My background is in journalism, not chemistry or any other science; so in order to understand this week's Ingredient of the Week, CoValence® Laboratories' IconicA®, I had to do a little bit of research and ask a few extra questions.
Vitamin A is tricky, as it has many different names. Retinoids, when naturally derived (versus synthetic), are naturally occurring derivatives of vitamin A (think retinol, retinaldehyde and tretinoin). Problem is they're notoriously unstable (among other issues that pertain to natural versus synthetic and the benefits of activating all RARs (retinoic acid receptors) with naturally derived retinoids versus activating a targeted selection of RARs with synthetically derived retinoids). Because of their inherit instability, many skin care formulas only use small amount of a retinoid.
What CoValence did was create a stable vitamin A technology, in which it was able to stabilize retinal's strength. They used retinaldehyde, also called retinal, which is the precursor to retinoic acid and proven to be the least irritating.
In short, IonicA:
- Performs closest to retinoic acid in a cosmetic topical, providing wrinkle reduction and prevention properties to skin
- Is the least irritating vitamin A to skin, which makes it great for all skin types
Kind of cool they developed the first stable retinal. Sounds promising to me.
