There is a good paper about  Hyaluronic acid, mm has to read it before you do something.

Hyaluronic acid and its well-known salt sodium hyaluronate have been used in cosmetics and personal care products for a number of decades now. But it is also available as zinc and calcium salts depending on the solubility of the particular system it is being used in. And it looks like its popularity will not be diminishing any time soon. That is because it is such a highly functional ingredient and it works very well as an anti-aging ingredient. Chemically, hyaluronic acid is a high molecular weight disaccharide unit which continually repeats itself (the molecular formula is pictured below). It has seen widespread use in the medical field but in the cosmetics industry it is being seen in more and more anti-aging products for its outstanding performance as a cell rejuvenator. Its ability to repair damaged skin cells and accelerate the wound healing process has given it top billing in some high profile products for some of the major players in the industry as well as some of the smaller companies including brands marketed by dermatologists. It is usually used in conjunction with other increasingly popular anti-aging ingredients. You may see it used along side coenzyme Q10, vitamins and other powerful antioxidants in many different types of treatment and skin care products.

Hyaluronic acid is a biopolymer produced in the Human body but it is also produced commercially by a fermentation process. Most of the hyaluronic acid in the Human body is found in the skin. It is usually supplied as a white powder or as a 1.00% aqueous solution. Even at a 1.00% concentration, it is a highly viscous crystal clear gel. Due to its natural skin-like properties, its excellent water retention capacity and its high viscoelacticity, it is highly recommended for skin care products, such as creams, lotions, sprays, lipsticks, etc. at a recommended use level of 0.25% to 2.00% by weight. Aside from being an excellent moisturizer, it decreases free radical formation and is a natural UV filter. For these reasons alone it can be considered an excellent anti-aging ingredient. It is very water soluble and like many anti-aging ingredients, it is fairly expensive and can add significant cost to finished goods if used at a high level of activity. It is available from many suppliers in many countries around the world.

When Estée Lauder first launched its Perfectionist product line, it was the result of following other players in the beauty industry who were using hyaluronic acid (or HA and NaHA as they are also known) in their products or as injections as an anti-wrinkle treatment. Estée Lauder invested huge sums of money conducting tests and substantiating claims that their Perfectionist line of products visually improved the smoothness and elasticity of the skin when used on a continual basis and was considerably safer than any hyaluronic acid injection. Estée Lauder was one of the first companies to use the phrase "reduces the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles" in their advertising and on their packaging. The Estée Lauder Perfectionist line has quickly grown from its original launch of two products. Its success owes to the fact that the hyaluronic acid in the products made them perform as claimed. The ingredients did work. Since then a number of companies have launched products which have been positioned as anti-fine line and anti-wrinkle. They may have been able to copy the products, but not the image.

Since fine lines and wrinkles are considered to be some of the key targets on the anti-aging battlefield, it is only natural that hyaluronic acid and NaHA are still being used as major ingredients to successfully win the anti-aging war. This is a war where everyone will come out a winner and it looks like it will certainly be won in the very near future.

My objective isn't to gear my articles towards the general consumer but I wanted to make all the formulators out there aware of the fact that they have some competition. In my readings I've noticed some (really quite a number of dozens) websites that allow people to formulate their own cosmetics at home. If one does a Google search for "homemade cosmetics" there would be pages upon pages of entries under this heading. Even though these formulations are very simple at times, there are some that state you can put together cosmetics using the same ingredients that you or I would use in our everyday products.

One of these companies is Somerset Cosmetics Company, LLC in Seattle, Washington. They offer kits that with simple instructions you can put together simple cosmetics in your own home. These kits include creams, lotions, hair products, makeup, lipstick and even pet shampoo. The lipstick kit is interesting as it provides base, ground powdered colorants and even a small plastic lipstick molding apparatus and cases. From just observing the picture of this kit I'm sure it would work just fine. These kits range in price from about $30.00 to $50.00. They are packaged very nicely as shown below. This may seem slightly high but for the amount of product you can make, it would still save you money than if you had bought the products at a store. This company also offers a recipe book for around the same price with almost 100 different recipes for products you can make using your own ingredients.

For those more ambitious people out there, there are some websites that offer the same ingredients that are used in regular cosmetics and personal care products. You can get small amounts (even though the unit cost may be higher) of beeswax, castor oil, mineral oil, glycerin, vegetable oils and other basic ingredients that a formulator might need for a simple cosmetic product. These are examples of some of the more serious companies and websites that offer you the ability to make your own cosmetics. Yet there are still some that have the most basic of recipes - those that contain maybe three to four ingredients - using ingredients that are in everyone's home. Ingredients such as honey, corn starch, canola oil, and of course water. They can even use filtered water or spring water to get some better results. They can even use natural colorants such as beet juice, carrot juice, annatto and caramel to color products. One can use oil soluble or water soluble colors depending on the particular recipe. This is of course in addition to the always available water soluble FD&C food coloring synthetic dye solutions.

Some examples, a website for a company called "Kitchen Cosmetics" gives recipes for products such as bath oils, hair preparations, skin care products and even makeup. Similar recipes can be found in the website "The Personal Formulator." Granted, these are definitely no competition for us formulators but it will give the non-science oriented consumer a general knowledge and idea of exactly what a formulator does to create today's cosmetic products. As we all learned in out early days of formulating - simple is better. And I personally think that a better educated consumer is much better for us. That education will help us formulate better products.

Best wishes!!

Due to its natural skin-like properties, its excellent water retention capacity and its high viscoelacticity, it is highly recommended for skin care products, such as creams, lotions, sprays, lipsticks, etc. at a recommended use level of 0.25% to 2.00% by weight. (1:13 first, then adds 30 ml water, final PH = 5.8 to 6.2).

[此贴子已经被作者于2008-5-16 1:27:15编辑过]