Skincare Ingredients For Optimal Skin Nutrition

Premium skincare ingredients and their anti-aging qualities

Skincare products can promise to deliver many benefits, but beneath the beautiful branding, what truly matters are the individual ingredients and how they work together to nourish and protect your skin.

LightWater’s founder, Soo-Young Kang, PhD, is a personal care expert and skincare fanatic who set out to make the freshest and cleanest skincare available with the goal of giving everyone’s skin the full nourishment it needs.

In order to create the best possible skincare products, she committed early on to select only ingredients that are:

• Clinically proven actives with scientific evidence to validate their efficacy
• Contain essential nutrients skin needs for around-the-clock care
• Work in harmony and synergy with each other to result in elegant formulas that are lightweight and fast absorbing, and provide a pleasing texture that feels great on skin
• Are pure and clean, without any residual components that may potentially irritate the skin or weaken it over time

We’d like to tell you about the unique strengths and unparalled benefits of the fresh, vegan ingredients that power our clean beauty approach to moisturizing and nourishing skin.

Morning Multivitamin Moisturizer Ingredients

These ingredients were specifically chosen to bolster skin’s resilience and protect it from the environmental stressors skin encounters day after day.

Antioxidant Blend:

• Pine Bark Extract (Pycnogenol) – This unique and powerful antioxidant is extracted from the bark of maritime pine trees found in southwestern France. Known for its efficacy in capturing free radicals, Pycnogenol defends skin against sun damage and photoaging, and fights off inflammation. It helps improve skin’s natural glow by aiding microcirculation, and revitalize skin’s elasticity by generating its collagen and hyaluronic acid. This potent multifunctional ingredient is also used to treat asthma and allergies in addition to its role in boosting skin health.
• Green Tea Extract – The antioxidant and anti-inflammatory qualities of green tea, combined with the presence of caffeine, a vasoconstrictor, help skin retain moisture, tighten, and reduce puffiness, especially in the undereye areas.
• Rice Germ Extract – A friend to sensitive skin, rice extract delivers a range of benefits. It provides UV protection, stimulates collagen production, reduces hyperpigmentation, and accelerates exfoliation. Together these qualities contribute to smoother, more evenly toned skin.

Deep Moisturizers:

• Sodium Hyaluronate – As its name suggests, this ingredient is a derivative of hyaluronic acid, which is famous for being able to hold 1000 times its weight in moisture. It offers the same extreme hydration benefits, but its lower molecular weight allows it to penetrate the epidermis more easily and reach deeper into the skin, making it all the more effective. By attracting and retaining moisture in the skin cells, sodium hyaluronate hydrates underlying skin layers to reduce dryness, flaking, and the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles. It has also been shown to have anti-inflammatory properties, making it effective at promoting softer, more supple skin.
• Shea Butter – This rich ingredient locks in and retains moisture. It also delivers several fatty acids that reinforce the skin barrier and even promote wound healing.

Evening Replenishing Cream Ingredients

Night time is the right time to help skin rest and rejuvenate. These ingredients were chosen to optimize your overnight skin care regimen.

Replenishing Nutrients:

• Ferulic Acid – Another weapon in the fight against free radicals that accumulate thoughout the day is ferulic acid, which is an antioxidant naturally found in foods like bran, rice, oats, and citrus fruits. It regenerates skin, protects against UV damage, and can lighten dark spots for a more even skin tone. Ferulic acid also offers anti-inflammatory properties. Research shows that it helps stabilize and enhance the anti-aging effects of vitamin C.
• Goji Berry Cell Extract – The nutrient-rich superfood native to Asia has been revered for generations due to its medicinal properties. Goji berry extract is packed with vitamins and amino acids that help boost collagen and elastin production. It tightens facial contours and improves skin density by stimulating the signaling of skin cells to regenerate and rejuvenate.
• Omega 3 and 6 – These well-known, high-potency essential fatty acids treat dry skin, strengthen its barrier function, increase resistance to external aggressors, and make skin smoother, stronger, and healthier.

Super-Hydrators and Barrier Strengtheners:

• Squalane – In keeping with our commitment to vegan skincare ingredients, we use a sugar cane-derived version of squalene, which is naturally produced by the skin cells. Benefits of squalane include increased cell turnover, improved elasticity, and better moisture retention to reduce the appearance of wrinkles and fine lines. It also works as an antioxidant and anti-inflammatory, and enhances skin barrier integrity.
• Oil Blend: Olive Oil, Sweet Almond Oil, Sweet Cherry Oil – Filled with vitamins, minerals, and skin-beneficial fatty acids, these oils offer a complementary combination of antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties while promoting smooth, well hydrated skin with a healthy glow.
• Jojoba Esters – Extracted from the seed of a desert shrub, this hardy ingredient provides a stable, hydration-boosting skin protectant similar to that produced by the body’s own sebaceous glands. The waxy molecular structure of Jojoba esters enables the substance to resist oxidation as it works to reduce flakiness and support firmer skin.

Working For You Day and Night

The following moisturizers and skin barrier strengtheners are found in both the AM and PM formulas because they promote skin health around the clock and support the functions of the other ingredients: 

The skincare actives in the products we use matter – they are what deliver results, but only if they are used while they’re still fresh and efficacious. What might be surprising is that many skincare actives degrade and oxidize rapidly, losing the majority of their efficacy in just a few months, and some even in just a few weeks.

Do you know what else matters? The ingredients that are not included — namely, preservatives, fragrance allergens, silicones, sulfates,  phthalates, PEG, EDTA, and more. Our Clean Act is our commitment to formulating skincare products for optimal skin health using only the most beneficial ingredients, while eliminating those that have even the slightest indication of potentially harmful effects.

We believe ingredients should be as pure and fresh as the food we aim to eat. All our ingredients are highly effective, hypoallergenic, and microbiome-friendly, in addition to being gentle and soothing to even the most sensitive and susceptible skin of any type or age.

Market moisturizers, cleansers and other products made with preservatives and chemicals may feel like they are taking care of your skin, but they are often more like processed foods that make us feel full, but can hardly be called nutritious. Based on our scientific knowledge, we aspire to achieve our mission of going beyond skincare to provide skin nutrition. Look clean, live clean!

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