Personalize your skin care product with these skin firming ingredients

The easiest, and perhaps, most rewarding, way to DIY (do it yourself) skincare is to personalize a ready-made product you already like. You don’t need to start from scratch making a serum or cream or lotion. Just take a product you like and make it suit your body even better.

Do you want a product that will firm your skin? Maybe you like our Canvas or European cream? Or our sea kelp bioferment? Add to either of these a hint of any of the following sea kelp bioferment (with extra fucoidan), collagen peptides or hyaluronic acid.

What other benefits, besides instant skin tightening, will you get?

Pullulan (from my glossary) Product of fermentation, skin tightener. Pullulan is a polysaccharide consisting of maltotriose units, it is a α-1,4- ;α-1,6-glucan. Three glucose units in maltotriose are connected by an α-1,4 glycosidic bond, and the consecutive maltotriose units are connected to each other by an α-1,6 glycosidic bond. Pullulan is produced by the fungus Aureobasidium pullulans.
The main commercial use of pullulan is in the manufacture of edible films that are used in various breath freshener or oral hygiene products. Pullulan is also used as a carrier for other chemicals by scientists trying to elicit an immune response to cancer cells or just for drug delivery and to accelerate wound healing (working as a scaffold).
In skin care, I consider pullulan to be a “make-up” type of ingredient because its tightening effect is almost instant but it will wash away. In the long-term, it may help to enhance the immune response and make the skin more resistant to infections. Note: We have been experimenting with various concentrations of Pullulan in our standard products. It can be used at almost any concentration; our preference is 0.5%. We recommend mixing a smaller quantity first and adding it slowly until the optimal consistency is found. You can add some collagen peptides to make it even more effective.

Sea kelp bioferment (from my glossary) Anti-inflammatory, antiviral. This ferment obtained from sea kelp supplies a complete nutrient medium, and moisturizes skin and scalp. The substrate for fermentation is kelp, a sea macroalga (Phaeophyta), the species can vary according to availability and ecological considerations. Fermentation makes the cell contents of this alga readily available to the scalp, moisturizing it and providing the nutrients required to synthesize new components. It also has anti-itch activity.  This active is rich in fucoidan, caragenaan, algin, fucoxanthin, minerals and many active chemicals, will moisturize the skin and provide it with the nutrients required to synthesize new components.  It provides minerals like iodine, copper, molybdate, magnesium, etc., required as cofactors in enzymatic reactions of lipid metabolism and energy conversion. Our Sea Kelp Bioferment can be used as a base for any of our water-soluble actives. It is one of our favorite ingredients and you will encounter it in practically all of our ready mixed products.  It is nutritious and works perfectly as a mask or added to bath water.

Hyaluronic acid (a.k.a. hyaluronan, sodium hyaluronate). From my glossary: is a polysaccharide, made by animals and some bacteria, with long chains made of N-acetyl-D-glucosamine alternating with glucuronic acid. In our skins, it stabilizes the intercellular (in-between cells) space in the dermis, and contributes significantly to cell proliferation, migration, and skin repair, activities essential to skin health. By definition, the molecular weight of hyaluronic acid is in the millions. Small fragments of broken hyaluronic acid can’t hold water or form gels.
Because of its tremendous capacity to hold water, adding this active to your creams, lotions, gels or serums will help keep skin moist. Also, hyaluronidase in the skin will break this active down and the sugars released will be used to make new Hyaluronic Acid in our dermis.

Collagen peptides(from my glossary) Amino acids, peptides, building blocks.  Collagen is an important component of skin and of many other tissues. It is an insoluble protein and, as such, is not useful as an ingredient. Like most proteins, it is easy to break down and once this is done, the amino acids become available as a topical ingredient. The peptide mix used by Skin Actives is derived from marine collagen and is not suitable for vegans (we use an amino acid mix obtained by fermentation for vegan users). Collagen peptides are rich in glycine, proline alanine and other amino acids.

Want to make it even easier? Stick to solutions or gels, rather than powders, then you don’t even need to dissolve the powder. Follow the instructions that come with the ingredient you are planning to add.

DISCLAIMER: These claims have not been evaluated by the FDA and are not intended to diagnose, cure, treat or prevent any disease.