The ABCs (and some other letters) of Moisturising Ingredients Glossary

Hey Class! We’ve got a special feature today - we’re going to be putting on our safety goggles and taking an educational trip down the ingredient factory!

Imagine, if you will, that the two of us were walking through each ingredient station where all key moisturising skincare ingredients are kept before they are slurped up, combined and sealed up in bottles as part of your favourite skincare products.

We’re going to take a little pause at each station and talk a little bit about what makes each ingredient unique and how it can help your skin so you can become a little bit more of a discerning shopper. Feel free to take notes! (Or you can just stick a bookmark at the top of this page so you can always come back to visit this mini glossary.)

This is allantoin - a moisturised exfoliator great for soothing and healing injured skin. A one to look out for if you’ve got dry and itchy skin as it can help improve your skin texture.

Betaine is a humectant which means it attracts water in the air. It’s a gentle and hydrating ingredient that helps balance your skin’s moisture levels.

Ceramides are lipids (fats) that can help to protect your skin from external irritants. Your skin naturally makes its own ceramides - adding to them can help you develop a plumper and stronger skin barrier.

This is a moisturisation superstar: hyaluronic acid. Also naturally occurring and a humectant that helps skin hold onto water. This ingredient has anti-ageing, moisturising, and anti-wrinkle properties that helps hydrate and draw moisture to your skin, minimising water loss and giving it an elasticity boost.

As we stroll over to glycerin, we’re looking at another very popular (and common!) hydrating ingredient that encourages your skin to hold onto moisture. It is lightweight, and enhances the penetration of other ingredients to make dry skin feel softer. Not to mention, it calms redness and inflammation too, making it a great choice for sensitive skin.

Ooh, here’s a fun one! Green tea is a well-known antioxidant, lauded for its soothing and anti-inflammatory properties. This amino-acid rich ingredient is a great pick to slow signs of ageing and also to use with other antioxidants due to their synergistic properties.

This is an ingredient that you might know by a different name: vitamin B5. It’s a skin defender and has known anti-inflammatory properties which makes it a good pick if you’re suffering from skin redness or irritation.

Prebiotics/ Probiotics/ Postbiotics

The triple combination of pre-, pro- and post-biotics boosts the production of peptides, collagen and ceramides in your skin. It regulates skin’s natural immune and inflammatory response, improves moisturisation and elasticity. Plus, it can strengthen skin’s surface from environmental damage such as air, sun or wind!

This one is pretty interesting. Sodium hyaluronate is a hyaluronic acid extract - but that doesn’t mean the two are functionally identical. This extract has a lower molecular weight which means it can go even deeper into the epidermis than HA, so it can moisturise from within.

Another common plant derived emollient that mimics your skin’s natural oils. This helps protect your skin barrier for a more hydrated, supple and luminous skin.

And with that, my friend, we have come to the end of our short little tour! I hope you’ve enjoyed taking a look around at all the wonderful ingredients that make our favourite skincare products work so well!

While, and I think you’d agree, that it’s important for us skincare enthusiasts to know what all is in our potions and elixirs, it’s unreasonable to expect all brands to create products that are 100% raw ingredients. There’s a lot of research and testing that goes into creating a product and part of that is also finding the perfect balance and synergy of each ingredient.

Some folks are more than happy picking out a product that offers a specific benefit without knowing the details and that’s totally fine! Our adventure today was more for those of us who wonder “how, though?”. The more we understand each word printed in small font on the side of the packaging, the more in control we’ll be over our regimen.

So if you enjoyed getting into the nitty-gritty with me today, why don’t you take a peek at the box of your next skincare purchase? Let’s see how many you can recognise!

Happy hunting!

x

Gi