Hyaluronic Acid Explained — Types, Molecular Weights, and How to Use It for Better Skin Hydration

[Intro] Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Facially Conscious with myself, Trina Reneá, 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 esthetics. It's confusing out there in this big, wide world. That's why we are 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!

01:01 Trina Reneá: Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Facially Conscious. We are happy to be with you today. Hello, Rebecca. 

01:09 Rebecca Gadberry: Hi there, Trina. 

01:10 Trina Reneá: How are you? 

01:11 Rebecca Gadberry: I'm doing quite well today. How are you? 

01:14 Trina Reneá: I'm good. We had some requests to go a little deeper dive into a hydrating ingredient. We did talk about hydrating ingredients in episode 16, and we also talked about a deep dive in 16A, and we still had requests to talk about hyaluronic acid. So I thought we'd come back today. We just had a lovely little breakfast meeting before this and it was yummy.

01:43 Rebecca Gadberry: It was yummy, and you ordered eggs. 

01:46 Trina Reneá: I did. And you can’t eat eggs.

01:47 Rebecca Gadberry: Which got me to thinking about hyaluronic acid.

01:50 Trina Reneá: What do eggs have to do with hyaluronic acid? 

01:53 Rebecca Gadberry: Funny you should ask. 

01:54 Trina Reneá: Oh, dear. So I can rub eggs on my face and I'll be hydrated? 

01:59 Rebecca Gadberry: Well, yeah. 

02:00 Trina Reneá: Actually, when you put egg whites on your face, you get tight. 

02:04 Rebecca Gadberry: That's right. 

02:05 Trina Reneá: Oh, is that what hya… oh, oh, it's all coming together.

02:10 Rebecca Gadberry: I remember now.

02:11 Trina Reneá: . Yes.

02:12 Rebecca Gadberry: Trina and I have talked about this at the UCLA classes that I teach.

02:17 Trina Reneá: Well, yes. 

02:17 Rebecca Gadberry: So hyaluronic acid is a long, skinny thread that becomes super saturated when it gets in contact with water. It can swell up a thousand times its weight in water, but it's molecular weight. You don't have to know what molecular weight is to understand that a million molecular weight is a big thread. And hyaluronic acid is a million molecular weight molecule that is in a lot of different biological substances, one of them being egg whites.

So the reason that you beat an egg, is it because you're a sadist? I like to say that at UCLA. But because you're chopping up the hyaluronic acid in the egg white. 

03:09 Trina Reneá: Oh my gosh, I never knew that. So it swells too. 

03:12 Rebecca Gadberry: It swells too. And when you cook it... 

03:15 Trina Reneá: But you don't add water to it to make it swell. You just beat it. 

03:18 Rebecca Gadberry: No, it's already in the albumin.

03:22 Trina Reneá: Fascinating. 

03:23 Rebecca Gadberry: And if you want to make your eggs fluffier, you add a little bit of water because you're hydrating the chopped up thread of hyaluronic acid. And you also ordered eggs. How did you order your eggs today? 

03:37 Trina Reneá: Over medium.

03:38 Rebecca Gadberry: Over medium. That's how I take mine, by the way. But the white of the egg turned into something that was kind of rubbery, right? 

03:44 Trina Reneá: Yes. 

03:45 Rebecca Gadberry: That's the hyaluronic acid that's forming that rubbery. It does what we call form a polymer or something that's a very long molecule that just stays together. 

03:59 Trina Reneá: Like when they stick it. in your face and puff it up with filler. 

04:02 Rebecca Gadberry: Right, with filler. 

04:04 Trina Reneá: That's hyaluronic acid.

04:04 Rebecca Gadberry: That's hyaluronic acid.

04:06 Trina Reneá: It turns into an egg white, over medium.

04:08 Rebecca Gadberry: No. Hopefully not. I just had a vision of egg whites over the eyes now with little yolks.

04:19 Trina Reneá: And like you inject the little white part of the egg when it's liquid into the face and it turns into an egg over medium and stays in there for like a few months. 

04:31 Rebecca Gadberry: Okay, I think we're confusing people. Not a good image here, Trina. 

04:36 Trina Reneá: Okay, I'm just kidding. Don't believe me. Don't do that. 

04:41 Rebecca Gadberry: And no, we do not use hyaluronic acid from eggs. 

04:44 Trina Reneá: No. 

04:45 Rebecca Gadberry: Hyaluronic acid is in the joints, the liquids of the body. It's in saliva. It's in your tears. 

04:54 Trina Reneá: Yeah, so that's one thing I want everybody to understand is that hyaluronic acid is something that our body actually produces itself. So it's an accepted substance into the body. And it's also not an acid as in a lot of people when they hear the word acid on the end of hyaluronic, they think it's an exfoliator.

05:14 Rebecca Gadberry: Right, but it's very mild. If you're familiar with the pH scale, which is what we measure acids on, seven is neutral. Hyaluronic acid is almost seven, whereas AHA, your alpha hydroxy acids and your salicylic acids, are down around one or maybe even lower. They're strongly acidic. The further away you get from seven, the stronger acidity. 

And very few people have an allergy or are irritated. I don't know anybody who's ever been irritated by hyaluronic acid.

05:51 Trina Reneá: Right, because it is something that we produce in our body. 

05:54 Rebecca Gadberry: Right. 

05:56 Trina Reneá: One thing I also hear people say a lot is when they put their hyaluronic acid on their face, their serum, that they actually feel tight afterwards. I tell them that's because you didn't put any water on top of it for it to suck into your skin. I say if you put it on first thing and then you put your products on right after, it'll actually make your skin feel more hydrated. And when they do that, they're like, “Oh, I didn't realize.” They just think they can put a little hyaluronic acid serum on their face and they'll be like… but also, we don't have any moisture in the air. That might be okay in a humid environment, but certainly not in Southern California.

06:38 Rebecca Gadberry: Well, I always like to recommend that you spray first with a mist that maybe has glycerin or panthenol, one of the common humectants, to pull the water in from the water that's saturating the hyaluronic acid thread. Think of yourself as putting on something to attract moisture. Then you put on a constant source of moisture, which is the hyaluronic acid. And then you can seal it in with a moisturizer. Now, that's three steps. 

So you don't have to go through all three steps if you want to just include the hyaluronic acid in a moisturizer. But make sure that you either put the hyaluronic acid-containing product on over wet skin, preferably the mist with the humectant in it. Now, it doesn't have to be glycerin or panthenol. Those are just the two most common. 

I was also thinking this would be great for slugging. Remember when we talked about slugging? 

07:39 Trina Reneá: Yes. 

07:40 Rebecca Gadberry: This would be really good as a slugging amplifier, so to speak. So you could spray your face or mist your face with the humectant mist, then put on the hyaluronic acid, then put on your slugging material. 

07:58 Trina Reneá: The sealant. To seal in that moisture. That's good. 

08:03 Rebecca Gadberry: And you know the reason why the skin feels tight is the same reason why the egg white feels tight on your skin, because it's drying. When the hyaluronic acid dries, that million weight molecule of the hyaluronic acid thread is just firming up your skin. So it can also be used as a tensor around your eyes, around your mouth to help smooth lines and wrinkles. 

08:32 Trina Reneá: That's extra. So tell me why is hyaluronic acid, I feel like it's the number one ingredient that people hear these days. And there's been some weird controversy, and I'm not even sure why if somebody made this up or if it was a marketing scheme for them to buy their product, but there's been word going around that I've been hearing from clients that you have to use a certain type of hyaluronic acid. It has to be a certain one in order for it to work. All the other ones are fake. 

09:15 Rebecca Gadberry: Fake? They're real.

09:19 Trina Reneá: I didn't know that you could buy levels of hyaluronic acid or…

09:25 Rebecca Gadberry: They're not levels. They're different forms of hyaluronic acid.

09:28 Trina Reneá: Could you explain that? 

09:30 Rebecca Gadberry: Let's talk about the reason why it's so popular right now. 

09:32 Trina Reneá: Okay.

09:33 Rebecca Gadberry: Hyaluronic acid was actually discovered in the human body around 1934. But it wasn't started being used in cosmetics until 1979. About 1981, Estee Lauder came out with the very first successful hyaluronic acid product, but nobody knew what it was because it was a trade secret ingredient, and they didn't have to tell anybody. 

09:57 Trina Reneá: Is it from the human body? 

09:59 Rebecca Gadberry: That one was from rooster combs, and it was $2,000 a kilo.

10:06 Trina Reneá: Rooster comb? You mean like an actual rooster's red thingy ______?

10:11 Rebecca Gadberry: Yes. 

10:11 Trina Reneá: How in the world did they find that? 

10:14 Rebecca Gadberry: Well, they knew it had hyaluronic acid in it, and they knew that the researchers did, and they knew that it was hydrating. So they started doing some research. This was over in Japan. Lauder contracted with them, licensed with them, and brought it over to the United States. 

The serum that it was in was one of the very first serums on the market, and it became a huge hit, huge, for the next two years. I was trying to find the name last night. I can't remember the name. If we can find it, we'll put it up on our notes section of the podcast. 

10:47 Trina Reneá: You mean Estee Lauder's, the name of the product that they came out with in 19 what? 

10:50 Rebecca Gadberry: Yes, the name of the product. 1981. So it became available to use in 1983. I was one of the very first chemists to use it and to bring it out in different products. 

I love it. It's a great ingredient. It took off for a while, but then it kind of went dormant until we started using hyaluronic acid in fillers, like you were talking about. And then people started thinking, the marketing people predominantly in different brands, well, if we could put it in the skin and it hydrates there, why not put it on the skin and say it does the same thing? 

But if you're putting it on the surface of the skin, that million molecular weight thread is not going to get in your skin. There's no way. It's like filling a room full of basketballs and expecting them to go through the keyhole. It just isn't going to happen. 

So when we talk about which are better for the skin, there's different weights now or sizes of the hyaluronic acid molecule. If you see hyaluronic acid on an ingredient list, that, by law, is supposed to be the million molecular weight. It's just going to stay on the surface of the skin. 

If you're going to use something like that, if you're going to use hyaluronic acid at the million molecular weight, you need your humectants like your glycerol, your panthenol, or other types of humectants in the product. So look for those on the label. Otherwise, it'll just sit there and it won't do anything for your skin. It'll just dehydrate on your skin. 

But if you want a smaller molecular weight, then look for something that's called sodium hyaluronate. Now, again, we're going to be putting these in the show notes, so don't worry about writing everything down, especially if you're driving. Don't write that. Don't want to cause any accidents. 

But sodium hyaluronate is just chopped up thread of hyaluronic acid, so it's smaller. Now, you might even see something called hydrolyzed sodium hyaluronate. That is the micro size of the thread of hyaluronic acid, and that does get into your skin. That can go all the way to the bottom of your epidermis, the top layer of skin, and bring hydration to where the cells are being given birth in the bottom of the epidermis. 

13:19 Trina Reneá: So then there is a difference in the hyaluronic. 

13:21 Rebecca Gadberry: There's a big difference, but none of them are fakes, okay?

13:24 Trina Reneá: Right. 

13:26 Rebecca Gadberry: They're all real. 

13:26 Trina Reneá: It's just how they're bigger or smaller and what their purpose are in the product. 

13:31 Rebecca Gadberry: And also what marketing group got a hold of them. Maybe they wanted to make a big thing out of hyaluronic acid. Maybe they wanted to make a big thing out of the hyaluronic acid they were specifically using and wanted to make it unique. That happens quite a lot. So I'm always, always skeptical when I hear somebody say, “Oh, this is the only type to use.” Because, to me, have you tested all the other types? Have you tested against them? How do you know it's the only one to use? It may be great for your skin. It might not be so good for somebody else's. So I suggest not falling for that kind of hype. 

14:10 Trina Reneá: Right, that kind of marketing. It's like, “We use the best one, the only one.”

14:13 Rebecca Gadberry: Right. Of course you use the best you can, but I wouldn't be buying from you if I was a consumer if I didn't think your products were the best. But I'd love to try your product and see how it works for me. That's where it needs to go.

And I'd also like to say, I know it's kind of way deep into our podcast at this point, but always look for a money-back guarantee, especially the bottom of the container, bottom of the bottle or jar, because it might take you a full bottle to see how something is working on your skin. If it's not working, see if you can get your money back for it. I heartily recommend that, especially if you're buying on air or something from television or an infomercial or something.

14:57 Trina Reneá: Right. So on that note, I don't give money-back guarantees because I am a mom-and-pop shop. I'm like, I will let you take a little tester of it home to try it if you like it.

15:09 Rebecca Gadberry: Exactly. 

15:11 Trina Reneá: Then if you buy it and you open it and you use it, like I can't take it back. 

15:16 Rebecca Gadberry: But as an esthetician, you are analyzing their skin. They're not just buying something off a TV or from a department store or at CVS. They have gone to you specifically because you're a professional. So I can understand that. 

15:31 Trina Reneá: Yes. And also if somebody is using a product, like we've said in other episodes, if you're really buying the product because you want it to work for you, which I think most people do, at least give it a whole bottle's worth try. Then if you decide, like, that didn't do anything for me, then don't buy it again. But you can't just try it for a couple of days and go, “Eh, not… I don't know,” and then just quit because you're not giving the product a chance. 

15:58 Rebecca Gadberry: Right. Hyaluronic acid takes at least 48 hours to see any difference. If you're looking for other results than hydration, it's very good, some forms of it. And I'll talk about those in a minute. Some forms of it are wrinkle fillers from the surface of the skin, not underneath the skin. Others help to hydrate the area in the dermis where wrinkles can form. That's going to take longer. When you're working on a wrinkle, you're looking at anywhere from two weeks to three to six months to see amazing results. Anybody that shows you something that's overnight or instant, they're only working on the very surface of the skin. They're not working down deep, so it's extremely temporary. 

16:47 Trina Reneá: Right. It's like a pretend fix, kind of. 

16:50 Rebecca Gadberry: It's a service fix. 

16:51 Trina Reneá: Do you find that hyaluronic acid is good in a product on its own or do you think that it should be combined with other hydrating ingredients? What do you think? 

17:02 Rebecca Gadberry: I think it should always have humectants with it, because the humectants and the hyaluronic acid go together. 

17:11 Trina Reneá: That we talked about in 16A, I believe, is those hydrating ingredients. 

17:14 Rebecca Gadberry: Yes, the hydrating ingredients. And I think there's a big long list of them there. So you can just look when you're out shopping, just go to the podcast. 

17:24 Trina Reneá: Glycerin is a big one that is in a lot of products, right? 

17:27 Rebecca Gadberry: Glycerin, panthenol. Panthenol is huge also. Those are the two most common for skin.

17:34 Trina Reneá: Okay, so what else about hyaluronic acid do people want to know? 

17:38 Rebecca Gadberry: Well, hyaluronic acid can also be triggered in production inside your skin by certain molecules. That hydrolyzed sodium hyaluronate, the little what I call the micro-HA, micro hyaluronic acid, micro size, can do that. It can go down into the very bottom of your epidermis and help to trigger more hyaluronic acid being made.

18:07 Trina Reneá: Oh, that's awesome. 

18:08 Rebecca Gadberry: Yeah, we used to think that the dermis was the only part of the skin that contained hyaluronic acid. And I don't know if you remember me talking about this in class, but imagine Cherry Jell-O. It's kind of jiggly, right? What did we use to say about it? Jell-O Jiggles or whatever. I forget what it was. 

18:32 Trina Reneá: I don't know. 

18:32 Rebecca Gadberry: I’ve kind of banned him from my thoughts. And then imagine a thread, chopped up and running through the Cherry Jell-O. The Cherry Jell-O is a hyaluronic acid, and then the chopped up threads are collagen and elastin that give your dermis strength. That's kind of a model, a simple model of your dermis, which is underneath your epidermis or the top of your skin. Your wrinkles and sagging form in your dermis. Your epidermis is where your barrier forms. 

Remember when we talked about the stratum corneum and lipids and keeping your skin not only hydrated but lipid-rich so that it was a nice intact barrier? 

19:17 Trina Reneá: Yes.

19:18 Rebecca Gadberry: Well, when your cells are made in the epidermis, at the very bottom, kind of like the placenta on a baby, hyaluronic acid wraps around the cells at the very bottom called the basal layer. Then as the cells leave, they start to dry out. But the hyaluronic acid keeps them moist and hydrated and plump at the very bottom of the skin. So if we can keep that hyaluronic acid replaced around the basal layer, then we can keep the cells moist as they grow up over a 28-day process and leave the surface of the skin. 

19:58 Trina Reneá: Right. So as they go up, they die, but at least they'll be in a hydrated area. 

20:04 Rebecca Gadberry: Well, they'll retain their hydration. They won't be in a hydrated area anymore, but they'll retain their hydration from when they were babies. So the problem with hyaluronic acid is while it keeps us plump all over our bodies, as we get older it dries out. We don't produce enough of it. It's produced by different cells. 

20:23 Trina Reneá: Or oil.

20:24 Rebecca Gadberry: Or oil.

20:25 Trina Reneá: Water or oil. Everything slows down. 

20:27 Rebecca Gadberry: Everything slows down. Well, you know my definition of aging, right? 

20:31 Trina Reneá: What?

20:32 Rebecca Gadberry: Where everything bad goes up and everything good goes down. That's just basically it. 

20:39 Trina Reneá: That's right. 

20:40 Rebecca Gadberry: So hyaluronic acid is good. It's going to go down. So what we want to do with skin care is we want to keep the surface of the skin and deeper down hydrated as much as possible. So using different forms of hyaluronic acid is awesome, because when you use just straight hyaluronic acid, it's going to be on the surface of the skin offering continuous moisture to the skin right below it, the barrier. When you use sodium hyaluronate, it's going to go a little bit deeper into the stratum corneum or the barrier. When you use hydrolyzed sodium hyaluronate, the micronized…

21:17 Trina Reneá: It goes down to the very bottom.

21:18 Rebecca Gadberry: It goes down to the very bottom.

21:19 Trina Reneá: So do people ever put the three into products? 

21:21 Rebecca Gadberry: Yes. That's becoming really popular. I've formulated probably seven or eight in the last year alone for different brands all over the world. 

21:33 Trina Reneá: I bet that's fancy and nice. 

21:36 Rebecca Gadberry: I like to use four of them together.

21:40 Trina Reneá: Four different hydrating? All hyaluronic acids? 

21:41 Rebecca Gadberry: Yes. Four different forms of hyaluronic acid. There are other ones. There's one called, and you're going to have to see it for the whole ingredient list and what you're looking for on the show notes, but it's called “hyalurosome”. A hyalurosome is simply a liposome, which is a microscopic fatty bubble. 

22:05 Trina Reneá: It carries stuff into the skin. 

22:07 Rebecca Gadberry: It carries stuff into the skin. It's a micro bubble. And they put the micro-sized hyaluronic acid into the liposomal bubble and they call it a hyalurosome.

22:27 Trina Reneá: And where does that go down? 

22:29 Rebecca Gadberry: That goes into the dermis. I like to stack them so we're targeting four different places in the skin.

22:38 Trina Reneá: Wow. I bet that looks really nice. That'd be great in a body cream, too. 

22:42 Rebecca Gadberry: It feels good, too. Yeah, it feels really good. 

22:46 Trina Reneá: I want to feel that. 

22:47 Rebecca Gadberry: I know that there are at least seven products like that available for marketing right now. 

There's also something called acetylglucosamine. And acetylglucosamine is the raw material that your cells need to make hyaluronic acid. So we can also give them a cellular trigger, if you will, to make more hyaluronic acid by using something the cell is already familiar with to trigger it to make hyaluronic acid. 

23:18 Trina Reneá: Oh, I love those triggers. I like to trigger ATP, which is the energy of that cell.

23:22 Rebecca Gadberry: Yes, energy.

23:27 Trina Reneá: Yeah, because there are ingredients we can put in now that do trigger your body to make more of something, so I like that. What’s it called again?

23:35 Rebecca Gadberry: Biomolecular. It's actually called acetylglucosamine. We call them biomolecular mimics. All of these things come from fermented yeast, fermented bacteria. None of them are taken anymore from roosters. They cost about $98 a kilo or less. 

24:00 Trina Reneá: So hyaluronic acid serum shouldn't be super expensive.

24:04 Rebecca Gadberry: Absolutely not. 

24:05 Trina Reneá: So if you do get one that's like hyaluronic or hydrating, super hydrating hyaluronic something and it's in the hundreds, it's just marketing? Probably, maybe. I mean, I can't say that specific because we don't know what we're talking about.

24:20 Rebecca Gadberry: We don’t know. I would ask that question, though. And also hyaluronic acid itself, you want to use at about 1%. So you're going to find it in the middle or upper lower part of the ingredient list. 

24:38 Trina Reneá: Okay. I do remember we talked about where things fall in the list. So if somebody is looking for hyaluronic serum, you're saying it should be in the upper to middle?

24:52 Rebecca Gadberry: No, it should be in the middle to lower. 

24:54 Trina Reneá: Middle to lower. It doesn't have to be in the top. 

24:57 Rebecca Gadberry: No. 

24:58 Trina Reneá: Okay. 

24:59 Rebecca Gadberry: Because it could take moisture from your skin. That is a general rule of thumb. If there's only like five or six ingredients, you're going to see it probably towards the middle to upper, because there aren't that many ingredients. 

25:14 Trina Reneá: Right. Okay. We're going to wrap this up now. We wanted to do a quick little deep dive into hyaluronic. We'll see you guys next time. We're going to be back for another episode, a deep dive into fragrance. So come back and see us next time. Talk to you soon.

Bye, Rebecca. 

25:30 Rebecca Gadberry: Bye.

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