DERMA E | ULTRA HYDRATING ALKALINE GEL BOOSTER

This review was originally part of my blog article titled, My Favorite Humectant Serums From Paula's Choice, The Inkey List, Ghost Democracy and More! You can catch the full piece here.

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Throughout the colder months between October and March, I really struggle with keeping my skin from becoming dry and dehydrated.

In November, I kicked off the annual dry skin season with a pair of articles on the best face creams for dry skin and all skin types in the cold, leading with a piece titled, Winter Moisturizers Part I – Some of the Best Face Creams for Dry Skin and All Skin Types in Cold Weather. A week later, I rounded out my list of the best dry skin moisturizers in Winter Moisturizers Part 2 — available to read here.

In mid-December, I followed those up with a piece on my favorite hydrating face mists titled, Favorite Face Mists For Keeping Skin Hydrated In The Cold – Best Face Mists, Best Hydrating Toners For Dry, Dehydrated Skin.

Richer face creams and hydrating mists are indispensable, essentials in every winter skincare routine. And, at least with the moisturizers, are fairly common. But the one true essential for maintaining skin health in the harsh cold months is a really good humectant product, usually a Hyaluronic Acid serum.

While Hyaluronic Acid is far and away the most popular and most sought-after of humectants, it is by no means the only one. Humectant ingredients that are also effective at preventing trans-epidermal water loss and subsequent dehydration include: Beta Glucan, Butylene Glycol, Centella Asiatica, Polyglutamic Acid, Glycerin, Aloe Vera, Snow Mushroom and even seaweed.

I think it’s just that Hyaluronic Acid was the new, sexy humectant popularized in one-note serums — treatments focused on a single potent active ingredient. Brands like Deciem’s The Ordinary and The Inkey List were founded on ingredient education and super affordable one-note serums. Among the most sought after are The Ordinary’s $6 Niacinamide 10% + Zinc 1% and the $8 Hyaluronic Acid Serum from The Inkey List — which I include in the line-up below.

Maintaining proper hydration levels year-round is essential if skin is going to function at its peak. Healthy functioning skin is better able to defend against external aggressors like pollution, UV, and free radical attacks. And healthy skin is better fortified against aging. So while it may seem slick to say that a humectant serum that helps keep skin hydrated is an effective anti-aging product, it’s not really a stretch at all.

Dry, dehydrated skin is certainly unhealthy; it can’t behave as it should. You may be asking yourself, as I once did, what the difference is between dry skin and dehydrated skin. Well, permit me to explore those differences.

What’s the difference between dry skin and dehydrated skin?

For the answer to that vexing questing, as I most often do, I turned to the experts on the Paula’s Choice Research Team for insights. There’s a superb piece on the Paula’s Choice site titled, What is Dehydrated Skin & How to Choose the Best Products. Here is an excerpt:

Dehydrated skin often looks and feels like dry skin all over your face, but there's a major difference between the two: dehydrated skin is usually a temporary concern (with various surprising causes) and dry skin typically doesn't change over time. If you have dehydrated skin, your skin may also produce a normal or even excessive amount of oil on its surface.
"Dehydrated skin" is something we’re asked about frequently. It seems there’s a lot of confusion about what this skin concern is about. A major part of the confusion is that the term "dehydrated skin" is often used interchangeably with "dry skin" or "combination skin" but they are not the same! Dehydrated skin can occur in all skin types and is not exclusive to those with dry skin or combination skin.
The Difference Between Dry Skin and Dehydrated Skin
Having classically dry skin is easy to recognize. Dry skin frequently feels tight and dry, with no oil anywhere to be seen. This situation rarely fluctuates; skin feels dry all year long. The dryness might get worse depending on the climate, season, or activity, but regardless of those things, without great skin care products, the uncomfortable dry, tight feeling will persist.
As mentioned above, dehydrated skin can look and feel similar, but there’s a major difference: Dehydrated skin tends to come and go, it does not persist.

With that, let’s take a look at a few of the best humectant serums for keeping skin optimally hydrated day after day…

Derma E | Ultra Hydrating Alkaline Gel Booster

One of my latest brand crazes of the young new year is Derma E — a clean, natural affordable skincare brand with some really cool innovations. I’ve been having so much fun trying out their broad range of clean skin care that I feel like a kid in a candy store! This past weekend, I enjoyed the Derma-E Vitamin C Instant Radiance Citrus Facial Peel for #selfcaresunday. If you didn’t see the video, you can catch it here. Derma E’s Vitamin C mask is literally infused with citrus pulp and is a real pleasure to use!

Prior to that, I first highlighted the brand in my earlier piece on the best face mists for dehydrated skin with the Derma E Hydrating Mist. It’s such a well-formulated face mist — and super refreshing for a quick pick-me-up on the driest of days.

If you’re unfamiliar with the Derma E brand, permit me to share some background on the indie brand.

Derma E got its start in 1984 with a single product, a Vitamin E cream sold at a small health food store in Southern California.

A clean beauty pioneer, the Derma E brand is perhaps best known for their “Refuse to Use” list of toxic ingredients and potential allergens that has helped to move the entire skincare industry forward. It’s the most extensive list I’ve come across with 2,700 “nasties”.

The Derma E Refuse To Use™ List

The DERMA E “Refuse to Use ™ List” is a comprehensive list of over 2700 common ingredients that have actually been found to be toxic to both people and the environment. DERMA E has been building this list of ingredients to ban in their products since their inception in 1984. This extensive list includes familiar ingredients like: parabens, phthalates, formaldehyde donors, animal ingredients, synthetics fragrances, and more. Many of these ingredients are banned in the EU and other countries, but are still found in products within the US.

Today, Derma E offers an extensive range of clean, natural, vegan and cruelty free skincare powered by beneficial actives, from antioxidant Vitamin C and Pycnogenol to peptides and Dimethyl MEA (DMAE) — an intriguing derivative of Vitamin B with skin benefits that’s also purported to enhance brain health.

In the Derma E collection are some of the best natural face creams, best natural anti-aging serums and even best natural cleansers for sensitive skin. Among my faves of the brand’s natural offerings is the Derma E Ultra Hydrating Alkaline Gel Booster.

What is hyaluronic acid for skin?

I recently found an excellent albeit wonky article on Hyaluronic Acid titled, Why Science Says Hyaluronic Acid Is the Holy Grail to Wrinkle-Free, Youthful Hydration.

This bit stood out to me, in particular:

“The benefits of hyaluronic acid on the skin has to do with its molecular weight and concentration. In this case, size matters! The molecular weight refers to its mass, or how big the HA molecule is. This is measured in something called unified atomic mass units — daltons, or kDa for short.
HA between 50 to 1,000 kDa is the most beneficial for skin, with about 130 kDa being the best, according to the most recent human studies. Anything higher won't make too much of a difference. Anything lower might cause inflammation. How did we get this number? When you look at studies, you'll see a pattern, but one of the most thorough studies looked at HA with different molecular weights, including 50, 130, 300, 800, and 2,000 kDa.
After one month, they found that treatment with 130 kDa HA was the most effective, increasing skin elasticity by 20 percent. Both the 50 and 130 kDa groups had significant improvement in wrinkle-depth and skin roughness after 60 days. All the other molecular weights still improved elasticity and skin hydration, just less so. You can read more about this molecular weight analysis from the original breakdown here.”

In my experience, there are two types of humectant serums — thick, pulpy and velvety formulas and lighter, runny and more easily layered ones. With its super watery texture, Derma E’s Ultra Hydrating Alkaline Gel Booster falls into the latter bucket.

The clean, natural formula is comprised of three humectants including vegetable-derived Glycerin, Sodium Hyaluronate and Hydrolyzed Sodium Hyaluronate — both of which are salt forms of Hyaluronic Acid that are more skin compatible.

But the Ultra Hydrating Alkaline Gel Booster is a superb antioxidant serum as well with Green Tea Leaf Extract and Superoxide Dismutase — a powerful antioxidant naturally occurring in that helps to protect human skin cells against free radical damage. There’s also Copper PCA, Panthenol (Vitamin B5) and even Palmitoyl Tripeptide-28.

Ultra Hydrating Alkaline Gel Booster has become one of my favorite pro-skin health treatments and a product that I look forward to using, an indicator of its superior quality.

SHOP THE BLOG: Purchase the Derma E Ultra Hydrating Alkaline Gel Booster for $21.50 here.

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