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How to make sure the base substances in cosmetic is qualified? Oil, fat, and wax are the base materials in cosmetic and skin care products. The sources are from plant, animal, mineral, and synthetic products. Animal fats are easy to absorb by skin, but they are not easy to storage. Vegetable oils are wild applied in cosmetics due to miscellaneous sources. The mineral oils are difficult to absorb by skin, but their advantages are price is cheap, better to isolate the skin with outer, and stable to storage. Synthetic products are designed to improve the drawbacks of animal fats and vegetable oils. They may be stable to storage, but they may hurt the skin. The structure of animal oil and vegetable oil is Triglyceride. The liquid phase is oil, and the solid phase is fat. They can be fatty acid and fatty alcohol after hydrolysis. There are 3 methods to evaluate the quality of oil, fat, and wax. Iodine value (IV) Iodine value is   mass of   iodine   in grams that is consumed b

Eczema is an inflammatory condition of the skin, the cause of which may be from outside environment, immune system, or a combination of both . The patients and the treating doctor hope the effective and convenient dermatological therapy. Physical therapy is usually inconvenient and need to a lot of patient but is effective. Systemic therapy is considered to be effective immediately. The patient and the treating doctor are often being conservative due to the risk of potential side effect. The following is dermatological therapies. Topical Corticosteroids Topical corticosteroids are certainly the mainstay of dermatological treatment of  inflammatory conditions. Corticosteroids function via by inducing suppression of inflammatory cytokines and inhibiting function of T cells and a range of other inflammatory cells. The production of arachidonic acid which is one of the fatty acid in skin is affected as well as the function of vascular and connective tissues. The potency

Eczema is an inflammatory condition of the skin, the cause of which may be from outside environment, immune system, or a combination of both. The basic symptom is itch. Spreading emollients is one of way to prevent the itchy skin.   Emollients Emollients can keep the skin dry by reducing water loss from the epidermis. Emollients are an essential part of their daily skin care for patients with dry skin such as eczema. There are many types of products like ointments , creams, lotions and so on. Evaporation of the product’s water from the skin can ease itching. It is important to avoid products containing potential allergens. Emollients can prevent eczema by maintaining skin barrier function An emollient is a   humectant,   lubricant   and   occluder. Occlusion provides a layer of oil on the skin's surface, thus slowing down water loss. A humectant enhances the surface of the skin's capacity to hold water. A lubricant reduces friction when anything rubs ag

The composition of cosmetic products A cosmetic and skin care product contains many ingredients. It could be divided into four groups roughly. They are the base material, additive agent, surfactant, and specific substance. Base materials include hydrophobic agent, hydrophilic agent, and powder. Base material dominates over 50% of the cosmetic and skin care product. Additive agents are like adding the aroma and colorful substances, antimicrobial agent and antioxidant agent. It makes sure the cosmetic and skin care products are safe and attractive. Surfactant is the ingredient to help to balance the surface tension of hydrophobic and hydrophilic agents. The final product would be a lotion or a cream. If the product is added specific substance, that product would have specific function. For example, the product added sun protect ingredients is called sun screen lotion.    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ help to find

Eczema is an inflammatory condition of the skin, the cause of which may be from outside environment, immune system, or a combination of both. The basic symptom is itch. There are many period of the symptoms for eczema. The conditions also could be acute, subacute, or chronic. The judgement could be by the careful histological examination from epidermis and dermis to observe the cell infiltrates. The dermal stroma contains all the necessary components for amplification and modification of the cellular response. The response includes the separation of the keratinocytes in stratum corneum in epidermis. The following is dermatological therapies.  part1 Bathing and Soaks There are three functions of bathing and soaks. 1.       Relief from itch for a moment. 2.       Astringent properties on skin which is exudative 3.       Prevent the bacterial proliferation such as Staphylococcus aureus by removing or reducing the inoculum size. Water Water is effective f

The myths of sun protection Many people believe their skins already are protected well if they apply sun block lotions. But it is not really. There are some myths of sun protection. 1.       The difference of realistic and practical value applied on skin The practical value is 2mg/ cm 2 on skin during the experiment for sun block lotion. The realistic average consumption of sun block products is 0.5-1.25mg/ cm 2   a day. That means needing to supply the lotion frequently to meet the experiment effect.     2.       The effectiveness of higher SPF According the testing, SPF 15 will protect 93% of sun light. SPF 30 will protect 96.66% of sun light. The sun protection factor is double, but the filter rate only increase a little. It shows not  the expensive and higher sun protection factor always is best. Otherwise, the normal products can’t provide wide band protection due to UVA and UVB have different wave lengths. The shorter wave length has higher energy to penetrate the

The applications of surfactants There are four kinds of surfactants which can decrease the surface tension of interface in the cosmetics and skin care products. They are anionic surfactant, cationic surfactant, amphoteric surfactant, and nonionic surfactant. The cosmetics and skin care products add surfactants for different functions as the following.    Emulsifier: anionic surfactant, nonionic surfactant Detergent: anionic surfactant, cationic surfactant, amphoteric surfactant Blowing agent: anionic surfactant, amphoteric surfactant Thickening agent: amphoteric surfactant, nonionic surfactant Bactericidal agent: cationic surfactant Solubilizer: nonionic surfactant Antistatic agent: cationic surfactant, amphoteric surfactant Wetting agent/ humectant: nonionic surfactant ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- help to find the specific skincare product ingredients by "skin+" App

How do pimples, zits, acne, blackhead and whitehead appear?  There are two kinds of sebaceous glands. One connects the follicle , and the other links the skin surface directly.     The frequent distributions of sebaceous gland are in forehead, cheek, chin, back, center of chest, and armpit. If the oil secretion is seriously flourished , it sticks out from the skin and causes pimples , zits and acne. As the sebum touch the air, it oxidizes and turns into black color . That is blackhead . The whitehead is oil secretion seriously flourished. But it can’t excrete out of the skin, it starts to block in the sebaceous gland and stretches the gland space . If the space has bacteria , it would become inflamed pimple and fill with pus .  -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- help to find the specific skincare product ingredients by "skin+" App

The characters of surfactant Decrease the surface tension The interfacial tension reaches the lowest value at the saturation of CMC ( Critical micelle concentration ). It also is an indicator to design the suitable surfactants adding in detergents.   Solubilization It means two different substances are immiscible in the beginning. They will be miscible after adding the third substance. It is called solubilization. For cosmetics and skincare products, they usually add surfactants as the third substance. The spice is immiscible with water, for example. Adding the suitable surfactant in spice and water for solubilization become lotion products.     Emulsification The two liquids are immiscible originally. But adding the third substance will let one of the two liquids become 0.2-50u particles separated in the other liquid. The phenomenon is called emulsification. The mixed liquid is emulsion. And the third substance is called emulsifier. For cosmetics and skincare

Protection of UVB and UVA The indicator of the sunblock lotion could be divided into for UVB and for UVA. Below is the data by the experiment for differential. 1.       The darker skin, the less suntanned. The MED (minimal erythema dose of 24 hrs exposure under sun)is higher as well. 2.       An example of skin testing MED of UVB is 20-35 mJ/cm 2 MED of UVA is 50000-60000 mJ/ cm 2 The results show UVA is not easy to cause erythema. But UVB does. The visible effectiveness of suntanned is from UVB. UVA causes immediate pigment darkening and disappear after few hours. UVA effectiveness is hard to measure and define in the experiment. But UVA will damage the elastin and collagen in dermis for long term. So the alternative testing is defined by the persistent pigment darkening.  The erythema results in UVB most of the time. It is meaningless if the lotion only protects UVA. It should be careful the long term suntanned, even if you apply the sun block lotion. You may do