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First Aid Beauty Brighten + Glow Facial Radiance Pads With Glycolic + Lactic Acids Versus Good Molecules Mandelic Acid Serum

First Aid Beauty Brighten + Glow Facial Radiance Pads With Glycolic + Lactic Acids Versus Good Molecules Mandelic Acid Serum This smoothing exfoliating pad uses a pre-saturated pad with Lactic Acid and Glycolic Acid to refine skin texture and brighten dull-loo

By Peptide Skincare & Beauty Editorial TeamPublished

First Aid Beauty Brighten + Glow Facial Radiance Pads With Glycolic + Lactic Acids Versus Good Molecules Mandelic Acid Serum

This smoothing exfoliating pad uses a pre-saturated pad with Lactic Acid and Glycolic Acid to refine skin texture and brighten dull-looking skin.

This smoothing serum is formulated around Mandelic Acid and Phytic Acid to refine skin texture and brighten dull-looking skin.

What's inside

Key Ingredients

Benefits

Concerns

Ingredients Side-by-side

Water

Aloe Barbadensis Leaf Juice

Cucumis Sativus Fruit Water

Lactic Acid

Glycolic Acid

Hyaluronic Acid

Phyllanthus Emblica Fruit Extract

Citrus Limon Peel Extract

Citrus Nobilis Fruit Extract

Glycerin

Polysorbate 20

Phenoxyethanol

Potassium Sorbate

Sodium Benzoate

Citric Acid

Chlorphenesin

Sodium Hydroxide

Water, Aloe Barbadensis Leaf Juice, Cucumis Sativus Fruit Water, Lactic Acid, Glycolic Acid, Hyaluronic Acid, Phyllanthus Emblica Fruit Extract, Citrus Limon Peel Extract, Citrus Nobilis Fruit Extract, Glycerin, Polysorbate 20, Phenoxyethanol, Potassium Sorbate, Sodium Benzoate, Citric Acid, Chlorphenesin, Sodium Hydroxide

Mandelic Acid

Dimethyl Isosorbide

Propanediol

Potassium Hydroxide

Phytic Acid

Gluconolactone

Sodium Hyaluronate

Polyacrylate Crosspolymer-6

Allantoin

Caprylyl Glyceryl Ether

Sclerotium Gum

Sodium Polyacryloyldimethyl Taurate

Succinoglycan

Caprylhydroxamic Acid

Xanthan Gum

Water, Mandelic Acid, Dimethyl Isosorbide, Propanediol, Potassium Hydroxide, Phytic Acid, Gluconolactone, Sodium Hyaluronate, Polyacrylate Crosspolymer-6, Allantoin, Caprylyl Glyceryl Ether, Sclerotium Gum, Sodium Polyacryloyldimethyl Taurate, Succinoglycan, Caprylhydroxamic Acid, Xanthan Gum, Glycerin

Reviews

Alternatives

Ingredients Explained

These ingredients are found in both products.

Ingredients higher up in an ingredient list are typically present in a larger amount.

Glycerin (or glycerol) is a compound naturally found in your skin. It's a powerhouse humectant that pulls water into the stratum corneum.

Topically, glycerin does several things at once:

Your skin makes glycerin on its own (mostly from sebaceous oil breakdown) and shuttles it to your outermost layer of skin, or your epidermis, via aquaporin-3.

Aquaporin-3 is a transporter that is essential for normal skin hydration, elasticity, and repair. Interestingly, mice lacking in AQP3 have dry and less elastic skin that can be fully corrected with glycerin.

This ingredient is non-irritating, plays well with almost every ingredient, and works across all skin types. Typical use is anywhere between 3-10% but can go up to 79% in some leave-on products.

Just know very high concentrations (>40%) can feel tacky in low humidity.

Glycerin is the name for this ingredient in American English. British English uses Glycerol/Glycerine.

Water. It's the most common cosmetic ingredient of all. You'll usually see it at the top of ingredient lists, meaning that it makes up the largest part of the product.

So why is it so popular? Water most often acts as a solvent - this means that it helps dissolve other ingredients into the formulation.

You'll also recognize water as that liquid we all need to stay alive. If you see this, drink a glass of water. Remember to stay hydrated!

Similar Comparisons

The reference edit

Ingredients, questions
& further reading.

Connected source records selected through this article’s public topic index.

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Formula cabinet

Ingredients & structured notes

Ingredient index

First Aid Beauty Facial Radiance PolishIngredients explained

  1. 01Good 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.
  2. 02It’s mainly a solvent for ingredients that do not like to dissolve in oils but rather in water.
  3. 03Expand to read more
  4. 04Once inside the skin, it hydrates, but not from the outside - putting pure water on the skin (hello long baths!) is drying.
  5. 05One more thing: the water used in cosmetics is purified and deionized (it means that almost all of the mineral ions inside it is removed). Like this, the products can stay more stable over time.
  6. 06A cleansing agent that's claimed to be so gentle on the skin that it hardly impacts the skin barrier. It also gives a rich, creamy foam, it's based on vegetable fatty acids and is readily biodegradable.
  7. 07It's an especially important and popular ingredient in "syndet bars" (or soapless soaps). Dr. Leslie Baumann says in her great Cosmetic Dermatology book that thanks to the unique molecular characteristic of Sodium Cocoyl Isethionate, it "has defined…
  8. 08A fatty alcohol (the non-drying type with a long oil loving chain of 22 carbon atoms) that is used to increase the viscosity of the formula and it also helps the oily and the watery parts to stay nicely mixed together (called emulsion stabilizing).
  9. 09A naturally derived, readily biodegradable cleansing agent that gives a rich, creamy foam, is milder to the skin than most sulfate-based cleansers and provides a luxurious, silky skin-feel.
  10. 10Propanediol is a natural alternative for the often used and often bad-mouthed propylene glycol. It's produced sustainably from corn sugar and it's Ecocert approved.
  11. 11It's quite a multi-tasker: can be used to improve skin moisturization, as a solvent, to boost preservative efficacy or to influence the sensory properties of the end formula.
  12. 12A thickening and foam-boasting co-surfactant with amphoteric structure meaning that its head contains both a positively and a negatively charged part (surfactants are most commonly anionic meaning their head has a negative charge). It's very mild an…
  13. 13An oily kind of ingredient that can magically blend with water all by itself. This is called self-emulsifying and SE in its name stands for that.
  14. 14The difference between "normal" Glyceryl Stearate and this guy is that the SE grade contains a small amount of water-loving soap molecules, such as sodium stearate. This increases Glyceryl Stearate's affinity for water and gives it stronger emulsify…
  15. 15Other than that, it’s a nice emollient that gives a smooth and soft appearance to the skin.
  16. 16You can read some more at Glyceryl Stearate >>
  17. 17Sodium chloride is the fancy name of salt. Normal, everyday table salt.
  18. 18If (similar to us) you are in the weird habit of reading the label on your shower gel while taking a shower, you might have noticed that sodium chloride is almost always on the ingredient list. The reason for this is that salt acts as a fantastic th…
  19. 19If you are into chemistry (if not, we understand, just skip this paragraph), the reason is that electrolytes (you know, the Na+ and Cl- ions) screen the electrostatic repulsion between the head groups of ionic surfactants and thus support the format…
  20. 20Other than that, salt also works as an emulsion stabilizer in water-in-oil emulsions, that is when water droplets are dispersed in the outer oil (or silicone) phase. And last but not least, when salt is right at the first spot of the ingredient list…
Source · incidecoder.com ⟶
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Product index

Related product references

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First Aid Beauty 5 in 1 Eye Cream Ingredients in First Aid Beauty 5 in 1 Eye Cream explained: benefits, concerns, and detailed analysis of 36 ingredients including Water, Glycerin, and Dime…

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Comparison edit

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