Types of Effective Skin Moisturizer Ingredients

Moisturizing is the key components to maintaining healthy, youthful skin. Moisturizers don’t just make dry skin feel nicer. They provide a temporary support system to fill in for lost collagen and elastin, as well as help to repair the skin’s own moisture retention capacity. Also, keeping the skin plumped with moisture slows the progression and deepening of wrinkles. We will discuss the key ingredients in moisturizers – humectants, occlusives, emollients, and miscellaneous ingredients – and discuss their effects on the skin.

Emollients are lubricating ingredients that make the skin feel silky to the touch. The emollient part of moisturizers can be oil-based or water-based. Oil-based emollients are heavier and may leave a residue on your skin, so they’re best for people who have dry skin that needs intensive moisturizing. Water-based emollients, on the other hand, are lighter and less greasy, which make them ideal for people with normal, oily or acne-prone skin. The list of proven and safe emollients is long and includes: silicone, lanolin and other animal oils, shea butter, cocoa butter, petrolatum, mineral and plant oils, cholesterol, stearates, myristates, palmitates and triglycerides.

Water binding agents, also known as Natural Moisturizing Factors or NMFs, are ingredients that not only bind water to the outer layer of dry skin, but also work to repair the external skin matrix. NMFs do this by loosening dry, hardened cells to expose their water binding sites thereby enabling the skin to retain water as nature intended. They are so-named because they are part of the skin’s natural moisturizing system.

Water binding agents to look for are: collagen, elastin, hyaluronic acid (a.k.a. sodium hyalurate, sodium hyaluronate or trademarked variants such as Avon’s Bo-Hylurox) and other glycosaminoglycans, urea, glycerin, glycogen, glucose, fructose, sucrose, polysaccharides, amino acids, cholesterol, lipids, ceramides and lecithin. Urea is broadly recognized to be a very effective NMF. Another NMF, hyaluronic acid (a.k.a. cyclic hydroxy acid), has recently been incorporated into skin moisturizers. Hyaluronic acid looks extremely promising since it binds 1000 times its own weight in water.

Humectants attract water from the dermis into the epidermis,increasing the water content in the epidermis. When humidity is higher than 70 percent, humectants can also attract water from the atmosphere into the epidermis. Humectants can be thought of as the cosmetic equivalents of Natural Moisturizing Factor (NMF).

Occlusives increase the water content of the skin by slowing the evaporation of water from the surface of the skin. These ingredients are often greasy and are most effective when applied to damp skin. Mineral oil is often used because of its favorable texture, but it is not as effective at preventing evaporation of water as many other occlusives. Lanolin is expensive and potentially irritating. Silicone derivatives (dimethicone and cyclomethicone) are not greasy but have a limited moisturizing effect. They are often added to petroleum to make it feel less “greasy.”