When you hear about news in the skincare business it is mostly about exotic ingredients and active substances. However, the active ingredients only make up a few percentages of a cream or a lotion, together with stabilizers, preservatives, emulsifiers and perfume. The rest, that is, about 95% of the product, consists of water and lipids (fatty substances such as oils and waxes).
Emulsions
Lately things have started to happen within this 95% part, not at least in the scientific arena. Creams and lotions are usually called emulsions. This is because you mix water and lipids together with emulsifiers. Without the emulsifiers, the creams would separate, like vinaigrettes. The emulsifiers “emulsify” the cream, that is, they make them fluffy and stable, because an emulsifier can bind both water and lipids.
Unfortunately, an emulsifier can also dissolve water and lipids, so they can also be viewed as tensides, that is, soap-like substances.
Paving the way for sensitive skin
When you use a conventional cream, you will thus add a soap-like substance to your skin that could break down your own skin barrier and natural lipid protection. This can pave the way for various skin disorders such as sensitivity, irritation, allergies and premature ageing.
Now this isn’t as awful as it sounds. Emulsifiers today are very gentle. However, if you already have a sensitive skin, or want to avoid theses kinds of substances, more or less all creams on the market pose a problem. What are your experiences of this?
Lamellar creams
What has happened within skincare science the last decade is the development of so called lamellar creams. These creams do not contain any emulsifiers. They are formulated using lipids that are naturally found in the skin that have a tendency to form bilayers. This sounds complicated but what it means is that using these lipids + water + pressure you will get a light and fluffy cream. Looking in a microscope will reveal that the cream looks like a network of microscopic thin flakes/layers. This layered, or lamellar structure, looks exactly like the structure of your own skin barrier. In a conventional emulsion, you will have drops of water and drops of oils bound together through emulsifiers but this is a very unnatural structure for the skin. As a lamellar cream is so similar to your own skin, both regarding the structure and lipid content, it will help your skin rebuild its own natural protection and beauty.
Emulsion cream Lamellar/DMS cream Your skin structure
So, lamellar creams are the new generation of skincare where you don’t have to use emulsifiers. The technology has been around for a while, however, very few skincare brands use it. We wonder why as there are tons of excellent data on lamellar creams. However, it is much more expensive to produce a lamellar cream than an emulsion. And it will probably take years until it becomes a new standard.
What we use
We use a kind of lamellar technology called DMS, Derma Membrane Structure, in our Everyday Energizing Facial Cream and Everyday Hydroactive Moisturizing Body Lotion. Another wonderful thing about using DMS/lamellar technology is that you don’t have to use any preservatives as the creams are self-preserving. You also get creams that are fluffy and that spread easily on the skin without using any silicones. We avoid using mineral oils and perfume as well, making our products as similar to the skin itself as possible.
To sum up, using lamellar technology/DMS you can make creams that build up your own natural skin barrier, preserving youth and beauty, without disturbing your skin with emulsifiers, preservatives, silicones, mineral oils and perfume.
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[...] lamellar structure it restores the skin’s own protective barrier (see more on lamellar creams in this post). It also contains active ingredients that are very kind but no preservatives, emulsifiers, [...]
[...] as the Facial Cream but without the active substances (read more about that in my earlier post on lamellar creams). It’s also an optimal choice if you have very sensitive skin and if you don’t bother to use [...]
[...] Cream and Everyday Body Lotion we have used lamellar technology (read more about in my earlier post here). In lamellar creams, the oils form thin intersecting layers in a kind of network that looks [...]
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[...] Rinse with warm water. This will leave your skin very soft and moisturized. If you follow up with a lamellar cream at least your skin will be hot and [...]
[...] the skin barrier so it will be necessary to replace the loss of natural lipids, preferably with a lamellar cream that can build up the skin’s [...]
[...] Everyday Energizing Facial Cream: A lightweight lamellar cream that makes your skin soft and beautiful by strengthening your skin’s natural protection. The cream reduces inflammations and impurities in deeper skin layers, making your skin moist and radiant from inside and out. Suggested further reading: Lamellar creams [...]
[...] rich formula helps the skin regain moisture with DMS, a lipid complex that resembles the skins own barrier structure. Natural extracts reduce irritation [...]