Boosting Skin Barrier’s Function with a Marine Ingredient Containing Human-like Ceramides: Oceamides®
Interview with José Miguel Cabello,
CEO, MC Actives GmbH
What is skin barrier function?
Skin barrier is essentially your body's first line of defence, the outermost layer that stands between you and the environment. Think of it as a sophisticated security system for your skin. Its dual role is crucial: it locks in vital hydration, ensuring your skin stays plump and healthy, while simultaneously blocking out threats like pollution, irritants, and pathogens. Ultimately, it's the cornerstone of healthy, strong, and resilient skin, and maintaining its protective and regenerative functions is crucial.
Is it relevant to Skin Health?
Absolutely! Just like any living organism, our epidermal cells require enough water to function optimally. The skin barrier is the primary guardian responsible for maintaining this crucial moisture balance, preventing excessive transepidermal water loss (TEWL) to the environment. This is particularly critical in conditions like dry skin. While healthy skin naturally loses around 300-400 mL of water per day, a compromised barrier in dry skin, characterized by irregular epidermal cells and reduced water content, significantly increases this water escape. This directly leads to the familiar signs of dryness, flakiness, and tightness. Therefore, skincare ingredients that reinforce this seal are vital for restoring skin barrier function.
What are the triggers of skin barrier weakness?
The weakening of the skin barrier isn't due to a single factor; it's a multifactorial issue. While the aging process is an uncontrollable factor that naturally causes the skin barrier to thin by approximately 6.4% per decade, there are several controllable elements we must address. Our lifestyle choices, exposure to pollution, and UV radiation significantly impact skin health, triggering the production of Reactive Oxygen Species and promoting oxidative stress. If these factors are not managed, the skin barrier's structure and composition are compromised, making it less capable of defending itself against daily threats.
MC Actives offers an innovative solution to the skin barrier weakness: Oceamides®. What is Oceamides®? Why is it so cutting-edge?
Oceamides® is a groundbreaking natural alternative to synthetic ceramide NP, sourced from the marine microalgae Nannochloropsis oculata. What makes it so cutting-edge is its precise composition: a master blend of human-like lipids, specifically including human-like ceramides NP and NS. This unique profile allows it to overcome key challenges prevalent in the traditional ceramide market within the cosmetic industry.
What challenges in the ceramide market does Oceamides® overcome?
- Natural Origin: Unlike many traditional ceramide ingredients that are synthetic, Oceamides® offers a truly natural origin.
- Formulation advantages: easy to formulate with, ready to use in the aqueous phase at room temperature, avoiding high temperatures and saving money.
- Uncompromised Efficacy: Despite its natural source, Oceamides® delivers superior efficacy to synthetic ceramides, ensuring robust cosmetic benefits.
- Competitive Pricing: We are proud to offer Oceamides® at highly competitive prices, making premium barrier support more accessible.
Let's explore the mechanism of action: How does Oceamides® boost skin barrier function?
Oceamides® contains human-like lipids that form part naturally of the stratum corneum (the outermost layer of the epidermis). So, firstly Oceamides® works providing an extra of those compounds, contributing to thicken the skin barrier layer. The lipidic compounds seal the spaces among cells, avoiding water loss.
This not only is reflected in the hydration maintenance but also in the cell protection as the skin barrier is stronger to overcome external aggressors.
Additionally, this ingredient can promote epidermal regeneration causing the thicken of the skin barrier.
What are the benefits on skin health and skin appearance of using Oceamides®?
Thanks to the boosting of the skin barrier function including increased integrity, protection and regeneration, Oceamides® at 0.5% in cream increased significatively skin moisture by 13% in only 2 hours, while synthetic ceramide NP at 0.5% in cream increased moisture by 9%. After 3 days of application skin hydration increase after the application of Oceamides® at 0.5% was 14%, a comparative result of that obtained with ceramide NP.
In another clinical test, Oceamides® showed similar results that synthetic ceramide NP in reducing skin fatigue, and better results than synthetic ceramide NP increasing skin firmness.
Those results point out that undoubtedly this natural and microalgal ingredient (Oceamides®) is a substitute for synthetic ceramide NP.
How could Oceamides® improve your cosmetic formulas? What are the main claims?
One of the remarkable advantages of using Oceamides® in your final product is that it is easy to formulate with, offering advantages that will save you time and money.
The first one is that you can add the ingredient at room temperature (25ºC), without needing high temperatures and it is quick to add and disperse in the aqueous phase. This will save time and money. However, if you need it, you can also formulate it at higher temperatures (up to 80ºC).
The second advantage is that you can add it to the aqueous phase, contrary to conventional ceramides that cannot be incorporated in the aqueous phase.
In this way, one can produce aqueous serums, mists, but also creams, diverse final products based on Oceamides®.
