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- [00:00]
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Foreign
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welcome to ASCP and the Rogue Pharmacist with Benjamin Knight Fuchs. In each episode we'll explore how internal and external factors can impact the skin. I'm Maggie Stasik, ASCP's program director. And joining me is Ben Fuchs, skincare formulator and pharmacist. Hey Ben.
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Hello, Maggie.
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So, Ben, estheticians and clients I think often worry that layering products or mixing actives will make them cancel each other out. But I know the reality is more nuanced. Can you break down when actives actually interfere with each other and when it's just a misconception?
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Yeah, there's not a lot of actives that will really interfere with each other. The most important ones involve vitamin C which is very, very unstable. Ascorbic acid that is in the water soluble form and that's easy to destabilize. Benzoyl peroxide, which is also very active, that can interfere with vitamin C. Sometimes niacinamide. I won't say it interfere with vitamin C but it can cause topical reactions in combination with vitamin C. Nice. As you may know, niacin cause the niacin flush. It's a vasodilator which is great, but in combination with vitamin C it can actually Ascorbic acid, that is. Now when I talk about the reactivity of vitamin C, I'm talking about ascorbic acid which is the water soluble form of vitamin C. Thda, tetrahexyl decal, ascorbate that we've talked about for many years. That's the kind I love to use in our truth treatments. That's not going to react really. That's a very, very stable form of vitamin C. I consider it to be the gold standard in vitamin C. Also, ascorbic acid can be canceled out by alkalinity high ph. So soaps, for example, a lot of lotions and creams have a higher ph. Soaps are especially problematic. So that can interfere with vitamin C. And then you hear a lot about retinol and vitamin C, which is true about the ascorbic acid form of vitamin C and retinoic acid. And when I say retinol, I always have to say retinol and retinoic acid. Those are the two most active forms of vitamin A. Those can destabilize ascorbic acid for sure. So when you hear people say, oh, you can't mix retinol and vitamin C, they're right about ascorbic acid. But the exact opposite is true about THDA and retinol and thda work together perfectly. They're ideal for each other. But with retinol, when you hear about vitamin C and retinol, it's correct. Ascorbic acid and retinol will destabilize each other and retinol will cause the ascorbic acid to break down, and the ascorbic acid will cause the retinol to break down. And that's probably the most dramatic of the active interactions. For the most part. You're not really going to get too much interaction with active material, although I should say probably alpha hydroxy acids. I don't know if they'll. I don't know if they'll, you know, they probably will. They'll speed up the breakdown of ascorbic acid. They'll increase the oxidation of ascorbic acid depending on how active the alpha hydroxy acid is. And then niacin and low ph sometimes can be a problem. It can cause a little bit more flushing. Peptides and low ph can be a problem. Sometimes peptides are fragile and acidic environments can cause hydrolysis of the peptide chains. That's unlikely, really, but that's. I suppose that's a possibility. Benzoyl peroxide is a big one, though. Benzoyl peroxide is very active. And so benzoyl peroxide can, like I said, cause breakdowns of vitamin C, but it can also accelerate breakdown retinol. It can probably accelerate the breakdown of peptides. Benzoyl peroxide is super active. You know, benzoyl peroxide is on. Is actually a tumor promoter in high concentrations because it's so darn active. The peroxide, um, benzoyl is a fatty molecule and peroxides are very active oxygen molecules. So that's why you can only get a 5 or 10% benzoyl peroxide at 50% or so. Benzoyl peroxide is used as a tumor promoter in laboratories. So that's. That's really an ingredient that's probably best avoided unless you want to use it medicinally, I suppose, for acne, because it kills bacteria. But there's probably better ways. Better ways to kill bacteria. Benzoyl peroxide is going to destabilize a lot of ingredients. That's probably the most destabilizing of all the active ingredients.
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B
So one clarifying statement here. I think there are probably some estheticians that hear the word actives and think of that in terms of it's exfoliating the skin or it has a low ph. And other people that think of actives in terms of it's just simply making change in the skin?
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Yeah, yeah. Actives can be defined two ways. As you pointed out, there's mechanical activity, and that's things like alpha hydroxy acids that induce exfoliation, for example, or speed up cellular turnover. Those are mechanical actives. But there's metabolically active ingredients, which is the second type. The ones that you say create changes, and those are active at the cell level. In other words, they create biochemical changes inside the cell. And that's things like your retinols and your vitamin C and theoretically peptides, if they can get into the cell hormones, as opposed to alpha hydroxy acids or urea or pumice or mechanical type of exfoliating agents. Those have mechanical activity as distinguished from metabolic activity. The metabolically active ones, those are the ones that you're gonna have problems with in terms of destabilizing retinol and vitamin C because they're. They're chemically active as opposed to mechanically active.
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How much is ph a factor in terms of actives interactive?
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It's huge. It's huge. For example, vitamin C is deactivated by alkalinity. Ascorbic acid is neutralized essentially by alkalinity. The skin has a ph that's slightly acidic. And under conditions of alkalinity, our skin gets sicker. Eczema patients tend to have higher ph. Skin dry skin patients, cirrhosis patients, tend to have higher alcohol. Higher physical, older skin tends to have higher ph. And if you're using soaps and you're using lotions and creams that already have a higher ph, you're going to be exacerbating that, which is why you always want to respect skin ph with your topical application, with your topical products, or even better, stimulate. I like stimulating skin with low pH. You know, that's one of the really hidden advantages of alpha hydroxy acids over retinol, over pumice, over a loofah pad or other exfoliating agents. Because not only are you exfoliating without hydroxy acids, not only are you exfoliating skin cells, dead skin cells from the surface, but you're also dropping the ph. You're driving little pieces of acid. Technically, little pieces of acid are called protons. And so when you use alpha hydroxy acid, you're driving protons, little pieces of acid. Don't hold my feet to the fire if you're chemist here, because I've been being colloquial little pieces of acid into the skin cells. And we know that under conditions of low ph, tissue stimulated cells are stimulated. That's why if you go to the gym and lift weights, you'll get strong. But if you lift weights till you drop the ph, you go into lactic acid to the production of lactic acid, or what they call anaerobic respiration, you get even stronger. So acids have a stimulating effect in addition to being, being exfoliating in terms of alpha hydroxy acids. So to answer your question, ph plays an enormous role in skin activity. And so if you want your skin to be active and you want your active to be active, definitely low ph is, is the way to go. And by low ph, I'm talking about like three to four. Not necessarily, you don't have to get really, really low, but 3 to 4 as opposed to 4.5 to 5.5, which is where the skin is.
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B
So I know we've talked about layering products in the past and you said it's not like a layer cake. Yeah, but when does layering enhance your results?
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It doesn't really, because they're all mixed together. You know, when you put the product in your skin, it's not like they stay in these discrete layer cake layers. That's the kind of thinking. It's all blended together, so it doesn't really. There's no real need to layer any product. Now the one exception to that might be with masks like clay masks. So if you, if you want to drive an ingredient into the skin, and it's always important, if you have a metabolically active ingredient, it's always important to get to the keratinocyte, which is in the basal layer, or even the fibroblasts in the dermal layer. And, and that's why putting like a, say a peptide on your skin or growth factor, which ordinarily wouldn't penetrate very effectively, and then putting a clay mask on top of it or even a sheet mask on top of it will help push the, push the active ingredient into the lower levels of the skin. So in that way, layering can be helpful. But this idea of putting one product on and another product on another product on, kind of implying that each product has its own discrete layer, that doesn't really happen. They're all blended together on your skin. But masks, either sheet mask or clay mask on top of a particular active ingredient, that can have a driving effect to get better penetration.
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What about whether it's water soluble, oil soluble? What about ph? Because in a facial you are applying multiple products.
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Yes.
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So is that impacting its effectiveness or its ability to penetrate?
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With the exception of the 1, the interactions that we talked about, like retinol vitamins, ascorbic acid and retinol? No, it's not going to affect how it penetrates. In fact, emulsifying agents which are found in creams and lotions and they bring the oil and water phases together in the cream or lotion, those can have a supportive effect for improving penetration. So if you put maybe say a single ingredient, say a retinol or peptide or a growth factor under the skin and then put an emulsion on top of it, that emulsifying agent can support the penetration of that active ingredient. Nonetheless, emulsifying agents aren't great for the skin, so it's probably not the, not the best way to improve penetration. A mask though, a clay mask would be, that would be ideal.
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Are there common actives that people think clash, but they actually don't?
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The most problematic misunderstanding about active ingredients that clash is vitamin C and retinol. And I find that very unfortunate because while ascorbic acid and retinol do interact and they will neutralize each other or cancel each other out, you could say, I suppose fat soluble vitamin C and retinol or retinoic acid are ideal together. For one thing, the vitamin C will mitigate any of the inflammation or irritation that retinol or retinoic acid can cause. And by mixing the two together, you can actually dose yourself with a higher concentration of retinol and get better effects when you put em together. I always blend retinol and fat soluble vitamin C together. And then secondly, retinol has a stimulating effect that will improve the penetration of vitamin C. So vitamin C mitigates some of the inflammation irritation that retinol can cause and retinol can support the penetration of fat soluble vitamin C. So to me that's the most problematic of all of the misunderstandings about how actives blend. And another thing just came to mind as I'm thinking about it. Sunscreen ingredients, you don't want to increase the penetration of sunscreen ingredients. You want your sunscreen ingredients sitting on the surface of the skin. Sunscreen ingredients. And by that, when I'm talking about sunscreen ingredients, I'm talking about your chemical sunscreens. Not zinc oxide or titanium dioxide, but octocrylene, oxybenzone, octomethoxycinnamate, these standard UVA and UVB blockers that are chemicals those you don't want to have penetrate. And if you're using them in an emulsify, in a cream, an emulsion or lotion, you will get some increased penetration. And likewise, unfortunately, with preservatives, so emulsions that have preservatives, emulsions that have sunscreen kinds of ingredients. Those can be problematic. Not so much in an interactive, not so much because they cancel each other out, but because the combination of the emulsifying agent and even perhaps the lipids in the emulsion plus the sunscreen ingredient or the preservative for that matter, you'll get increased penetration, which is definitely not a good thing.
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Is there any way to avoid that?
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Zinc oxide? It's the way to go. I'm telling you, man, it's crazy to use anything but zinc oxide. Although I will say zinc oxide is very difficult to formulate with as a formulator, I can say this is a formulator. It's also expensive. Other than the expense and other the formulation difficulties. It's crazy to use a chemical sunscreen when you have an option like zinc oxide. That's the way to go. And also, you know, I don't know, I don't know how much of a digression we want to make on sun protection, but people forget that the sun protection you get from zinc oxide or even from a chemical sunscreen, that's just one type of sun protection. Antioxidation is another very important sun protection mechanism. And even though vitamin C doesn't technically have an SPF by virtue of its very powerful antioxidant properties, likewise vitamin E and, and acetylcysteine and even to a certain extent retinol and zinc, their antioxidant effects give you a whole nother mechanism for sun protection above and beyond the sun protection that you get through chemical sunscreens or the mechanical sunscreens like zinc oxide or titanium dioxide.
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That concludes our show for today, and we thank you for listening. But if you just can't get enough of Ben Fuchs, the ASCP's rogue pharmacist, you can find him@truthtreatments.com for more information on this episode or for ways to connect with Ben Fuchs or to learn more about ascp, check out the show notes.