How to maintain a healthy-looking skin during the pandemic?
The pandemic has been one-of-a-kind experience for many of us – some focused on cooking, some worked with home improvement whereas others concentrated on their skincare routines.A survey from PowerReviews Changing Face of the Beauty Shopper Study from 10,646 active beauty consumers revealed that it deeply changed our beauty habits: more than half (56%) of the panelists indicated they’re more focused on skincare now than they were before the pandemic. With home office becoming the norm and mask wearing, skin care has become a priority over make up.
They also observed a shift toward online purchasing, with more than haft of shoppers (53 %) stating they buy more beauty products online than before the pandemic, which is even more obvious for youngest panelists: 66% of Generation Z shoppers and 58% of Millennials say they spend more online on beauty products now than they did before the pandemic.
With limited access to dermatologists, aestheticians and spas, Google has also become the reference in maintaining a healthy-looking skin. With “Maskne” being portrayed as a pandemic side effect, efficacious and quick solutions have been widely searched. Google revealed the most 2020 asked questions in the beauty section, among them:
How to build a skin-care routine?
What order to do skin care?
How to get rid of acne?
What is the best skin care routine for a radiant skin?
Among the proposed solutions, retinol and salicylic acid ranked high in the most efficient care routines.
These are very potent active ingredients and provides the much-needed clinical efficacy to treat skin issues such as skin texture or pigmented spots – issues that can be noticeably seen on our zoomed in faces in online meetings. However, the ignorance of the consumers lies on the lack of clear indications about how to use them, the possibility to use both active ingredients in tandem, what kind of formulations to look for etc. Mechanistically, they both work through different pathways to increase exfoliation, which means shedding the upper layer of the skin. Well, our skin is naturally designed to shed the upper layer, but sometimes it does not work properly and can be charged with outside actives like retinol or acids. The same goes for acne.
Other times, we just want to renew the radiance which could be achieved through exfoliation as well. During this whole process, we are ripping the outer layer out of skin cells of the lipid layer that makes skin vulnerable to external aggressors. Under a given condition, skin tends to turn back to normalcy by building up the barrier, but if we want to be the skin guru and continue the use of harsh ingredients with the intention of getting faster results, we are actually making it worse. We are not just losing the barrier, but also the hydration which leads to dry skin, accelerated aging and diseased clinicals manifestations such as eczema and atopic dermatitis. Hence, most of the dermatologists are seeing the aftermath of those who experimented with different harmful skincare routines.
Water homeostasis and barrier function, the winning solution for a healthy skin
The physiology of skin works under homeostasis in a way that it tries to maintain the skin barrier and to keep it hydrated by reducing the loss of water. There are 3 main strategies to maintain water homeostasis:
1- Trap water with the help of humectants, such as glycerol or hyaluronic acid
2- Distribute water through the aquaporins, the channels that help with the transport of water from the very lower of epidermis to the top layer of epidermis
3- Retain water into the epidermis by maintain a healthy barrier function
The holy grail lies not just covering the skin with occlusives, but through the holistic approach of building the barrier from inside out and maintaining the water homeostasis that is imbalanced during the experimentation process. Here we are highlighting two of our multifunctional ingredients that works in a holistic way to repair the barrier and maintain the water homeostasis level.
Hydra Synol® DOI – A Smart Lipophilic Skin Hydrator & Barrier Builder
Isosorbide Dicaprylate is a smart skin hydrator and barrier builder that intelligently provides optimum hydration based on skin moisture content/deficit.
- Clinically proven to provide long-lasting (>48 hrs.) skin hydration.
3 independent clinical studies were performed to evaluate the superiority of Hydra Synol® DOI on skin hydration through expert grading and instrumental measurements. Every study independently confirmed long-lasting hydration with the use of a 2% Hydra Synol® DOI lotion, even after 3-day regression period. - Works at different levels within the epidermis to maintain water homeostasis through aquaporins
Hydra Synol® DOI increases the expression of aquaporins-3, which was confirmed by microarray, PCR array and at the protein level. - Repairs the barrier from within through increased expression of desmosomal and tight junction genes
It helps with the repair of the epidermal barrier through increased expression of desmosome genes (like desmogline 3, E-cadherin and Desmocollin) responsible for providing strong intercellular cohesion and for maintaining the integrity of cells & tissues exposed to continuous mechanical stress. In addition, it upregulates the genes involved in tight junctions that contributes to the epithelial barrier function by preventing leakage of solutes through the intercellular space.
Being lipophilic in character, it indeed works at different levels of the epidermis to maintain skin barrier, as well as maintaining the water homeostasis. It’s a smart active ingredient that stimulates the endogenous system and adapts to the needs of the skin: the drier is the skin, the higher the hydration boost will be and vice versa.
Now let’s go back to face pandemic issues. With the use of harsh ingredients, our skin is not just getting rid of the lipid layer, but also getting rid of the water that is being transferred from the very lower layers of the skin which results in dry skin. And we all know impaired skin barrier accelerates the negative effect of external aggressors like hand sanitizers, soaps and even UV rays by more than double. If you are working on sensitive skin, baby products, very dry areas like hands/feet or even hair care or color cosmetics, Hydra Synol® DOI is the versatile multifunctional ingredient that you have been looking for.
ECOCERT COSMOS Natural. REACH registered. Patented Product.
More info about Hydra Synol® DOI
Synovea® EL – A Smart Synergist with Multiple Skin Benefits
Ethyl Linoleate is a stable version of Linoleic acid (LA) which is an essential fatty acid, a precursor of ceramides and is called Vitamin F. EL gets converted to LA or Omega-6 fatty acid which provides all the skin benefits of LA with improved skin permeability and ease of handling. Omega-6 fatty acid is an important source of energy and plays a key role in immune response.
- Clinically proven to maintain barrier function and has been shown to reverse detergent-induced barrier damage. The benefits comes from linoleic acid being an essential part of the epidermis.
- Mechanistically increases skin hydration through increased expression of FLG and AQP-9
- Clinically proven to reduce pigmentation by inhibiting Tyrosinase activity (rate limiting enzyme required for pigmentation formation).
- Helps maintain stratum corneum acidity. The presence of LA creates an acidic environment that is needed to activate pH-sensitive lipid hydrolases, which converts phospholipids to free fatty acids, a sequence required for normal barrier function.
Ethyl Linoleate provides the holistic way of maintaining the barrier through different mechanisms both in healthy and troubled skin such as acne. It also helps with managing the pigmentation issues that could arise as a result of our skin is being exposed to different environmental conditions.
REACH registered.
More info about Synovea® EL
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