Peptide Skincare & BeautySkin science and ingredient guides

Product and ingredient reference

Dermexcel Collagen Serum

Dermexcel Collagen Serum Dermexcel Collagen Serum ingredients explained: Aqua, Tetrahexyldecyl Ascorbate, Honey Extract, Soluble Collagen, Hydrolyzed Elastin, Sodium PCA, Serine, Glycogen, Sodium Acrylates Copolymer, Lecithin, Niacinamide, Hydrolyzed Hyaluroni

Dermexcel Collagen Serum Dermexcel Collagen Serum ingredients explained: Aqua, Tetrahexyldecyl Ascorbate, Honey Extract, Soluble Collagen, Hydrolyzed Elastin, Sodium PCA, Serine, Glycogen, Sodium Acrylates Copolymer, Lecithin, Niacinamide, Hydrolyzed Hyaluronic Acid, Cyclopentasiloxane, C30-45 Alkyl Cetearyl Dimethicone Crosspolymer, PEG/PPG-20/23, Polyacrylamide, C13-14 Isoparaffin, Laureth-7, Sodium Phytate, Aqua, Alcohol, Phenoxyethanol, Ethylhexylglycerin, Tocopherol, Dimethyl Isosorbide, Hydroxypinacolone Retinoate, Hydroxyethylcellulose Show all ingredients by function Aqua solvent Tetrahexyldecyl Ascorbate antioxidant, skin brightening goodie Honey Extract moisturizer/​humectant Soluble Collagen Hydrolyzed Elastin moisturizer/​humectant, emollient Sodium PCA skin-identical ingredient, moisturizer/​humectant 0, 0 Serine skin-identical ingredient Glycogen Sodium Acrylates Copolymer viscosity controlling Lecithin emollient, emulsifying Niacinamide cell-communicating ingredient, skin brightening, anti-acne, moisturizer/​humectant superstar Hydrolyzed Hyaluronic Acid Cyclopentasiloxane emollient, solvent C30-45 Alkyl Cetearyl Dimethicone Crosspolymer emollient PEG/PPG-20/23 Polyacrylamide C13-14 Isoparaffin emollient, viscosity controlling, solvent Laureth-7 emulsifying, surfactant/​cleansing Sodium Phytate chelating Alcohol antimicrobial/​antibacterial, solvent, viscosity controlling icky Phenoxyethanol preservative Ethylhexylglycerin Tocopherol antioxidant 0-3, 0-3 Dimethyl Isosorbide solvent, viscosity controlling Hydroxypinacolone Retinoate cell-communicating ingredient Hydroxyethylcellulose 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. Expand to read more Once inside the skin, it hydrates, but not from the outside - putting pure water on the skin (hello long baths!) is drying. One 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. Tetrahexyldecyl Ascorbate is a stable, oil-soluble form of skincare big shot Vitamin C. If you do not know, why Vitamin C is such a big deal in skincare, click here and read all about it. We are massive vitamin C fans and have written about it in excruciating detail. So now, you know that Vitamin C is great and all, but it's really unstable and gives cosmetics companies many headaches. To solve this problem they came up with vitamin C derivatives, and one of them is Tetrahexyldecyl Ascorbate (let's call it THDA in short). It's a really promising candidate (see below), but while reading all the goodness about it in a minute, do not forget that derivatives not only have to be absorbed into the skin but also have to be converted to pure vitamin C (ascorbic acid or AA) and the efficacy of the conversion is often unknown. In addition, vitamin C's three magic properties (antioxidant, collagen booster, skin brightener) are all properly proven in-vivo (on real people), but for the derivatives, it's mostly in-vitro studies or in the case of THDA, it's in-vitro and done by an ingredient supplier. With this context in mind let's see what THDA might be able to do. First, it is stable (if pH < 5), easy to formulate, and a joy to work with for a cosmetic chemist. Second, because it's oil-soluble, its skin penetration abilities seem to be great. So great in fact, that it surpasses the penetration of pure vitamin C threefold at the same concentration and it penetrates successfully into the deeper layers of the skin (that is usually important to do some anti-aging work). There is also in-vitro data showing that it converts to AA in the skin. Third, THDA seems to have all three magic abilities of pure vitamin C: it gives antioxidant protection from both UVB and UVA rays, it increases collagen synthesis (even more than AA) and it has a skin brightening effect by reducing melanogenesis by more than 80% in human melanoma cell cultures. So this all sounds really great, but these are only in-vitro results at this point. We could find Tetrahexyldecyl Ascorbate mentioned only in one published in-vivo study that examined the anti-aging properties of a silicone formula containing 10% AA and 7% THDA. The authors theorized that the 10% AA is released slowly from the silicon delivery system and probably stays in the upper layer what‑it‑does antioxidant | skin brightening moisturizer/humectant moisturizer/humectant | emollient skin-identical ingredient | moisturizer/humectant irritancy, com. emollient | emulsifying cell-communicating ingredient | skin brightening | anti-acne | moisturizer/humectant emollient | solvent emollient | viscosity controlling | solvent emulsifying | surfactant/cleansing antimicrobial/antibacterial | solvent | viscosity controlling solvent | viscosity controlling

Open original product source