Making Sense of Skincare Ingredients & Terms​

Making Sense of Skincare Ingredients & Terms

The struggle is real right now to know which "scary sounding" ingredients are chemicals that should be avoided or which are in fact the scientific name for something simple like Vitamin C (which is ascorbic acid).  

My skincare customers and my nutrition coaching client often ask me about ingredients, so they can feel comfortable in what they choose to put on and in their bodies. So I love it when resources come out that make it that much easier for me and them to find out what these ingredients and industry terms actually mean. 

One reason I am proud to be partnered with R+F is that they've offered a money-back guarantee and been transparent about their ingredients from the get-go. You can see a full list of ingredients with every product and they have a dictionary to help you find out why it's the product. Their latest edition is the Skin-Pedia: Skincare Terms Defined post. It goes through an alphabet of terms from acnegenic to stratum corneum. It's a great starter if you're new to unpacking the what's what of skincare terms. 

If you want to dig deeper into the world of ingredients, check out this article in JAMA Dermatology that looks into natural and clean beauty products (Rubin & Brod, 2019).

A lighter read is this one from Allure, "The Skin-Care Glossary." 

In the end, you. have to make the choice that feels right for you. A few things to remember: the dose makes the poison; not everything natural is safe and not everything man-made is dangerous (and vice versa).