Have you ever considered taking a good look at the ingredients in your Go-To lotion or cream? If you have, perhaps you've noticed a weird-sounding name: glyceryl stearate. What does it do, you might think? Well, today we are going to learn about what glyceryl stearate does to our skin and why is considered important for a number of skincare products. OILREE is here to help you.
What is Glyceryl Stearate?
Glyceryl stearate is an ingredient, which you can find in many skincare products. It is an emulsifier that basically just means it helps oil and water to get along. This blending is essential as various lotions and creams have oil-based, just as water-based parts glyceryl stearate This is the glue that sticks everything else together, without it all these other ingredients would simply separate and never work as intended. Therefore, the role of glyceryl stearate is that it prepares a smooth and efficient product for us to apply on our skin.
How does Glyceryl Stearate work with our skin?
Lotions and creams When we put on those lotions or cream, how soon is it that the skin needs to come back to its usual state? Thanks to the protective barrier of our skin, there are a lot of things that it keeps out (which is great because we do not want everything in!) Yet this also makes getting good stuff inside equally challenging. Enter glyceryl stearate and acrylic thickener, to the rescue! It can also assist in allowing other beneficial actives to penetrate through this barrier so they are able enter into our skin and perform their functions efficiently.
Will It Strengthen Your Skin Barrier Glyceryl Stearate
You could be thinking, "What a minute do Breaking down my skin barrier is not a good concept? " It's a good question! In reality, the skin barrier is composed of tiny cells and fats that are many layers thick. There are ingredients in skin care that can be harmful to our layers but some, like glyceryl stearate and acrylate styrene actually have the opposite effect.
Glyceryl stearateResearch has proven that the skin barrier is one of the benefits. It does this by elevating the lipids – or fats — between skin cells. It adds that additional moisture which in turn keeps our skin hydrated and this way it acts as a shield from harmful outside elements like water, pollution or UV rays from the sun.
How glyceryl stearate impacts skin absorption
This not only helps our skin barrier but also it aids to the better absorption of active products. This is how lotions and creams, which make their way into our skin help with multiple layer problems such as dryness or irritation.
For example, a study researched adding glyceryl stearate to an anti-inflammatory medication and found that it helped the medication much better penetrate into skin. This is great news because glyceryl stearate can actually allow other beneficial ingredients to work better.
How Glyceryl Stearate Works in Medicines?
Glyceryl stearate is not confined to use in skincare products, it can also be found in medicines applied directly onto our skin. They are what is known as topical drugs. These targeting agents are unique because instead of taking them as pills or by injection, we apply these drugs to our skin.
Because a drug-administration skin patch introduces medicine through our body's outer layer to hit the places it was intended for. Medicines that are large and medications with a high preference to being in watery solutions may have difficulty penetrating.
That is where glyceryl stearate could well be extremely useful! It is a penetration enhancer – so it can help these medicines better penetrate through our skin barrier. This in turn can help medications to be effective for a better cause, it even means we have the higher likelihood of response to treatment with less amounts of medicine.
Does Glyceryl Stearate Improve Skincare Products?
Having learned about how glyceryl stearate increases the skin absorption, plays its part in barrier function and helps with drug delivery let's find out whether it can make a well-rounded skincare product as well.
For example, one fascinating study demonstrated that when glyceryl stearate is added to a moisturizer product it increased the ability of this moisturiser cream to retain water within our skin. That is why glyceryl stearate can improve the efficacy of other cheaper ingredients in skincare products and make them more effective when applied to our skin.
