Lately all the major skincare brands have been touting a fancy sounding word - ceramide. Ceramide is an ingredient that is quite popular in the skincare industry for its powerful moisturizing and water locking, barrier repair and anti-aging effects. Many brands and products use it as the main efficacy of the ingredients, claiming to have skin care wonders, so what is the difference between niacinamide and ceramide?
What is ceramide?
Ceramide, also known as neurosphingolipids, is a type of neurosphingolipid consisting of long-chain bases of neurosphingomyelin and fatty acids. Ceramide (commonly known as molecular nails) is a lipid that occurs naturally in the skin and is a very important component of the skin barrier (stratum corneum) in as much as 40-50%. It creates a waterproof barrier on the surface of the skin. Not only does it help the skin lock in moisture, but it also repairs the skin's lipid barrier.
What happens when your skin is deficient in ceramides?
Many problematic skins, such as dermatitis (including hormonal face), psoriasis, eczema, and redness, as well as sensitive skin, dry skin, and rough skin, have significantly lower ceramide levels than normal skin. In addition to these, people under normal circumstances with age, ceramide will also gradually reduce, thus producing dryness, wrinkles and these problems, the skin naturally aging. Generally speaking, girls with fragile cuticles have their ceramide levels much lower than those of healthy skin.
The reason for this is actually quite simple: if there is not enough ceramide in the skin, it will not be able to fight off external enemies (keeping the bad stuff out) and lock in water (keeping the good stuff out), and the skin as a whole will show all sorts of irregularities.
The main effect of "Ceramide"
• Barrier effect: Ceramides fill in the interstices of skin keratinocytes, so that water in the skin can not penetrate out and excess foreign matter can not penetrate in, with barrier protection function.
• Polymerization: The use of ceramides significantly enhances adhesion between keratinized cells, improves dryness and reduces flaking of the skin.
• Moisturizing effect: Ceramide can maintain skin moisture by forming a mesh structure in the stratum corneum, which can prevent skin moisture loss.
• Anti-aging effect: dry and aging skin by supplementing ceramides, the dry state of the skin and fine lines are reduced or disappeared in 1 ~ 2 weeks, the true wrinkles significantly reduced, the aging process can be slowed down.
• Anti-allergic effect: Ceramide skin care products can make the skin stratum corneum significantly thickened, effectively inhibit the invasion of harmful substances triggered by skin allergies, enhance the skin's ability to adapt to the external environment.
• Whitening effect: Clinical whitening effect shows that ceramides have an improving effect on symptoms such as dry face, flushing, make-up infection, etc. It can also inhibit melanin production, with obvious skin-beautifying effect.
• Water retention: Ceramide is known as the "king of hydration", is 16 times the moisturizing effect of hyaluronic acid, very easy to be absorbed by the skin, and can promote the penetration of other nutrients.
How are ceramides lost?
Age Loss: Like skin moisture, ceramides gradually decrease with age, leading to dryness, dry lines, and dryness sensitivities, etc. Ceramide loss accelerates after the age of 30. After 30, ceramide loss accelerates. After 40, your face may have only 37% of the ceramides it had when you were 20.
Synthetic damage: Sub-healthy skin leads to compromised endogenous ceramide synthesis and disruption of the skin barrier function.
Environmental factors: dryness and cold and sun exposure can also lead to a decrease in the ability to synthesize ceramides.
Life factors: excessive use of cleansing products, the skin "walls" are mechanically damaged, the stratum corneum is weak out of redness.
Chemical irritation: Ceramides are easily lost due to the irritation caused by the daily application of maintenance containing a large number of chemical ingredients.
Emotional stress: staying up late, mental stress or seasonal state, the adrenal glands secrete too much corticosteroid, more oil, ceramide synthesis is blocked.
Unhealthy Habit: Frequent hot showers lead to excessive dissolution of the skin's oil content, and the loss of ceramides is accelerated.
Oral medications: Regular use of medications such as retinoids can inhibit epidermal cell proliferation and also cause loss of ceramides.
How do I take a ceramide supplement?
Because ceramides are found in the outermost layer of the skin, the stratum corneum, it is possible to replenish them directly through application. Skin care products with ceramides will moisturize better and last longer than skin care products with only lipid-based ingredients. Because ceramide itself is a part of the skin's stratum corneum, it can be injected directly into the inner layers of the skin to help repair the skin barrier, thus enhancing the skin's natural water locking power and curing all kinds of sensitivity problems caused by dry skin.
Extended extension: what are ceramides called in the list of ingredients
Ceramides are categorized as: naturally occurring ceramides (Ceramide, 9 types), phytoceramides (Phytoceramides), ceramide-like ceramides (Psuedoceramides) and synthetic ceramides (synthetic naturally occurring ceramides).
Sost biotech has been supplying ceramide raw materials for a long time, providing customers with high-quality sources, if you have the needs of customized formulations, you can also contact us for a quote.