Get the best from your beauty rest
September 20, 2018
According to Mintel, the increasingly hectic pace of modern life is creating a market for night-time products, like night creams, night treatments, and sleeping masks. They help users to relax before bedtime, sleep better, and restore the body while they rest. According to a study in the UK, night cream usage has risen from 39% in 2017 to 48% in 2018, while day cream usage has risen from 59% to 66%. Consumers are looking for products designed for a specific time of the day. Let’s see what makes the night so precious for the skin, and how we can get inspiration from nature to get the best night recovery!
During the day, the skin is exposed to multiple stresses. The more obvious one is the sunlight, and inflammation from daytime UV damage can persist for several hours after exposure. Laminaria ochroleuca is a brown algae living deep in the sea in a low light exposure environment. Due to the tide cycles, the algae deals with important solar variations. To protect itself, it secretes secondary metabolites to resist against U.V. at low tide, giving ANTILEUKINE 6™ its anti photoaging property. Active 6 to 12 hours after solar exposure, it makes it particularly interesting for night treatment.
Before going to bed, it’s now very common to watch tv, use cell phones, or play on tablets, bringing an excess of blue light exposure for the skin. Sakadikium™, extracted from the roots of the butterfly ginger, offers multi protection to the skin, especially against modern stresses: blue light, UV, pollutants and chronological aging. It’s the perfect extract to recover from a stressful day, and avoid blue light impact at night.
During the day, skin is exposed to environmental factors which generate free radicals, responsible for premature aging. They are at their maximal concentration at the end of the day, so it’s particularly important to use antioxidant and detoxifying actives at night, to deeply “clean” the skin. Ephemer™ is extracted from the rare and precious gametophyte cell of the algae Undaria pinnatifida. At this stage, it contains antioxidant molecules to protect itself from its stressful environment. EPHEMER™ particularly provides immediate antioxidant effects (after 1h), which makes it able to act during sleep.
Plants, like humans, have a day/night rhythm, and the ability to regulate they oxygen production depending on the luminosity. Native essence™, a seashore plant extract, will boost the content of oxygen in the skin, even in asphyxia condition. It is of special interest for night care products as oxygen is needed for cell regeneration.
After the stresses of the day, just as the mind needs a soothing nighttime, so does the skin. Skin is also very much more sensitive in the evening: the number of inflammatory receptors is much higher between 7pm and 11pm, making it the best time to apply anti-inflammatory actives on the skin. Centella asiatica - or tiger grass - has been used for thousand of years in Asia for its regenerative properties. It is said that tigers - nightfall hunters - roll themselves over in the leaves to cure their wounds. TECA™, a titrated extract of Centella asiatica, has been shown to accelerate the wound healing process while soothing the skin.
Skin sebum excretion peaks at midday, and there is less sebum production at night. This can lead to a lack of skin barrier effect, resulting in transepidermal water loss. At night, the temperature of the skin increases, leading even more to skin dehydration and enlarged pores. Ceramosides™ HP helps to boost the ceramides skin content, and improves the skin barrier effect. This natural, gluten-free wheat extract will also improve skin firmness, leading to pore minimizing effect, for a fresh look even in the morning!