Nowadays, it's impossible to look for a new beauty product without hearing the words, "clean beauty", and it makes sense! We don't want to use products that could harm our health or the environment. In some ways, clean beauty is a little like music- everyone can understand it, but very few people can agree on what's the best. Every brand has its own definition of what it means to be a "clean beauty" brand, so it can be very confusing when one brand says one ingredient is clean versus another brand saying an ingredient isn't clean. Clean beauty apps, like the Yuka app or the EWG app, claim to make navigating this world of clean beauty easier. All you have to do is scan the barcode on the bottom of the box and boom! The app tells you if there are any ingredients in the formula that could be hazardous to your health or the environment. While this may seem like a dream come true, the reality is slightly more nuanced.

Clean beauty apps are fairly consistent in what they state are "good" ingredients and what they state are "bad" ingredients. It's very often that the more natural ingredients score highly yet the synthetic ingredients tend to get low scores. This is a good example of the Appeal to Nature Fallacy, which states that something is good or desirable because it is natural, and that natural products are preferable to synthetic ones. Ironically, natural ingredients like essential oils are typically more irritating than synthetic ingredients. In its natural form, BOTOX® is one of the most toxic substances on earth, but when it's processed in a lab, it becomes one of the most highly sought-after cosmetic treatments in the world of dermatology.

In cosmetic formulations, there are two different types of ingredients- functional and active. Active ingredients promote change in the skin- vitamin c, for example, can stimulate collagen production. Functional ingredients work to make a product more elegant and improve the performance of the product. Ingredients like dimethicone are used to give products a nice silky texture and ingredients like carbomer make lotions and creams more thick. There are also multiple names for the same ingredient. On the back of a product label, vitamin c will never be written as vitamin c, but it may appear as L-ascorbic acid, sodium ascorbyl phosphate, magnesium ascorbyl phosphate, ascorbyl glucoside, ascorbyl palmitate, or tetrahexyldecyl ascorbate. That's a lot of long words, but they are all forms of vitamin c!

When navigating the skincare, haircare, or cosmetic aisle, it's best to approach the ingredients list with an open mind and curiosity at heart. If an ingredient has a long name and is hard to pronounce, that doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad thing. Dihydrogen monoxide sounds scary, but it's water, after all.

If you have any concerns or need personalized advice, stop by skinfo® and speak with one of our licensed estheticians!