Skip to content

Every Lipid Serum: what it is, why you need it.

https://skinactives.com/every-lipid-serum/

The ingredient list for our Every Lipid Serum (or ELS, for short) sounds as boring as any other ingredient list:

Squalane, Linum Usitatissmum (Flax) Seed Oil, Rosa Canina (Rosehip) Seed Oil, Lecithin, Salvia Hispanica (Chia) Seed Oil, Punica Granatum (Pomegranate) Seed Oil, Argania Spinosa (Argan) Kernel Oil, Tocotrienols, Tocopherol (Vitamin E), Astaxanthin, Lycopene, Xanthophyll, R-Alpha Lipoic Acid, Beta-Carotene, Docosahexanoic Acid, Ceramide-3, Cholesteryl Oleyl Carbonate (and) Cholesteryl Nonanoate (and) Cholesteryl Chloride (and) BHT, Phytosterols, Oryzanol.

Plant names (common and their Latin counterparts), chemicals with fancy names like astaxanthin  and others even harder to pronounce like docosohexanoic acid, and more. But ingredient lists are anything BUT boring. Good (always good in Skin Actives products) or bad, they are a chemical catalog of what you are applying to your skin. In this case, the name of the product tells you what it is all about: lipids or, the more common name, fats.

You may think of fats like something to avoid, especially if you are overweight, but lipids are not only unavoidable but also crucial for life. Various lipids are an integral part of cell membranes; they are partly responsible for the permeability properties that make every membrane in our cells able to function properly, allowing some stuff to come in, keeping other stuff out and allowing some chemicals to come in and out as required by the cell to continue to live.

We need lipids, including essential fatty acids, for our cells to function properly. During evolution we humans (actually, vertebrates in general)  lost some enzymes on the way, including some fatty acid desaturases, enzymes that remove two hydrogen atoms from a saturated fatty acid creating a double bond. For example, we can’t convert oleic acid into linoleic acid and α-linolenic acid, both of these polyunsaturated fatty acids that are essential for development. This changes the spacial arrangement of the fatty acid. It also changes its physical properties, and the behavior of the membrane where that fatty acid is inserted, including how it responds to temperature changes.

We say that ELS has no “fillers”. There is nothing wrong with fillers, as we call the ingredients that have no clear biochemical activity on our skin cells.  However, we need those ingredients to dissolve actives, to protect actives from the action of bacteria and mold, to make the product pleasant (you would not use a non-pleasant product),  etc.  It just happens that ELS does not need any non-active ingredient to be able to do its job. In the absence of water, there will be no bacterial or fungal growth so you don’t need preservatives. You don’t need a fragrance (if you want a fragrance you can use a perfume you like, assuming you have no allergy problems).

ELS is one of our key products. It is essential for all skin types, especially those with dry skin, to soothe and moisturize. It will also help eliminate rough patches of skin affected by psoriasis. This serum contains the lipids all skin needs to maintain a healthy barrier against the environment. The objective of this every lipid serum (not literally every lipid, but close enough) is to provide an array of nutrients and antioxidants that your skin needs to stay healthy. \

What else is in ELS? It contains derivatives of cholesterol, another crucial component of cell membranes; phytosterols (also lipids), phosphatidyl choline (in lecithin) . Tocopherol and other lipophilic antioxidants prevent lipid peroxidation in cellular membranes and peroxidation of other lipids, including those we use as energy for our mitochondria to use to produce ATP and reducing power that will be used in making everything else our cells require.