Skin Care, Beauty and Health

all about Active ingredients

We all want to look our best, Part of looking your best, is feeling your best, and keeping your health in top form. Diet, exercise, sleep are all important things we can focus on to make ourselves the best looking we can be. But what if that is not enough?

Sometimes our skin cells need a little extra help to make the beautiful skin you always knew you could have. Maybe they are lacking a specific nutrient, or maybe our genetics falls a tad bit short, and we cannot create the structure needed to have youthful and glowing skin. Skin care products promise to replace missing things like collagen or elastin, or energy needed to make you skin cells work better. But all too often they are a superficial treatment that does not work at all. That is because those ingredients simply sit on the surface of your skin until they are washed off. They never get anywhere, especially where they would be most effective.

How do people try to overcome these problems? In many formulations there are ingredients called penetration enhancers. These molecule disrupt the epidermis structure at least temporarily and this allows ingredients to penetrate deeper, past the hydrophobic skin surface. Once they are in they can diffuse along with everything else and hopefully reach their destination. Some penetration enhancers are so powerful that you skin remains porous for a long time. That is why these same formulas contain emollients to repair the lipid junction that the penetration enhancer disturbed.

Another way to approach this problem is to package the active ingredient into tiny little boats made from the same molecules that are in the cell junctions of the epidermis. These can squeeze through between the keratinized cells of your epidermis with less disruption, is gentler, and does less harm. These same boats can be used to direct the active to the correct depth and cell location for maximum effect. You can use less and get more.

Tune in again for more useful information about skin care, beauty, and health.