Human skin structure, self-healing ability, and skin color recovery ability.

What kinds of substances will support self-healing abilities on deep (dermis) and surface (epidermal) of the skin?

The surface (epidermis) is responsible for barriers, moisturization and metabolism. The barrier can be subdivided into a microbial barrier and physical barrier. The microbial barrier is subdivided into two parts. One of them is the microbe that has the same symbiosis with the human body on the surface of the skin. These microbes can be simply called “good bacteria”, and these are harmless to the human skin. On the other hand, in order to maintain their own survival, these good bacteria will secrete related substances to maintain their own territory and prevent other alien colonies from invading the territory. Therefore, the outermost layer is a microbial barrier membrane. The membrane can completely isolate all pathogenic bacteria that are harmful to the human body.

Our nature uses the competition between microorganisms skillfully. Therefore, if good bacteria can occupy an absolute majority on the surface of the skin, it is impossible for the harmful bacteria to culture on the human body and enters into human body to affect human health.

Unfortunately, when we use a large number of inappropriate cleansers and skincare products for a long time will destroy this natural protective layer. The foreign bacteria will have the opportunity to fall on the surface of the human body. Recently some producers introduced skincare products containing bacteria, which is making corresponding products based on this theory. These products will have the opportunity to bring positive effect on the skin, but at the same time, we also need to consider the additional skincare products that have a positive effect on the skin's bottom layer, the cuticle of the epidermis and the sebum membrane. Also, it would be better to have chemical additives as less as possible. Because these good bacteria are good under the condition that the skin's own barrier is healthy. It is impossible to form a strong external barrier by relying on a single effect from good bacteria.

The other part of the microbial barrier is the pH value, which is not associated with blood, nor is it related to the so-called acidic or alkaline constitution of skin. The pH of the skin surface is around 5.5. This weak acidic environment is good for the good bacteria to occupy the most important position in the area, thus preventing external bad bacteria from falling on the surface of human skin. Some brands claim that the pH of their products is equal to 5.5, which is derived from this theory.

The pH value of 5.5 is resulting from the complex application of the oil secreted by the skin between the skin surface and the microorganisms, and it causes sebum membrane that is above the epidermis under the microbial barrier. This layer of sebum membrane can be understood as a layer of oil film, which can effectively moisturize the outermost layer of keratin, and it can provide softness, prevent evaporation, and improve skin's moisturizing ability. Without this layer of oil, the water in the stratum corneum can easily evaporate to the air, resulting in immediate conditions such as dryness, hardness, discomfort, and lack of water. If the condition persists, it will start to desquamation, which will cause itching. If we over scratching, our own keratin will be destroying to occur inflammation, redness, and swelling. More serious will lead to skin allergies and chapped.

Most of the cleaning products will wash away this layer of sebum membrane. If the skin's own keratin is already damaged, skin is aged due to improper care, or skin aging condition, it will make it difficult to replenish the skin oil properly, which will lead to immediate irritation and allergies such as redness and swelling.

Even if the skin has strong oil secretion, you should not use a product with strong cleansing power. In the teenager stage where acne is strong, washing the skin to be very dry will not bring any improvement, but will aggravate the symptoms. This is because too many things are washed away, and the oil secreted by the skin itself cannot be dissolved into a sebum membrane. It will become a slick oil on the skin, and these oils are quickly oxidized and used by the acne bacillus, which is eventually exacerbating the symptoms of acne.

Physical barrier - against mechanics and chemistry

The keratin is divided into the outermost non-physiological function keratin and the inner layer of physiologically function keratinocytes, then deeper inside is the basal layer. Between non-physiological function keratin to the basal layer is the physical barrier. Simply described, the physical barrier refers to the ability of the skin to exert external mechanical force and certain chemical defence through multiple layers of non-physiological keratin.

The health of this physical barrier is directly related to the keratinocyte intercellular matrix. Generally speaking, the brick and wall structure refers to brick (keratin) + ash (intercellular matrix). The matrix is composed of the water-soluble natural moisturizing factor and some lipids (such as ceramide and cholesterol). Some brands use ceramides as a selling point, which is based on this theory.

However, only to supply ceramides does not mean that the epidermis can be improved comprehensively. In practical application, it is found that simply supply physiological lipids is poor efficient for the skin condition is not good or elderly people.

Therefore, in general, it is necessary to replenish the water-soluble natural moisturizing factor (NMF) to boost the efficiency the function of repair and at the same time strengthen the keratin together with physiological lipids. This will really totally make our skin healthy and improve keratin.

Basal layer - physical and chemical barrier

There are energetic keratinocytes and melanocytes in the basal layer. Where is the place for the normal division of keratinocytes allow the skin to metabolize, remove the old skin cell, and replace to a new softer skin. Through this process, the melanin would be removed along with the old dead keratin. Our skin will become white again after sunburn, which is closely related to the metabolism of keratin. If the keratin is not working for normal metabolism, the tan will remain dark.

Physical barrier - against light

One of the physical barriers is to against light, and that is melanin. After melanin is synthesis, it will transport to keratinocytes, which can effectively block the UV rays to damage the skin. If you don’t have melanin in your skin, it will be very easy to get sunburn and even travel will be very limited.

Chemical sunscreens play a role similar to melanin, but chemical sunscreens are not what the skin within. The biggest difference to physical sunscreens is that chemical sunscreens absorb UV ray, then they will be converted and decomposed. But this decomposition might become a risk that they will transfer to other substances which will penetrate deep into the skin, and whether this decomposition process will cause other problems, that is the risk from chemical sunscreens.

Dermis

There is a large number of cells inside dermis, and its thickness constitutes 70-80% of the total skin. Therefore, it is easy to understand why a large reduction in dermis collagen fibres causes the skin to collapse and wrinkles formation, conscious skin becomes thinner and loses elasticity.

Whether your skin looks younger and more energetic than our peers, the main thing is to check the health of this dermis layer is properly care or not. But if we want the active ingredients to reach the dermis is very difficult. It is not only to solve the natural problems such as the oil/water rejection and penetrate ability, but also to check whether these substances are the nutrients needed by the cells.

And do they toxic to cells?

Oil-soluble substances can reach to the place above the basal layer. However, the dermis layer requires a water-soluble substance to reach. Many products can moisturize the skin, even help to repair the epidermis, improve moisturizing, but they cannot improve the two major problems of whitening and anti-wrinkle, which is directly caused by the magical structure of the skin.

Most substances are stopped outside of the keratin, and only very few of them can reach the basal layer. The properties of these substances are lipophilic and require to be small size. This explains why most whitening products are slow effect or not effective at all. Not only because many whitening ingredients are unstable, but also consumers lose a lot of benefits before open. Many whitening ingredients has risk of irritation, so their addition in the formulation is low. If the dosage is low, it is impossible to expect the performance of efficacy. Furthermore, some whitening ingredients are difficult to arrive the basal layer.

The cells in the dermis are mainly fibroblasts. As the name implies, this cell can synthesize collagen molecules, and finally these collagens have the opportunity to aggregate and form the collagen fibers. After the active ingredients reach the dermis layer, we should ensure it will not harm fibroblasts. Then we need to confirm whether the substance is a key factor for cell proliferation and protein synthesis. If not, then the active is useless for collagen synthesis. Moreover, it will not improve the overall condition of the skin.

In this case, it is also necessary to confirm whether these substances will have some cytotoxic issue to penetrate into the dermis. Many preservatives have stronger penetration ability than many active ingredients. Therefore, they will restrict the efficacy of the actives. So if the product can be free of preservatives and free of risky substances that may cause cytotoxicity, then the product can be considered as a product with a truly comprehensive improvement in skin ability.

Why Additive-free?

We should avoid the long-term transdermal absorption of toxins, which may cause cytotoxicity.

Differences in cosmetics and food for consumers

The characteristic of cosmetics is to apply to the epidermis. This method belongs to percutaneous absorption. The characteristics of percutaneous absorption are that the substances in the product may enter the blood circulation without going through the stomach, intestines, and liver.

The characteristics of the food that it would be decomposed or even detoxified by the liver, then it will enter the blood circulation. The differences here can be understood by examples, such as why people die after being bitten by a poisonous snake? It is because the toxin enters the bloodstream through the veins of the snake's teeth. But if we suck the snake veins by our mouth or even we mistake snake blood, we will not happen to die. Because most toxic substances are broken down through the stomach and intestines and become harmless.

Why nano materials considered to be risky substances and being banned in Europe? This is because their penetration ability is too strong, and it is possible to directly enter the blood circulation. Most cosmetics have not undergone medical multi-phase clinical trials, so the application of such ultra-small size materials poses a very high risk to humans. It is similar as injecting a substance that is unknown to human health into the blood vessel, and from blood vessel will flow through all important organs of the human body, including the brain, heart, lungs, and genital organs, etc. Moreover, most of these ingredients are not studied for their metabolic period, and this will cause unpredictable harm to human organs.

Why heavy metals are prohibited in skin care products?

The most important reason is the risk of penetration, absorption, storage in the subcutaneous tissue, and blood circulation. The ability to store in subcutaneous tissue means that heavy metals can penetrate into epidermis and dermis, which poses a very serious cytotoxic hazard. Many evidential reports showed the danger of heavy metals.

The rise in sensitive skin ratio is directly related to many chemical products on the market

The components used in conventional products include various surfactants, emulsifiers, preservatives, and various additives for texture and product’s appearance. Surfactants are common in conventional products, for example like makeup remover, facial cleanser, body wash, and hair wash products. Why soaps and facial cleanser have bubbles after rubbing? Why many makeups cannot be washed away by normal water but can use makeup removers to wash away?

That is the function of surfactants. Many surfactants cause direct irritation and wash away too much skin sebum membranes, and then resulting in more and more sensitive and dry skin. It leads the scientists to develop some mild wash technology, for example like the amino acid cleaning systems, cleansing oil and other products. For instance, SDS (sodium dodecyl sulfate) is a powerful surfactant, but it is rarely used now. The reason is the excessively severe irritation. After infiltration, it may even cause red blood cells to break in the blood vessels and result to hemolysis.

The role of the emulsifier is mainly to combine water and oil phases to become an emulsion. For example, the emulsion and the cream are originated from water and oil, these are incompatible. If we combine them through thickeners and emulsifiers, we can make well-known emulsions like creams and lotions. Another application for emulsifiers is to remove the makeup by emulsification in the cleansing process. Because of the presence of emulsifiers, most skincare lotions/creams can be used to remove makeups, though this is more luxurious.

There are two main functions of preservatives. One is to destroy the stability of the microbe cell membrane to kill microorganisms, and the other is to penetrate the cell membrane and affect the metabolism of the microorganism itself and kill them. These substances are harmful to microorganisms and also have a negative impact on normal human cells. They can be understood as indiscriminate attacks.

The history of microorganisms is actually much longer than human beings. There are different microbial distributions in various harsh environments on the earth, even in the upper stratosphere. Most microbes normally are much stronger than human cells. Preservatives can kill the microbes, which means that once the human cells with the preservatives will also face serious injuries.

What is even more risky is that these preservatives can penetrate the cell membrane, precisely because they are very small. In fact, there must be preservatives which penetrate into the bottom layer of the skin in conventional cosmetics. However, many claimed active ingredients, such as certain proteins or certain acids are too large to penetrate. These preservatives sometimes have an osmotic effect, especially some alcohols. One of them is ethanol, that is, alcohol. Alcohol has several functions in the formulation, which can sterilize and also help to penetrate.

The reason why parabens are not recommended to use is because many reports indicated that such substances may have a negative impact to the human body.

The most important practice of dermatological treatment: firstly, stop all products currently used by patients

From doctors’ point of view, "do not use anything that might hurt your skin" is more important than "use something that will benefit your skin". The actual situation in the clinic also shows that about 20-30% of the symptoms of allergies are related to heredity and food, but others are caused by the long-term use of bad products. In this case, patients are required to discontinue existing products, including cleansing, makeup removal, make-up, etc. This is the way to improve the skin condition without continuing to harm the skin.

According to recent data, the population of sensitive skin in China is about 50%. In the dermatological clinic, more than 95% of the doctors' first treatment is to stop all skincare and makeup products which patient currently used. Why do them stop all the products? This is a last resort. Because most products have a lot of strange ingredients in order to have a good appearance, comfortable texture, long shelf life…etc. However, these ingredients have no positive benefits in long-term use for the skin and often have immediate irritation to the skin with imperfect barriers.

BioTruly continues to explore and do more experiments with pure natural, preservative-free and additive-free technology. It is precise because as producers that we want consumers Not to continue to contact these risky substances for long-term use. This kind of worry is not unfounded. For decades, worldwide dermatologists have observed that people suffered from diseases were decreased, but suffer from the sensitive skin are on the rise. The population of sensitive skin in some highly industrialized countries is as high as 70%, which in turn drives these countries’ skin care manufacturers to produce more so-called mild products. However, it also indicates the harm of many common chemical ingredients after decades of long-term use.

While BioTruly develops the products, we not only minimize the use of high-risk substances but also conducts cytotoxicity tests and human irritation tests on the core and high-ratio substances in our formula according to scientific methods. BioTruly can prove the highest level of safety and high-performance skincare products based on safety. Although efficacy is important, it is completely incomparable to health. In accordance with this concept, BioTruly conducted a large number of safety and efficacy experiments on the fermented raw materials which we researched and produced to verify the high efficiency and high safety of BioTruly’s technology.