BIOSSANCE Squalane + Vitamin C Rose Oil

BIOSSANCE Squalane + Vitamin C Rose Oil BIOSSANCE Squalane + Vitamin C Rose Oil ingredients explained: Squalane, Tetrahexyldecyl Ascorbate, Caprylic/Capric Triglyceride, Pistacia Lentiscus (Mastic) Gum, Rosa Damascena Flower Extract, Geraniol, Citronellol Show all ingredients by function Squalane skin-identical ingredient, emollient 0, 1 goodie Tetrahexyldecyl Ascorbate antioxidant, skin brightening Caprylic/Capric Triglyceride emollient Pistacia Lentiscus (Mastic) Gum Rosa Damascena Flower Extract Geraniol perfuming icky Citronellol It seems to us that squalane is in fashion and there is a reason for it. Chemically speaking, it is a saturated (no double bonds) hydrocarbon (a molecule consisting only of carbon and hydrogen), meaning that it's a nice and stable oily liquid with a long shelf life. It occurs naturally in certain fish and plant oils (e.g. olive), and in the sebum (the oily stuff our skin produces) of the human skin. As f.c. puts it in his awesome blog post, squalane's main things are "emolliency, surface occlusion, and TEWL prevention all with extreme cosmetic elegance". In other words, it's a superb moisturizer that makes your skin nice and smooth, without being heavy or greasy. Expand to read more Another advantage of squalane is that it is pretty much compatible with all skin types and skin conditions. It is excellent for acne-prone skin and safe to use even if you have fungi-related skin issues, like seborrhea or fungal acne. The unsaturated (with double bonds) and hence less stable version of Squalane is Squalene, you can read about it here >> 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). It's a really promising candidate (see below), but while reading all the goodness about it in a minute, do not forget that derivatives not only have to be absorbed into the skin but also have to be converted to pure vitamin C (ascorbic acid or AA) and the efficacy of the conversion is often unknown. In addition, vitamin C's three magic properties (antioxidant, collagen booster, skin brightener) are all properly proven in-vivo (on real people), but for the derivatives, it's mostly in-vitro studies or in the case of THDA, it's in-vitro and done by an ingredient supplier. With this context in mind let's see what THDA might be able to do. First, it is stable (if pH < 5), easy to formulate, and a joy to work with for a cosmetic chemist. Second, because it's oil-soluble, its skin penetration abilities seem to be great. So great in fact, that it surpasses the penetration of pure vitamin C threefold at the same concentration and it penetrates successfully into the deeper layers of the skin (that is usually important to do some anti-aging work). There is also in-vitro data showing that it converts to AA in the skin. Third, THDA seems to have all three magic abilities of pure vitamin C: it gives antioxidant protection from both UVB and UVA rays, it increases collagen synthesis (even more than AA) and it has a skin brightening effect by reducing melanogenesis by more than 80% in human melanoma cell cultures. So what‑it‑does skin-identical ingredient | emollient irritancy, com. antioxidant | skin brightening