Aqua (Water)
Also-called: Water | What-it-does: solvent
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.
Montmorillonite - goodie
Also-called: Type of clay | What-it-does: viscosity controlling, absorbent/mattifier, emulsion stabilising
A type of clay that was originally found next to the French village,Montmorillon. Nowadays,Montmorillonite is used almost like a synonym for the most common type of clay,bentonite. Technically bentonite is montmorillonite and additional crystalline structures, or to put it another way,montmorillonite is 100% clean bentonite.
As for montmorillonite in skincare products, it's used for its magic absorbentproperties. It's excellent at instantly sucking up sebum and gunk from the skin and it might even be helpful in treating some rashes or skin irritations (contact dermatitis). But be careful, it can also be drying.
Kaolin - goodie
Also-called: Type of clay, China clay | What-it-does: colorant, absorbent/mattifier, abrasive/scrub | Irritancy: 0 | Comedogenicity: 0
Kaolin is a type of clayor to be precise, a naturally occurring hydrous aluminum silicate. When you hear clay, you probably think of a muddy greenish-blackmess, but that one is bentonite, and this one is a fine, white powder. It is so white that it's also often used, in small amounts, as a helper ingredient to give opacity and whiteness to the cosmetic formulas.
As a clay, it's absorbent and can suck up excess sebum and gunk from your skin, but less so than the more aggressive bentonite. As it's less absorbent, it's also less drying and gentler on the skin, so it's ideal for dry and sensitive skin types.
Bisabolol - goodie
Also-called: Alpha-Bisabolol | What-it-does: soothing
It's one of the active parts ofChamomile that contains about 30% of bisabolol. It's aclear oily fluid that is used in skincare as a nice anti-inflammatory and soothing ingredient.
Silica Cetyl Silylate
What-it-does: viscosity controlling
We don't have description for this ingredient yet.
Isodecyl Neopentanoate
What-it-does: emollient
Alow molecular weight dry, silkyemollient ester that gives a light and non-greasy feel to the formulas. It's great at reducing the oily or heavy feeling caused by certain ingredients such as sunscreenagents or pigments. It alsogives improved emolliency, spreadability and a smooth, elegant feel on the skin.
Panthenyl Triacetate
We don't have description for this ingredient yet.
Glucosyl Hesperidin
What-it-does: moisturizer/humectant
We don't have description for this ingredient yet.
Potassium Azeloyl Diglycinate - goodie
What-it-does: skin brightening, anti-acne, soothing
A derivative of clinically proven, superstar ingredient Azelaic Acidand hydrating amino acid Glycine. Azelaic acid is an awesome ingredient with anti-inflammatory, skin lightening and anti-acne effects, but its insolubility (it's soluble neither in water nor in oil) makes it difficult to use it in a cosmetically elegant and versatile way.
The solution is supposed to bePotassium Azeloyl Diglycinate, at least according to the manufacturer. The derivative is very water soluble, easy to use in nice formulas and inherits all the lovely properties of Azelaic acid. It acts as a skin brightening agent via Tyrosinase (a famous enzyme needed to make melanin) inhibition and also has significant sebum normalizing activity.
Regarding research, we could find two studies wherePotassium Azeloyl Diglycinate's name popped up. One study examined the management of rosacea and the other one researched the treatment of melasma. Both were successful (we mean people showed improvement :)) but our Azelaic acid derivative was combined with other actives so it's hard to know what to attribute to this guy only.
Overall, a promising multi-functionactive that's worth checking out if you have pigmentation-prone, acne-prone or rosacea-prone skin.
Argilla
What-it-does: abrasive/scrub, moisturizer/humectant
We don't have description for this ingredient yet.
Glycerin - superstar
Also-called: Glycerol | What-it-does: skin-identical ingredient, moisturizer/humectant | Irritancy: 0 | Comedogenicity: 0
- 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
Read all the geeky details about Glycerin here >>
Butylene Glycol
What-it-does: moisturizer/humectant, solvent | Irritancy: 0 | Comedogenicity: 1
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.
Resveratrol - goodie
What-it-does: antioxidant
If you are looking for a reason why red wine is good for you, good news, you have found it! Resveratrol, aka the "red grape antioxidant" is the thing that's suspected to keep the French from coronary heart disease despite their not so healthy eating habits (such as high saturated fat intake).
So resveratrol, found in the seed and skin of thered grape (and berries), is a pretty well-known and well-studied molecule that has potent antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and anticarcinogenic abilities. Most of the studies were done examining resveratrol's promising anti-cancer properties, but as for skin care, it shows a potentprotective effect against UV-caused oxidative stress as well as promising effects against multiple types of skin cancer including the most severe one, melanoma (as an adjuvant therapy).
When it comes to skincare and antioxidants, "the more the merrier", so resveratrol is definitely a nice addition to any skincare routine.
Naringenin
We don't have description for this ingredient yet.
Arginine - goodie
What-it-does: skin-identical ingredient
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 hydratorand might also help to speed up wound healing.
Arginine usually has apositive 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.
Alteromonas Ferment Extract - goodie
What-it-does: soothing
A so-calledexopolysaccharide (high-molecular-weight polymers) secreted by a microorganism living in hydrothermal deep vents. The manufacturer claims that itsoothes and reduces irritation to sensitive skin against chemical (such as drying acne treatments or strong chemical exfoliants), mechanical (such as micro-cuts after shaving) and UVB aggressors.
Perfluorodecalin
Also-called: Part of Fiflow blends | What-it-does: solvent
Perfluorodecalin is afluorocarbon, a molecule that contains nothing else but carbon andfluorine. It's usually mixed with otherfluorocarbons and goes by the trade nameFiflow. Fiflows are interesting materials: they are very stable (inert), heavy liquids that are neither water nor oil soluble but they create a third phase in emulsions. They can carry gasses, notablyOxygen, Nitrogen and Carbon Dioxide into the formula.
The manufacturer claims thatFiflowblends can have all kinds of good effects on the skin: they can have wound healing, muscle relaxation, and dermal filling effect and they might also improve skin renewal and skin elasticity.
Simmondsia Chinensis Seed Oil - goodie
Also-called: Jojoba Oil | What-it-does: emollient | Irritancy: 0 | Comedogenicity: 0-2
Jojoba is a drought resistant evergreen shrub native to South-western North America. It's known and grown for jojoba oil, the golden yellow liquid coming from the seeds (about 50% of the weight of the seeds will be oil).
At first glance, it seems like your average emollient plant oil: it looks like an oil and it's nourishing and moisturizing to the skin but if we dig a bit deeper, it turns out that jojoba oil is really special and unique: technically - or rather chemically - it's not an oil but awax ester (and calling it an oil is kind of sloppy).
So what the heck is a wax ester and why is that important anyway? Well, to understand what a wax ester is, you first have to know that oils are chemically triglycerides:one glycerin + three fatty acids attached to it. The fatty acids attached to the glycerin vary and thus we have many kinds of oils, but they are alltriglycerides. Mother Nature created triglycerides to be easily hydrolyzed (bebroken down to a glycerin + 3 fatty acid molecules) and oxidized (the fatty acid is broken down into small parts) - this happens basically when we eat fats or oils and our body generates energy from it.
Mother Nature also created wax esters but for a totally different purpose. Chemically, a wax ester is a fatty acid + a fatty alcohol, one long molecule. Wax esters are on the outer surface of several plant leaves to give them environmental protection. 25-30% of human sebum is also wax esters to give uspeople environmental protection.
So being a wax ester results in a couple of unique properties: First, jojoba oil is extremely stable. Like crazy stable. Even if you heat it to 370 C (698 F) for 96 hours, it does notbudge. (Many plant oils tend to go off pretty quickly). If you have some pure jojoba oil at home, you should be fine using it for years.
Second, jojoba oil is the most similar to human sebum (both being wax esters), and the two are completely miscible. Acne.org has this not fully proven theory that thanks to this, jojoba might be able to "trick" the skin into thinking it has already produced enough sebum, so it might have "skin balancing" properties for oily skin.
Third, jojoba oil moisturizes the skin through a unique dual action:on the one hand, it mixes with sebum and forms a thin, non-greasy, semi-occlusive layer; on the other hand, it absorbs into the skin through pores and hair follicles thendiffuses into the intercellular spaces of the outer layer of the skin to make it soft and supple.
On balance, the point is this: in contrast to real plant oils, wax esters were designed by Mother Nature to stay on the surface and forma protective, moisturizing barrier and jojoba oil being a wax ester is uniquely excellent at doing that.
Glycosphingolipids
What-it-does: emollient
We don't have description for this ingredient yet.
Propanediol
Also-called: Zemea | What-it-does: solvent, moisturizer/humectant
Propanediol is a natural alternative for the often usedand 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 efficacyor to influence the sensory properties of the end formula.
Xanthan Gum
What-it-does: viscosity controlling, emulsion stabilising
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-calledrheology 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).
Carrageenan
What-it-does: viscosity controlling
A natural polysaccharide(big sugar molecule) coming fromred edible seaweeds. It isused as a helper ingredientfor itsgelling, thickening and stabilizing properties.
Acacia Senegal Gum
Also-called: Gum Arabic
A natural polymer(big molecules from repeated subunits) that is harvested from theAcacia treein thesub-Saharan region in Africa. It's a great thickening and binding agent. Often coupled with xanthan gum, as it helps to reduce its unpleasant stickiness.
Mica
Also-called: CI 77019 | What-it-does: colorant
A super versatile and common mineral powder that comes in different particle sizes. It is a multi-tasker used to improve skin feel, increase product slip, give the product light-reflecting properties, enhance skin adhesion or serve as an anti-caking agent.
It is also the most commonly used "base" material for layered composite pigments such as pearl-effect pigments. In this case, mica is coated with one or moremetal oxides (most commonly titanium dioxide) to achieve pearl effect via the physical phenomenon known as interference.
Quartz
What-it-does: abrasive/scrub
We don't have description for this ingredient yet.
Sucrose Palmitate
What-it-does: emollient, emulsifying, surfactant/cleansing
A sugar ester (sucrose + palmitic acid) that works as a natural emulsifier (helps oil and water to mix). According to the manufacturer, it has a great skin-feel, improves smoothness, emolliency and even hydrates the skin.
Combined with another sugar ester, sucrose stearate, it can improvehigh temperature stability of Sucragel based oily gel cleansers.
Trisodium Ethylenediamine Disuccinate
Also-called: EDDS | What-it-does: chelating
A helper ingredient that helps to neutralize the metal ions in the formula (they usually come from water) so it stays nice longer. The special property of this particular ingredient is that it's more effective against more problematic ions, likeCu (copper) and Fe (iron) compared to less problematic ones like Ca (calcium) and Mg (magnesium).
Ethoxydiglycol
What-it-does: solvent, moisturizer/humectant, perfuming | Irritancy: 0 | Comedogenicity: 0
A nice odorless liquid used mainly as asuperior solubilizer and efficacy booster for cosmetic active ingredients such as skincare bigshot vitamin C, self-tanning active DHA or the anti-acne gold standard, benzoyl peroxide.
Other than that it can also be used in hair care products where it gives a longer-lasting and more uniform coloring. According to a manufacturer, it might even preventthe formation of split ends.
Potassium Sorbate
What-it-does: preservative
It's one of those things that help your cosmetics not to go wrong too soon, aka a preservative. It’s not a strong one and doesn’t really work against bacteria, but more against mold and yeast. To do that it has to break down to its active form, sorbic acid. For that to happen, there has to be water in the product and the right pH value (pH 3-4).
But even if everything is right, it’s not enough on its own. If you see potassium sorbate you should see some other preservative next to it too.
BTW, it’s also a food preservativeand even has an E number, E202.
Sodium Benzoate
What-it-does: preservative
A helper ingredient that helps to makethe 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.
Phenoxyethanol
What-it-does: preservative
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.
Chlorphenesin
What-it-does: preservative, antimicrobial/antibacterial
A little helper ingredient that works as a preservative. It works againstbacteria and some species of fungi and yeast. It's often combined with IT-preservative, phenoxyethanol.
