SKINdough The Serum ingredients (Explained) (2024)

Read more on how to read an ingredient list >>

Alcohol Free

Anti-acne: Niacinamide

Antioxidant: Snail Mucin, Alpha-Arbutin

Cell-communicating ingredient: Niacinamide

Skin brightening: Niacinamide, Alpha-Arbutin

Skin-identical ingredient: Hyaluronic Acid, Glycerine

Soothing: Allantoin

Other Ingredients

Aqua

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.

Niacinamide - superstar

Also-called: vitamin B3, nicotinamide | What-it-does: cell-communicating ingredient, skin brightening, anti-acne, moisturizer/humectant

• A multi-functional skincare superstar with several proven benefits for the skin
• Great anti-aging, wrinkle smoothing ingredient used at 4-5% concentration
• Fades brown spots alone or in combination with amino sugar, acetyl glucosamine
• Increases ceramide synthesis that results in a stronger, healthier skin barrier and better skin hydration
• Can help to improve several skin conditions including acne, rosacea, and atopic dermatitis

Read all the geeky details about Niacinamide here >>

Propylene Glycol

What-it-does: moisturizer/humectant, solvent | Irritancy: 0 | Comedogenicity: 0

• It's a helper ingredient that improves the freeze-thaw stability of products
• It's also a solvent, humectant and to some extent a penetration enhancer
• It has a bad reputation among natural cosmetics advocates but cosmetic scientists and toxicology experts do not agree (read more in the geeky details section)

Read all the geeky details about Propylene Glycol here >>

Hyaluronic Acid - goodie

What-it-does: skin-identical ingredient, moisturizer/humectant

• It’s naturally in our skin and behaves there like a sponge
• It can bind up to 1000 times its own weight in water
• It is a big molecule from repeated subunits (polymer) so different molecular weight versions exist (unfortunately there is no way to determine MW from INCI list only)
• High-molecular-weight-HA (>500 kDa) is an excellent surface hydrator, skin protectant and can act as an osmotic pump helping water-soluble actives to penetrate deeper into the skin
• Low-molecular-weight-HA (< 500 kDa) can hydrate the skin somewhat deeper though it is still a big molecule and works mainly in the epidermis (outer layer of the skin)
• Low-molecular-weight-HA might also help the skin to repair itself by increasing its self-defense (~ 200kDa used in the study)
• Ultra-low-molecular-weight-HA (<50kDa) is a controversial ingredient and might work as a pro-inflammatory signal molecule

Read all the geeky details about Hyaluronic Acid here >>

Snail Mucin - goodie

Also-called: Snail Slime, Snail Mucin;Snail Secretion Filtrate | What-it-does: antioxidant, moisturizer/humectant

If you are into the K-Beauty trend, you must have bumped into snail slime like a thousand times. Korean brandslove the ingredient and tout it for its miraculous repair and hydration properties. It's claimed to be able to repair everything from dry patches, acne breakouts to signs of aging and we are happy to say that it might be just true.

So snail slime is the yucky stuff that snails (in cosmetics the secretion of Cornu Aspersum, the garden snail is used) produce when they are in stress (it's not the same as the one they secret to be able to move nicely and smoothly). As the cosmetic chemists at the Beauty Brains blog write, "chemically speaking, snail slime is a complex mixture of proteoglycans, glycosaminoglycans, glycoprotein enzymes, hyaluronic acid, copper peptides, antimicrobial peptides and trace elements including copper, zinc, and iron." English translation equals it's loadedwith a bunch of good-for-the-skin stuff.

Alpha-Arbutin - goodie

What-it-does: antioxidant, skin brightening

An optical isomer of naturally occurringarbutin(or beta-arbutin). Just like its sibling, alpha-arbutin is also a skin-brightening, depigmenting agent.

Researching the difference between the two kinds of arbutin, you can read in multiple places on the internet that alpha-arbutin is stronger in effect. Unfortunately, it's never backed up with a credible source. :( Our own research resulted in conflicting results: a study from 1995 found that alpha-arbutin is 10x as effective on mouse melanoma as beta-arbutin. On the other hand, a more recent study from 2015 found that beta-arbutin is more effective both on mouse melanoma cells and onhuman melanoma cells (btw, kojic acid was the most effective on human melanoma cells).

None of the studies we could find is in-vivo (made on real people) anyways, so who knows. We think you cannot go wrong with trying both beta- and alpha-arbutin and see if one works better for you than the other.

Glycerine - superstar

Also-called: Glycerol;Glycerin | 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 >>

Allantoin - goodie

Super common soothing ingredient. It can be found naturally in the roots & leaves of the comfrey plant, but more often than not what's in the cosmeticproductsis produced synthetically.

It's not only soothing but it' also skin-softening and protecting and can promote wound healing.

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.

Scent - icky

Exactly what it sounds: nice smelling stuff put into cosmetic products so that the end product also smells nice. Fragrance in the US and parfum in the EU is a generic term on the ingredient list that is made up of 30 to 50 chemicals on average (but it can have as much as 200 components!).

If you are someone who likes to know what you put on your face then fragrance is not your best friend - there's no way to know what’s really in it.

Also, if your skin is sensitive, fragrance is again not your best friend. It’s the number one cause of contact allergy to cosmetics. It’s definitely a smart thing to avoid with sensitive skin (and fragrance of any type - natural is just as allergic as synthetic, if not worse!).