Cica PDRN Serum Mist
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Mania Holic Cica PDRN Serum MistIngredients explained
Good old water, aka H2O. The most common skincare ingredient of all. You can usually find it right in the very first spot of the ingredient list, meaning it’s the biggest thing out of all the stuff that makes up the product.
It’s mainly a solvent for ingredients that do not like to dissolve in oils but rather in water.
Once inside the skin, it hydrates, but not from the outside - putting pure water on the skin (hello long baths!) is drying.
One more thing: the water used in cosmetics is purified and deionized (it means that almost all of the mineral ions inside it is removed). Like this, the products can stay more stable over time.
A super common emollient that makes your skin feel nice and smooth. It comes from coconut oil and glycerin, it’s light-textured, clear, odorless and non-greasy. It’s a nice ingredient that just feels good on the skin, is super well tolerated by every skin type and easy to formulate with. No wonder it’s popular.
A clear, colorless liquid that works as a solvent and viscosity decreasing ingredient. It also has great skin-moisturizing abilities.
It's a nice glycerin-based humectant and emollient that gives skin a smooth and luxurious feel.
A really multi-functional helper ingredient that can do several things in a skincare product: it can bring a soft and pleasant feel to the formula, it can act as a humectant and emollient, it can be a solvent for some other ingredients (for example it can help to stabilize perfumes in watery products) and it can also help to disperse pigments more evenly in makeup products. And that is still not all: it can also boost the antimicrobial activity of preservatives.
- A multi-functional skincare superstar with several proven benefits for the skin
- Great anti-aging, wrinkle smoothing ingredient used at 4-5% concentration
- Fades brown spots alone or in combination with amino sugar, acetyl glucosamine
- Increases ceramide synthesis that results in a stronger, healthier skin barrier and better skin hydration
- Can help to improve several skin conditions including acne, rosacea, and atopic dermatitis
We don't have description for this ingredient yet.
- A natural moisturizer that’s also in our skin
- A super common, safe, effective and cheap molecule used for more than 50 years
- Not only a simple moisturizer but knows much more: keeps the skin lipids between our skin cells in a healthy (liquid crystal) state, protects against irritation, helps to restore barrier
- Effective from as low as 3% with even more benefits for dry skin at higher concentrations up to 20-40%
- High-glycerin moisturizers are awesome for treating severely dry skin
An easy-to-formulate, commonly used, nice to have ingredient that’s also called pro-vitamin B5. As you might guess from the “pro” part, it’s a precursor to vitamin B5 (whose fancy name is pantothenic acid).
Its main job in skincare products is to moisturise the skin. It’s a humectant meaning that it can help the skin to attract water and then hold onto it. There is also research showing that panthenol can help our skin to produce more lovely lipids that are important for a strong and healthy skin barrier.
Another great thing about panthenol is that it has anti-inflammatory and skin protecting abilities. A study shows that it can reduce the irritation caused by less-nice other ingredients (e.g. fragrance, preservatives or chemical sunscreens) in the product.
Research also shows that it might be useful for wound healing as it promotes fibroblast (nice type of cells in our skin that produce skin-firming collagen) proliferation.
If that wasn’t enough panthenol is also useful in nail and hair care products. A study shows that a nail treatment liquide with 2% panthenol could effectively get into the nail and significantly increase the hydration of it.
As for the hair the hydration effect is also true there. Panthenol might make your hair softer, more elastic and helps to comb your hair more easily.
Butylene glycol, or let’s just call it BG, is a multi-tasking colorless, syrupy liquid. It’s a great pick for creating a nice feeling product.
BG’s main job is usually to be a solvent for the other ingredients. Other tasks include helping the product to absorb faster and deeper into the skin (penetration enhancer), making the product spread nicely over the skin (slip agent), and attracting water (humectant) into the skin.
It’s an ingredient whose safety hasn’t been questioned so far by anyone (at least not that we know about). BG is approved by Ecocert and is also used enthusiastically in natural products. BTW, it’s also a food additive.
We don't have description for this ingredient yet.
You probably know olive oil from the kitchen as a great and healthy option for salad dressing but it's also a great and healthy option to moisturize and nourish the skin, especially if it's on the dry side.
Similar to other emollient plant oils, it's loaded with nourishing fatty acids: oleic is the main component (55-83%), and also contains linoleic (3.5-20%) and palmitic acids (7-20%). It also contains antioxidant polyphenols, tocopherols (types of vitamin E) and carotenoids and it's one of the best plant sources of skin-identical emollient, Squalene.
Overall, a great option for dry skin but less so for acne-prone or damaged skin.
A glycerin-derived gentle cleansing agent that is described as being skin and eye-friendly, and not leaving the skin dry or tight. It's also used as a co-emulsifier or solubilizer that helps to blend small amounts of oily things into water-based products.
Exactly what it sounds: nice smelling stuff put into cosmetic products so that the end product also smells nice. Fragrance in the US and parfum in the EU is a generic term on the ingredient list that is made up of 30 to 50 chemicals on average (but it can have as much as 200 components!).
If you are someone who likes to know what you put on your face then fragrance is not your best friend - there's no way to know what’s really in it.
Also, if your skin is sensitive, fragrance is again not your best friend. It’s the number one cause of contact allergy to cosmetics. It’s definitely a smart thing to avoid with sensitive skin (and fragrance of any type - natural is just as allergic as synthetic, if not worse!).
If you have spotted ethylhexylglycerin on the ingredient list, most probably you will see there also the current IT-preservative, phenoxyethanol. They are good friends because ethylhexylglycerin can boost the effectiveness of phenoxyethanol (and other preservatives) and as an added bonus it feels nice on the skin too.
Also, it's an effective deodorant and a medium spreading emollient.
Super common soothing ingredient. It can be found naturally in the roots & leaves of the comfrey plant, but more often than not what's in the cosmetic products is produced synthetically.
It's not only soothing but it' also skin-softening and protecting and can promote wound healing.
It’s one of those little helper ingredients that makes sure the product stays the same over time. No color change or anything like that. It does so by neutralizing the metal ions in the formula (that usually get into there from water) that would otherwise cause some not so nice changes.
Glyceryl acrylate/acrylic acid copolymer is the fancy word for a common polymer (big molecule from repeated subunits), namely polyacrylic acid (aka carbomer when it comes to cosmetics) with glycerin attached to it in some places.
The main thing of this polymer is that it forms a hydrogel (trade named Lubrajel) that can sit on top of the skin and provide moisturizing, water-soluble ingredients such as glycerin to the skin. Think of it as a very thin, wet sponge that a cosmetic manufacturer can fill with good ingredients for your skin. It also works as a thickening agent (remember, it is a carbomer type of molecule), and can provide the skin with a nice slippery feel. It can also draw water to the skin (thank you, pendant glycerol groups!), providing skin hydration.
Also, don’t let people scare you into thinking polyacrylic acid is dangerous because of the toxicity of acrylic acid. Since acrylic acid is dangerous due to its ability to absorb into the skin (since it’s small), when you chain them together into a polymer (which is big), this danger is no longer significant.
Adenosine is an important little compound in our body that has a vital cell-signalling role. Research on smearing it on our face is also promising and shows so far a couple of things:
- It can help with wound healing
- It’s a good anti-inflammatory agent
- It might even help with skin’s own collagen production and improve skin firmness and elasticity
- It helps with barrier repair and protection
- It might be even useful for the hair helping with hair thickness and hair growth
We don't have description for this ingredient yet.
We don't have description for this ingredient yet.
Citric acid comes from citrus fruits and is an AHA. If these magic three letters don’t tell you anything, click here and read our detailed description on glycolic acid, the most famous AHA.
So citric acid is an exfoliant, that can - just like other AHAs - gently lift off the dead skin cells of your skin and make it more smooth and fresh.
There is also some research showing that citric acid with regular use (think three months and 20% concentration) can help sun-damaged skin, increase skin thickness and some nice hydrating things called glycosaminoglycans in the skin.
But according to a comparative study done in 1995, citric acid has less skin improving magic properties than glycolic or lactic acid. Probably that’s why citric acid is usually not used as an exfoliant but more as a helper ingredient in small amounts to adjust the pH of a formulation.
A big molecule created from repeated subunits (a polymer of acrylic acid) that magically converts a liquid into a nice gel formula. It usually has to be neutralized with a base (such as sodium hydroxide) for the thickening to occur and it creates viscous, clear gels that also feel nice and non-tacky on the skin. No wonder, it is a very popular and common ingredient. Typically used at 1% or less in most formulations.
It's a common little helper ingredient that helps water and oil to mix together. Also, it can help to increase the solubility of some other ingredients in the formula.
- Primary fat-soluble antioxidant in our skin
- Significant photoprotection against UVB rays
- Vit C + Vit E work in synergy and provide great photoprotection
- Has emollient properties
- Easy to formulate, stable and relatively inexpensive
A tripeptide (three amino acids attached to each other: Lys-Val-Lys) that's claimed to protect and boost collagen and improve skin texture.
The manufacturer did an in-vivo (made on real people) study with 45 volunteers and found that used twice daily for 84 days 1% and 2.5% Syn-Coll reduces the appearance of wrinkles by 7 and 12% respectively. In another study (also by the manufacturer) with 33 female Chinese volunteers, 77% of the participants felt that Syn-Coll visibly improved the firmness and elasticity of the skin after 4 weeks. What's more, 60% of the participants also noticed a reduction in the look of the pore size also after 4 weeks of treatment.
We don't have description for this ingredient yet.
- GHK-Cu is a copper-peptide complex found naturally in yucky bodily fluids (plasma, saliva, and urine)
- It has unique wound healing properties by stimulating the breakdown of unhealthy, too large collagen in scar tissue and stimulating nice and healthy collagen production afterwards
- It stimulates the production of several important skin-identical ingredients (e.g. collagen, elastin, and glycosaminoglycans)
- It has significant anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effect
- There are a few promising studies showing GHK-Cu can improve skin elasticity, clarity, firmness and reduce lines and wrinkles
- It can improve hair growth by enlarging hair follicles (and bigger follicles produce longer, thicker hair)
- There are some urban legends about possible overdosing or facial hair problems (read more in geeky details)
A really famous peptide that is part of Matrixyl 3000, the most sold peptide complex in the word. Before we go and find out what the big deal with Matrixyl 3000 is, let's just focus on Palmitoyl Tripeptide-1 itself for a bit.
It's a small three amino acid (they are the building blocks of all proteins) peptide with the amino sequence of glycine-histidine-lysine, or GHK. GHK is attached to palmitic acid (a fatty acid) to increase oil solubility and skin penetration.
The GHK part is the important one as it's a type I collagen fragment. When collagen naturally breaks down in the skin, the resulting peptide fragments signal to the skin that it should get to work and create some nice, new collagen. Adding in collagen fragment peptides, like GHK, might trick the skin into thinking that collagen has broken down and it's time to create some more.
Therefore, Palmitoyl Tripeptide-1 is believed to be able to stimulate collagen production in the skin, and more collagen means fewer wrinkles and younger looking skin.
In Matrixyl 3000, Palmitoyl Tripeptide-1 is coupled with Palmitoyl Tetrapeptide-7 and the duo works in synergy to reduce wrinkles and give younger looking skin. According to the manufacturer's in-vivo (made on real people) test, applying 3% Matrixyl 3000 twice a day for 2 months resulted in all of the following things:
- 39.4% reduction in surface occupied by deep wrinkles
- 32.9% reduction in main wrinkle density
- 19.9% reduction in main wrinkle average depth
- 16% improvement in roughness
- 16.2% in lifting effect
- 5.5% improvement in elasticity
- 15.5% improvement in skin tone
Manufacturer results, of course, always have to be taken with a pinch of salt, but if you like peptides, the Matryxil 3000 duo is one of the best-proven and most well-known ones and it's something that is worth trying.
A four amino acid peptide with the amino sequence of glycine-glutamine-proline-arginine. It is attached to palmitic acid (a fatty acid) to increase oil solubility and skin penetration.
It works by reducing the production of the signal molecule, interleukin-6 (IL-6) which promotes inflammation in the skin and less inflammation means slower degradation of important things (like collagen) that results in younger looking skin for a longer time.
It works in synergy with its pal, Palmitoyl Tripeptide-1 in the famous Matrixyl 3000 complex. You can read some more about the famous duo here.
We don't have description for this ingredient yet.
Centella Asiatica - or sometimes also called Gotu Kola or Cica - has been used in folk medicine for hundreds of years. It’s traditionally used to improve small wounds, burns and scratches and it’s also a well known anti-inflammatory agent for eczema.
Recently science has taken an interest in Gotu Kola as well and it turns out it really has many active compounds with several benefits. Just for hard-core geeks, the main biologically active compounds are pentacyclic triterpenoid saponins called asiaticoside, madecassoside, asiatic and madecassic acid (also called centellosides).
One of the biological activities of the centellosides is to be able to stimulate GAGs (glycosaminoglycans - polysaccharides that are part of the liquidy stuff between our skin cells), and especially hyaluronic acid synthesis in our skin. This is probably one of the reasons why Centella Asiatica Extract has nice skin moisturizing properties that was confirmed by a 25 people, four weeks study along with Centella's anti-inflammatory effects.
Madecassoside can also help in burn wound healing through increasing antioxidant activity and enhancing collagen synthesis. Asiaticoside was shown to increase antioxidant levels on rats skin when applied at 0.2%.
Centella Asiatica also often shows up in products that try to treat cellulite or striae. Of course, it cannot make a miracle but it might have some effect via regulating microcirculation and normalizing the metabolism in the cells of connective tissues.
Bottom line: Gotu Kola is a great plant ingredient with proven wound healing, anti-inflammatory, and antioxidant properties. Nice to spot on any ingredient list.
One of the main biologically active components of the famous medicinal plant, Centella Asiatica, aka Gotu Kola. It has well established wound healing and antioxidant activities.
In-vitro (made in the lab) studies also show that Asiaticoside stimulates GAGs (glycosaminoglycans - polysaccharides that are part of the liquidy stuff between our skin cells) production as well as collagen I synthesis. Read more at Gotu Kola >>
One of the main biologically active components of the famous medicinal plant, Centella Asiatica, aka Gotu Kola. It has well established wound healing, skin-soothing and antioxidant activities.
There is also a study by La Roche Posay (belongs to L'Oreal) that examined the anti-aging effects of 5% Vitamin C combined with 0.1% Madecassoside. They mention that " Madecassoside is known to induce collagen expression and ⁄ or to modulate inflammatory mediators thus might prevent and correct some signs of aging." The surprisingly long, 6-month study observed "significant improvement of the clinical score for deep and superficial wrinkles, suppleness, firmness, roughness, and skin hydration", but Vitamin C in itself is already an anti-aging superstar, so it is hard to know how much Madecassoside did.
Another promising property of Madecassoside is that it seems to inhibit UV-induced melanin synthesis (test formula with 0.05% MA, used twice a day on 23 volunteers for 8 weeks), making it a great active for hyperpigmentation-prone skin.
If that would not be enough, the French manufacturer (Seppic) also has encouraging in-vivo studies on the molecule. Used at 0.2%, Madecassoside reduces redness and peeling in skin with light atopic dermatitis as well as itching in psoriasis-prone skin.
One of the biologically active components of Gotu Kola. It's a bit less prominent than its sister component, Asiaticoside, but in-vitro (made in the lab) studies show that Asiatic Acid also stimulates GAGs (glycosaminoglycans - polysaccharides that are part of the liquidy stuff between our skin cells) production as well as collagen I synthesis.
English translation equals that it probably contributes to the well-established moisturizing and wound healing abilities of Gotu Kola.
One of the biologically active components of Gotu Kola that is thought to contribute to the plant extract's well-documented skin regenerating, wound healing, and moisturizing properties.
If you are into Gotu Kola we have some more info at Centella Asiatica Extract and its other biologically active components Madecassoside, Asiaticoside and Asiatic Acid.
One of the many types of ceramides that can be found naturally in the upper layer of the skin. Ceramides make up about 50% of the goopy stuff that's between our skin cells and play a super important role in having a healthy skin barrier and keeping the skin hydrated. It works even better when combined with its pal, Ceramide 1.
We wrote way more about ceramides at ceramide 1, so click here to know more.
Beta-Glucan is a nice big molecule composed of many smaller sugar molecules (called polysaccharide). It’s in the cell walls of yeast, some mushrooms, seaweeds, and cereals.
It’s a real goodie no matter if you eat it or put it on your face. Eating it is anti-diabetic, anti-cancer, and even lowers blood cholesterol.
Putting it on your face also does a bunch of good things: it‘s shown to have intensive skin repairing & wound healing properties, it’s a mild antioxidant, a great skin soother, and moisturizer, and it even shows promising anti-aging benefits.
The manufacturer of the ingredient did a published study with 27 people and examined the effect of 0.1% beta-glucan. They found that despite the large molecular size the smaller factions of beta-glucan penetrate into the skin, even into the dermis (the middle layer of the skin where wrinkles form). After 8 weeks there was a significant reduction of wrinkle depth and height and skin roughness has also improved greatly.
Bottom line: Beta-glucan is a great ingredient, especially for sensitive or damaged skin. It soothes, moisturizes, and has some anti-aging magic properties.
We don't have description for this ingredient yet.
Lactococcus Ferment Lysate is a fairly new probiotic ingredient that is obtained from the Gram-positive bacteria, Lactococcus lactis. The lysate is a fluid substance that is produced when you break down the cell membrane, which means it contains interesting things including cytoplasm and cell wall fragments.
According to the manufacturer, it positively influences both the speed and quality of epidermal growth that results in better barrier function and overall skin quality. To prove their point, the German manufacturer conducted several in-vitro (made in test tubes) tests examining how the treatment with Lactococcus Ferment Lysate (LFL) affects important skin proteins.
They found that gene expression influencing the proteins binding the live skin cells together (such as Occludin, Desmocollin 1 and Desmoglein 1) is stimulated by LFL, as well as the expression of enzymes (Kallikrein 5 and 7) breaking the bonds between the shedding dead skin cells. LFL also had a positive influence on epidermal growth and on the thickness of the stratum corneum (the outermost layer of the skin). Another positive finding was that LFL stimulated the production of antimicrobial peptides that play an important role in the immunocompetence of the skin cells.
As for in-vivo tests, the manufacturer only did one and that had only 5 volunteers. They did some tape stripping (exactly what it sounds, hurting the skin by stripping off the top layers) and examined skin renewal and barrier recovery. 4 days after the experiment 3% Lactococcus Ferment Lysate used twice daily resulted in thicker stratum corneum (the difference was about 2 µm) and less trans-epidermal water loss.
Overall, Lactococcus Ferment Lysate is a promising but fairly unproven ingredient that might help with the natural skin renewal process as well as with a healthy skin barrier and skin flora.
Bifida Ferment Lysate is a probiotic ingredient that’s used in one of the most iconic serums in the world, the Estee Lauder Advanced Night Repair. Based on manufacturer info it potently protects against UV-induced damage in the skin and helps with DNA repair. An Estee Lauder patent from 2009 also talks about DNA repair activity.
As far as published research goes we could find one promising one. It showed that applying 10% bacterial extract to sensitive, reactive skin helped with better barrier function and decreased skin sensitivity.
Overall, it is definitely a promising ingredient, even for sensitive skin types but not the most proven one (yet).
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| what‑it‑does | solvent |
| what‑it‑does | emollient |
| what‑it‑does | solvent |
| what‑it‑does | moisturizer/humectant | emollient | viscosity controlling |
| irritancy, com. | 0, 0 |
| what‑it‑does | solvent |
| what‑it‑does | cell-communicating ingredient | skin brightening | anti-acne | moisturizer/humectant |
| what‑it‑does | skin-identical ingredient | moisturizer/humectant |
| irritancy, com. | 0, 0 |
| what‑it‑does | soothing | moisturizer/humectant |
| irritancy, com. | 0, 0 |
| what‑it‑does | moisturizer/humectant | solvent |
| irritancy, com. | 0, 1 |
| what‑it‑does | antimicrobial/antibacterial | surfactant/cleansing |
| what‑it‑does | antioxidant | emollient |
| irritancy, com. | 0, 0-2 |
| what‑it‑does | surfactant/cleansing | emulsifying |
| what‑it‑does | perfuming |
| what‑it‑does | emulsifying |
| what‑it‑does | preservative |
| what‑it‑does | soothing |
| irritancy, com. | 0, 0 |
| what‑it‑does | chelating |
| what‑it‑does | moisturizer/humectant | viscosity controlling |
| what‑it‑does | cell-communicating ingredient |
| what‑it‑does | surfactant/cleansing |
| what‑it‑does | skin brightening |
| what‑it‑does | buffering |
| what‑it‑does | viscosity controlling |
| irritancy, com. | 0, 1 |
| what‑it‑does | emulsifying | surfactant/cleansing |
| irritancy, com. | 0, 0 |
| what‑it‑does | antioxidant |
| irritancy, com. | 0-3, 0-3 |
| what‑it‑does | cell-communicating ingredient |
| what‑it‑does | cell-communicating ingredient | soothing | antioxidant |
| what‑it‑does | cell-communicating ingredient |
| what‑it‑does | cell-communicating ingredient |
| what‑it‑does | moisturizer/humectant |
| what‑it‑does | soothing | antioxidant | moisturizer/humectant |
| what‑it‑does | antioxidant | perfuming |
| what‑it‑does | antioxidant | soothing |
| what‑it‑does | skin-identical ingredient |
| what‑it‑does | soothing | moisturizer/humectant |