Deep Dive into Hydrating Ingredients

[Intro] Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Facially Conscious, with myself, Trina Renea, esthetician, and Rebecca Gadberry, the cosmetic ingredient guru, highly acclaimed educator, and award-winning journalist. She is the cosmetic industry leader.

We are gathered here together with you to talk about this crazy world of aesthetics. It's confusing out there in this big, wide world. That's why we're here to help explain it to you all, subject by subject. We will be your go-to girls. And from our perspective, without giving medical advice, we will keep things facially conscious. 

Let's get started.

01:02 Trina Renea: Hello and welcome to Episode 16A, our mini episode on hydrators. I'm Trina Renea, and I am here with Rebecca Gadberry. We are excited to talk to you about specific ingredients you want to look out for for hydrating. So, Rebecca, I'm going to let you take the floor on this since you're the master, guru master, legendary. 

01:22 Rebecca Gadberry: The guru master. When you say guru, I always feel like I'm Mike Myers in The Love Guru sitting on a meditation pillow or something. 

01:31 Trina Renea: Right. We're going to change that to “The Legendary”. 

01:35 Rebecca Gadberry: Oh, thank you. Thank you. Yes, I'm a legend in my old mind. 

01:42 Trina Renea: And to many others, believe me.

01:44 Rebecca Gadberry: Yes. Thank you very much. I'm either that or a pioneer. I'm just old. I think that's what they both mean. 

01:52 Trina Renea: Well, no, you're very special to the industry because you just give the knowledge out in a way that other people can understand, where it's very confusing to learn about chemistry and ingredients and things. You explain it really well. 

02:07 Rebecca Gadberry: Thank you. I appreciate that. 

02:11 Trina Renea: I know about hyaluronic acid, which we're going to touch at the end of this episode, or we'll do it in a future episode, but let's start with the ones that you think are the most important and your favorite. 

02:24 Rebecca Gadberry: Well, if you remember in the episode on hydration with Dr. Vicki and Julie, our well-educated consumer, I love that, we agree that glycerin is probably the most important humectant. It's also so old. It was developed, as far as I know, it was developed in an ancient culture that we've lost track of. It wasn't developed by the Greeks because there's a recipe for a moisturizer using glycerin from like 2,500 years ago.

03:03 Trina Renea: Oh, my God. 

03:04 Rebecca Gadberry: I know. Can you believe that? 

03:06 Trina Renea: And for those of you who haven't heard Episode 16, actually, what is glycerin?

03:13 Rebecca Gadberry: Glycerin is simply what we call a clear fat. It originally came from the tallow of animals, from the fat of animals. The people who settled our country, and also people in Europe, throughout Europe, and probably other cultures as well, would make glycerin soap at the same time that they would make candles, because it all comes from the reduction of tallow or fats. 

Today, it doesn't really come from animal fats anymore, unless it's just treated as a commodity ingredient in a very low-price glycerin bar or something. Most of the market, and especially the professional market, the aesthetics market and the spa markets, the medical markets, use plant-derived glycerin.

04:11 Trina Renea: From what plant? 

04:13 Rebecca Gadberry: It depends. 

04:13 Trina Renea: Or different plants? 

04:14 Rebecca Gadberry: Different plants: palm kernel, coconut oil. If it comes from palm kernel, we need to be careful of using ingredients that come from palm because the palm trees or the palm plants are taken from areas like Borneo where animals, like orangutans, are endangered. You want to look for a glycerin that has a special certification.

And if I'm reminded, I will put on the show notes what that certification is that you're looking for. It will either be on the package, or you could look for it.

04:58 Trina Renea: But the consumer isn't going to see that on the package, right? It's going to be more the…

05:03 Rebecca Gadberry: They might. It depends upon whether it's part of the marketing strategy for the brand or not. 

05:09 Trina Renea: But mostly, like chemists and labs would be looking for proper glycerin to use in their product that’s good.

05:15 Rebecca Gadberry: For a certified glycerin, that's certified safe as far as being derived from plants in Borneo or other endangered areas. 

05:25 Trina Renea: Okay. I do notice that glycerin is in many, many, many, many products. Like almost all of them, I feel like. 

05:33 Rebecca Gadberry: It's in a lot of products because it is a tried and true hydrator or what we call a humectant. A humectant is a substance that attracts water to its molecule. The problem with a lot of humectants is that If there's not enough water around the molecule coming from the air, when it's on the skin, it'll take it from the skin instead. 

05:58 Trina Renea: Which is terrible. It will dehydrate you. 

05:59 Rebecca Gadberry: Which is terrible. And that's a problem with ingredients like sodium PCA. A very popular ingredient from 20 or 30 years ago. But if you do not have it in a well-formulated moisturizer with a lot of fats or lipids in it, then it's going to take it from your skin, the water from your skin and dehydrate your skin. 

I stopped using sodium PCA about 25 years ago. 

06:32 Trina Renea: That's kind of like when a moisturizer, people say, “Oh, I put it on and I feel like I just have to keep putting it on,” because it's drawing water.

06:40 Rebecca Gadberry: It's drying the skin, or it could be due to what we call the washout effect of the moisturizer. That's where you have emulsifiers, usually stearic acids. That's an S-T-E-A-R syllable that you're looking for. It could be stearic acid, stearyl alcohol, something like that, that are high up in the ingredient list, which means that there is more than 1%, maybe 5%, 6%, 7% of that ingredient in the moisturizer.

And the higher up in the list it is, the more likely it will have a washout effect on your barrier. What that means is an emulsifier, which, as you know, Trina, it's like the minister that marries the water and the oil. Instead of letting them go home and having their life, the emulsifier, the minister goes home with them and makes sure that their marriage sticks. So it holds water and oil together. 

It does such a good job that if there's too much of it in the product, it will go into your barrier and start emulsifying your barrier, so that when you wash your face, some of your barrier lipids come out with it.

And we talked about barrier lipids. I think we talk about it in the episode on barrier repair. And the problem with that is that your skin starts to feel drier. As your skin feels drier, you put more moisturizer on. That has a more drying effect. So it's what I call a vicious cycle. 

08:27 Trina Renea: So I would say to the public then, if you're feeling a moisturizer you're using is not satisfying the moisture, stop using that. 

08:36 Rebecca Gadberry: Right. Stop using it, yes.

08:38 Trina Renea: Don't add another ingredient that's going to be hydrating because it might be this product that you just added. 

08:42 Rebecca Gadberry: Right, the washout effect. It's not a product. It's an ingredient. 

08:47 Trina Renea: An ingredient in a product. 

08:49 Rebecca Gadberry: Right. And so the higher up the emulsifiers are, the more likely this washout effect could be occurring. 

08:56 Trina Renea: Okay. So what's another good hydrating ingredient that people...

09:00 Rebecca Gadberry: Well, let's finish talking about glycerin. You're looking for ingredients, not only glycerin. G-L-Y-C-E-R-I-N is the way we spell it in the United States. It may have an E on the end, which is a European way of spelling it, or a Canadian way. But you're also looking for the syllable G-L-Y, as in glyceryl stearate. There we have the STEAR, but we've got the GLY in there too. It's a water-attracting emulsifier. So glyceryl stearate can actually counteract that washout effect. 

Glycerin on its own we want in there, again in this upper half of the ingredient label. When you're looking at an ingredient label, about midway is halfway where we see the 1%, and then anything after that midway is in there at less than 1%. We want to see the glycerin in there as maybe the second, third, fourth, or fifth ingredient. 

And what it does, it is a super moisture magnet. It draws water from the air and makes it available to the skin. It also goes into your skin and pulls moisture from the moisturizer above. If you're using hyaluronic acid, that offers a continuous layer of moisture to that glycerin. So they work together synergistically to hydrate the skin even more.

So you want to see with a hyaluronic acid product, and you might see it on the label as sodium hyaluronate. And there will be other ingredient names for hyaluronic acid that we'll talk about in an upcoming episode. But whenever you see the “hyaluron” syllable, you know you're working with hyaluronic acid.

You put glycerin in there and they work together to pull moisture in the skin continuously. 

11:05 Trina Renea: So even better. 

11:06 Rebecca Gadberry: Even better. And it magnifies the effect.

11:09 Trina Renea: Do they ever put glycerin in a hyaluronic acid serum? 

11:13 Rebecca Gadberry: Oh, yeah, Absolutely. Because, again, the two work together. Hyaluronic acid on its own is too big of a molecule to get into the skin, with a few exceptions that we're going to talk about in that upcoming episode, which is why we're going to spend so much time on hyaluronic acid. 

But hyaluronic acid or sodium hyaluronate cannot pull moisture into the skin on its own. It needs a humectant that goes down into the skin, like glycerin, in order to pull moisture in.

11:46 Trina Renea: But hyaluronic acid also pulls water from the product that you have on top of it or in it?

11:53 Rebecca Gadberry: Or in it, around it, yeah.

11:55 Trina Renea: Deeper into the skin, right? That’s the purpose to get that water in. Okay. 

What is it? She shook her head at me. 

12:06 Rebecca Gadberry: Shook my head, yes. 

12:09 Trina Renea: So rude. Just kidding. 

12:10 Rebecca Gadberry: Imagine a microscopic thread, really tiny. You can't see it. And it's saturated with water, up to a thousand times its weight in water. And you put those on your skin, almost like a meshwork over your skin. That's hyaluronic acid. And that saturated little thread or fiber continues to offer water to the skin for as long as it's on the skin.

But if your skin is not prepared to take the water in, then you just have water on the surface of your skin. It doesn't attract water to itself. It gives water out. 

And glycerin and other humectants, there's a fabulous humectant that it is trade named “moisture magnet”. It's that effective. It's called saccharide isomerate. The spelling for that is going to be in your show notes. 

And saccharide isomerate is even better at glycerin than pulling water into the skin. It pulls up to 400 times its weight in water to the skin. So you might see that. You might see saccharide isomerate. You might see glycerin in there. You might also see some sugars that may look kind of weird in the product. Fructose and glucose, and let me see. Hold on a second. I wrote them down so I could remember them. 

13:41 Trina Renea: But sugars in the products aren't going to affect somebody with diabetes, right? 

13:45 Rebecca Gadberry: No, they're not, because they're not that kind of sugar. And that's a good point. A lot of people think, you know, if there's sugar in my product, I can't have it because I'm a diabetic. It's not like that at all. 

These sugars, which are what we call our natural moisturizing factors, they're made by the cells in the skin. They are part of that mortar that Dr. Vicki and I were talking about in an upcoming episode, actually, and in the barrier repair area. They're in there to help pull water into the skin and to maintain the water content in your skin. 

A lot of times, they evaporate or they're not made at the same rate. This is true as we get older. After the age of 30, your skin starts to lose the war with things like free radicals and cellular repair or DNA repair. It doesn't make the goodies that your skin needs to have that intact hydrated barrier. 

So these natural moisturizing factors are part of the hydration aspect of your skin. They're called urea, U-R-E-A, which some people think come from pee.

15:05 Trina Renea: Which people think is pee. 

15:07 Rebecca Gadberry: Yes. It does occur in urine. It's a nitrogen molecule. And when we dissolve proteins in our body, they turn into urea and they're excreted through your kidneys and your bladder. It has nothing to do with your product. There is no pee in your product. 

15:26 Trina Renea: Well, let me tell you one little side story, because this happened to me. A girl came to me who had acne to get a facial. She was from a Latin country. And she said that she has been spritzing pee on her face in a bottle that she has peed into the bottle to do. I kept a very straight face trying to be— in my head, I was like, “What are you talking about? Oh, my God.” 

But she said that the urea, or from the pee, is to dry up the acne. And this is an old thing that her grandma used to tell her.

16:04 Rebecca Gadberry: Yes, it is. Right.

16:06 Trina Renea: So I went to Dr. Vicki and asked her about that at the time because I was working there, and she told me that's not really a good idea to do that. She understands the concept of it, but there's other products that, you know, how to tell her nicely, like, probably not a good idea to do that. 

But what do you think about that? I mean, that is what they do. 

16:29 Rebecca Gadberry: It's supposedly free of bacteria. I don't know if that is true or not, because I'm not a urologist. But, yes, it's done in a lot of cultures. As a matter of fact, there's cultures in arid climates, desert climates, where women and men would take camel dung or cow dung or goat dung and pee and make a cake out of it and put it on their skin to keep it protected and hydrated. 

16:56 Trina Renea: Eww. 

16:57 Rebecca Gadberry: Yes. But, you know, it shows you that we're very resourceful. Humans are very resourceful. 

17:04 Trina Renea: But urea in product is not from pee.

17:07 Rebecca Gadberry: No, it is not. It is actually one of the very first molecules to be synthesized in a laboratory back in, I think it was the early 1800s. But if you see urea with another word like diazolidinyl urea or imidazolidinyl urea, those are preservatives. We're talking about urea by itself. U-R-E-A. It's in a lot of good dermatological products that are for very dry hands, for people with ichthyosis or even eczema, because it's very hydrating. 

You want to see it in combination, though with ingredients like lactates, lactic acid, or just a lactate of some sort, L-A-C-T-A-T-E.

17:59 Trina Renea: Is that from milk? 

18:01 Rebecca Gadberry: No, it, too, is synthesized. Now it can also be from sugar cane. It can be from sugar cane. 

You've also got different types of sugars, like glucose and fructose. Anything that ends in O-S-E is a sugar. 

18:19 Trina Renea: These are all hydrating. 

18:20 Rebecca Gadberry: These are all hydrating. You want to look for them together, if possible. This mimics your own natural moisturizing factors to keep your skin naturally hydrated. 

Now, what glycerin does is it helps to make what we call the precursor or the molecule that your cells need to make these natural moisturizing factors. That is called filaggrin, F-I-L-A-G-G-R-I-N. You're not going to see that in a container, but what you are going to see is the glycerin that then makes the filaggrin, and that allows your cells to make the natural moisturizing factor. That's another reason why glycerin is so important.

19:03 Trina Renea: Because it helps your body to create more moisturizer. 

19:06 Rebecca Gadberry: Right. It gives your molecule or your cells the nutrient that it needs to make the natural moisturizing factor. 

19:15 Trina Renea: So filaggrin is in glycerin? 

19:18 Rebecca Gadberry: No, the cells use glycerin to make filaggrin, and then they make natural moisture.

19:25 Trina Renea: Oh, filaggrin is in our cells. 

19:27 Rebecca Gadberry: Cells. It's made by our cells. 

19:27 Trina Renea: Got it. Okay. 

19:30 Rebecca Gadberry: So we have glycerin. Cell takes it up, eats it up. Then it makes filaggrin, which it needs to make natural moisturizing factors. When it makes those, it spits out these natural moisturizing factors into the mortar around the cell, and that helps to keep the cell plump and hydrated and your skin filled with water. 

19:53 Trina Renea: So can we say that when using a product with glycerin in the top high ingredients, that if you are using that product for a long period of time, it's going to actually make your cells make more of their own moisture and, over time, just repair better themselves?

20:13 Rebecca Gadberry: Since we haven't done a study on your particular cells, I can't say that for sure, but I can say there's a 99% chance of that being true. 

20:23 Trina Renea: Okay. I was just trying to figure out how that all… So it is actually helping inside repair, repair yourself.

20:30 Rebecca Gadberry: Not repair. 

20:31 Trina Renea: Not repair, but create moisture.

20:33 Rebecca Gadberry: Create. Produce. 

20:34 Trina Renea: Produce moisture within the cell.

20:35 Rebecca Gadberry: Yes. And not producing the moisture. Producing the moisture holders. Okay. That's what humectants do, is they draw in moisture. So you still need to have moisture, which would come from the air or from hyaluronic acid. 

20:54 Trina Renea: Right, not in this desert we live in. Not a lot of moisture in this air. 

20:58 Rebecca Gadberry: Yeah, well…

20:59 Trina Renea: Sometimes. 

21:00 Rebecca Gadberry: Yeah, sometimes. I know the last week it's been very cold. 

21:03 Trina Renea: I know. 

21:03 Rebecca Gadberry: And a lot of moisture, which makes it colder, right? 

21:06 Trina Renea: Yeah, it's interesting the way that works. 

21:08 Rebecca Gadberry: And one last ingredient that I really like is called panthenol. P-A-N-T-H-E-N-O-L. It's what the body needs to make vitamin B5 or pantothenic acid. Panthenol is another super hydrator. When it goes into your skin, it helps to pull water into the cells as well. 

21:32 Trina Renea: And when you see an ingredient, does it always have to say panthenol or can it sometimes say B5? Because I know I've seen stuff that say B5. 

21:39 Rebecca Gadberry: B5 is an illegal listing, because B5 stands for pantothenic acid. Panthenol is what we call the precursor or the molecule that your cell needs to make pantothenic acid. It's not named B5. If you're going to say B5, you're not going with the regulations for the United States ingredient, legal ingredient listings. 

22:05 Trina Renea: But you can say panthenol B5, or just panthenol?

22:08 Rebecca Gadberry: No, just panthenol. You can't say B5.

22:09 Trina Renea: B5 at all anymore?

22:11 Rebecca Gadberry: You never have been able to, but people do it. 

22:13 Trina Renea: I know somebody who does. A big, big, big company. Maybe they changed it since. 

22:19 Rebecca Gadberry: I hope so, because FDA is not going to come after them.

22:23 Trina Renea: They won't?

22:24 Rebecca Gadberry: No, they're not. They don't have the money to. They don't have the budget. One of the heads of the FDA about 30 years ago told me, “Unless you're killing or maiming anybody, we don't have the budget to come out and regulate.”

22:39 Trina Renea: Oh, gosh, I don't know if we should tell people that. 

22:42 Rebecca Gadberry: Well, that was 30 years ago. That is not today. 

22:47 Trina Renea: Today they will come after you, so watch yourselves, people. 

22:50 Rebecca Gadberry: You've got to be careful. Yeah. So there's a lot of other good humectants, saccharides, algae peptides, your glycolic, your lactic. Honey is becoming really popular. Another panthenol ingredient is dexpanthenol, which can get into the dermis and actually helps to repair some of the damage in the dermis with collagens. 

23:19 Trina Renea: I want to know more about that. 

23:19 Rebecca Gadberry: That study was done in Germany. I think Americans have very similar skin to Germans, so it probably applies to them, too.

23:31 Trina Renea: All right. Well, let's wrap this little episode up here. We will definitely talk about hydrators on many shows because it's just part of our conversation. 

23:40 Rebecca Gadberry: Yes. 

23:42 Trina Renea: And if we find a future need to have— I feel like we should have maybe an episode just on all the hyaluronic acids since there's a big hype about what you should use and what you shouldn't use and what kind. It's so confusing. 

23:52 Rebecca Gadberry: And they're so misunderstood. 

23:55 Trina Renea: Yeah, so I think that's important that we talk about that on a future episode as well. 

23:58 Rebecca Gadberry: I do too. 

24:00 Trina Renea: Well, thanks for joining me today. 

24:02 Rebecca Gadberry: You're welcome. 

24:04 Trina Renea: It's always lovely. 

24:04 Rebecca Gadberry: It's so wonderful to be with you. 

24:05 Trina Renea: And we'll see you on the next episode. 

24:07 Rebecca Gadberry: Okay. Bye, everybody. 

24:08 Trina Renea: Bye.

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