Ingredients
Preservatives are the reason your cream is not a petri dish
Anything containing water grows microbes eventually. The preservative system is the least glamorous and most safety-relevant part…
Ingredients
What an active actually does, at what strength, and how long it takes.
21 articles · updated August 11, 2026 · page 2 of 2
Ingredients
Alcohol on an ingredient list is two unrelated things
Cetyl alcohol and alcohol denat share a word and nothing else. One thickens and softens, the other evaporates, and confusing them…
Ingredients
Antioxidants work as a network, which is why they arrive in pairs
A single antioxidant neutralises a radical and becomes one itself. What happens next depends entirely on whether anything in the…
Ingredients
Plant oils differ by fatty acid, and that decides how they behave
Jojoba, squalane, rosehip and coconut are not interchangeable. The ratio of linoleic to oleic acid in a bottle predicts how it sits…
Ingredients
Urea and lactic acid change job as the percentage climbs
Two ingredients that hydrate at low strength and dissolve surface bonds at high strength. The number on the pack is not a marketing…
Ingredients
Tyrosinase inhibitors interrupt a production line, and slowly
Alpha arbutin, tranexamic acid and kojic acid all interfere with the same enzyme at different points. What that means in practice…
Ingredients
Bakuchiol is promising, and promising is not the same as proven
It is sold as a gentle alternative to retinol, and it is not chemically related to one. What the supporting work actually shows…
Ingredients
Glycerin is the least glamorous ingredient that actually works
It appears near the top of almost every moisturiser ever made, costs very little and is never on the front of the pack. The reason…
Ingredients
Panthenol, allantoin and centella do quiet work worth understanding
The soothing shelf gets dismissed as filler because nothing on it produces a dramatic result. What each one is understood to do…