of the 9 types of ceramides that can be found naturally in the upper layer of the skin. Ceramides make up a big part (about 50%) of the goopy stuff that's between our skin cells (called extracellular matrix) and play a super important role in having a healthy skin barrier and keeping the skin hydrated.
We wrote way more about ceramides at ceramide 1, so click here to know more.
If you have spotted ethylhexylglycerin on the ingredient list, most probably you will see there also the current IT-preservative, phenoxyethanol. They are good friends because ethylhexylglycerin can boost the effectiveness of phenoxyethanol (and other preservatives) and as an added bonus it feels nice on the skin too.
Also, it's an effective deodorant and a medium spreading emollient.
Ceramides get quite a lot of hype recently and good news: there is a reason for that. But before we go into the details, let's just quickly define what the heck ceramides are:
They are waxy lipids that can be found naturally in the outer layer of the skin (called stratum corneum - SC). And they are there in big amounts! The goopy stuff between our skin cells is called extracellular matrix that consists mainly of lipids. And ceramides are about 50% of those lipids (the other important ones are cholesterol with 25% and fatty acids with 15%).
Ok, so now we know what ceramides are, let's see what they do in our skin: research shows clearly that they play a super important role in keeping the skin barrier healthy and the skin hydrated. If ceramides in the skin are decreased, more water can evaporate from the skin and there is less water remaining in the skin. So ceramides form kind of a "water-proof" protecting layer and make sure that our skin remains nice and hydrated.
Now the question is only this: If we put ceramides all over our face do they work as well as ceramides already naturally in our skin? Well, the answer is probably a no, but they do work to some extent. The BeautyBrains blog made a fantastic article about ceramides and they have listed a couple of examples about studies showing that ceramides - especially when used in certain ratios with cholesterol and fatty acids - do hydrate the skin and can help to repair the skin barrier.
So far we were writing about ceramides in plural. It's because there are lots of different ceramides, a 2014 article writes that currently 12 base classes of ceramides are known with over 340 specific species. Chemically speaking, ceramides are the connection of a fatty acid and a sphingoid base and both parts can have different variations that result in the different types of ceramides.
Our current one, Ceramide 1, or more recently called Ceramide EOP, was the first one that was identified in 1982 and it's a special snowflake. It contains the essential fatty acid, linoleic acid and has a unique structure. It's believed that ceramide 1 plays a "binding role" in the lipid layers of the extracellular matrix. Along with ceramides 4 and 7, they also play a vital role in epidermal integrity and serve as the main storage areas for linoleic acid (a fatty acid that's also very important for barrier repair).
Oh, and one more thing: alkaline pH inhibits enzymes that help ceramide synthesis in our skin. So if you use a soap and you notice your skin is becoming dry, now you know why.
A type of ceramide that can be found naturally in the upper layer of the skin. Ceramides make up 50% of the goopy stuff that's between our skin cells and play a super important role in having a healthy skin barrier and keeping the skin hydrated.
We have written way more about ceramides at ceramide 1, so click here to know more.
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| what‑it‑does | solvent |
| what‑it‑does | skin-identical ingredient | moisturizer/humectant |
| irritancy, com. | 0, 0 |
| what‑it‑does | moisturizer/humectant | solvent |
| irritancy, com. | 0, 0 |
| what‑it‑does | emulsifying | solvent | surfactant/cleansing |
| what‑it‑does | sunscreen |
| what‑it‑does | sunscreen |
| what‑it‑does | viscosity controlling |
| what‑it‑does | buffering |
| what‑it‑does | preservative |
| what‑it‑does | antioxidant |
| what‑it‑does | soothing |
| irritancy, com. | 0, 0 |
| what‑it‑does | moisturizer/humectant | solvent |
| irritancy, com. | 0, 1 |
| what‑it‑does | viscosity controlling |
| what‑it‑does | chelating |
| what‑it‑does | solvent | moisturizer/humectant |
| what‑it‑does | skin-identical ingredient | moisturizer/humectant |
| irritancy, com. | 0, 0 |
| what‑it‑does | solvent | moisturizer/humectant |
| what‑it‑does | antioxidant | soothing | moisturizer/humectant |
| what‑it‑does | viscosity controlling | abrasive/scrub |
| what‑it‑does | emollient | emulsifying |
| what‑it‑does | moisturizer/humectant | viscosity controlling |
| what‑it‑does | emollient |
| what‑it‑does | emulsifying | surfactant/cleansing |
| what‑it‑does | antioxidant | skin brightening |
| what‑it‑does | skin-identical ingredient |
| what‑it‑does | exfoliant | moisturizer/humectant | buffering |
| what‑it‑does | solvent |
| what‑it‑does | abrasive/scrub | viscosity controlling |
| what‑it‑does | cell-communicating ingredient |
| what‑it‑does | skin-identical ingredient |
| what‑it‑does | preservative |
| what‑it‑does | antioxidant |
| what‑it‑does | skin-identical ingredient |
| what‑it‑does | skin-identical ingredient |