If your skin is tender and irritated, what you need are some skin-soothing ingredients.
But just what are they?
What are Skin-Soothing Ingredients?
Skin-soothing ingredients are those that help calm reactive skin, reducing inflammation and redness and allowing the skin to feel more comfortable again.
If you have skincare solutions with these ingredients in them, your skin should look and feel calmer when you use them. They work to diminish redness and blotchiness, stopping any sources of distress that are causing your skin to react.
As a bonus, many skin-soothing ingredients can also help reduce the signs of aging!
Best Skin-Soothing Ingredients
The following skin-soothing ingredients can be used by all skin types, even those with sensitive, reddened, and irritated skin. They are gentle but effective and will help you feel better about how your skin looks and feels.
1. Bisabolol
Derived mainly from the chamomile plant, alpha-bisabolol is famous for helping to soothe the skin. It is a naturally occurring compound that is the primary constituent of the essential oil from German chamomile.
This ingredient helps tame irritation, calm inflammation, and even fight off bacteria and other microbes. It’s high in panthenol (a B vitamin), which helps moisturize and heal the skin. It’s been used for centuries to condition the skin while reducing dryness, flakiness, and damage.
We also know that bisabolol can stimulate the skin’s healing process, helping it heal itself.
Skin-Soothing Ingredients 2. Curcumin
Curcumin is one of the main compounds in the turmeric root. Turmeric is related to ginger and is used to create a bright, yellow-orange spice called curry. But it also has powerful health benefits to the skin because of the curcumin in it.
We know, for instance, that curcumin can help heal wounds by decreasing inflammation and oxidation. If you have irritated skin, curcumin can be a powerful ally in helping it calm down.
Curcumin can also positively affect collagen, stimulating production and helping to encourage regeneration and skin firmness. Its powerful anti-inflammatory properties can even help you with eczema and psoriasis flare-ups, as it calms the skin’s reactions.
If you have acne, you should also look for turmeric. Its antimicrobial properties help keep pores clean and clear-up acne breakouts while reducing acne scarring.
3. Beta-Glucan
Derived primarily from oats, but also from yeast, fungi, and seaweed, beta-glucan is often used as a skin-soothing agent. It’s a polysaccharide (complex sugar) that you may ingest in food, but you can also apply it to your skin.
This ingredient has several properties that help soothe skin:
- Humectant: It attracts water to the top layers of skin, helping to moisturize and prevent dryness. This also helps to reinforce the skin barrier so it’s less likely to react to irritants. Beta-glucan is considered just as good at this as hyaluronic acid, if not better.
- Regenerator: Some research shows that beta-glucan can help in the treatment of dermatitis, eczema, bedsores, wounds, and burns.
- Plumper: Because it’s deeply moisturizing, it can help penetrate the skin to effectively plump up fine lines and wrinkles.
- Antioxidant: Beta-glucan recruits immune cells to attack unwanted outsiders from pollution, UV rays, and more. This can help protect sensitive skin.
Skin-Soothing Ingredients 4. Aloe Vera
This ingredient has a stellar reputation as a skin-soothing agent. It’s moisturizing and protective, and also rich in vitamins that help shore up the skin’s outer barrier. These include vitamins A, C, E, and B12, which also help lock in moisture without exacerbating oiliness.
Aloe vera absorbs easily, which means the skin benefits from it immediately. Its anti-inflammatory properties help reduce redness and swelling, and it also helps support the production and release of collagen to help heal wounds faster.
We also know that aloe vera is an effective antioxidant, protecting the skin from damaging free radicals. Use it to help repair sun damage and slow down the aging process in the skin.
5. Sea Buckthorn Oil
This natural oil comes from a flowering shrub (Hippophaes rhamnoides) also called the Siberian pineapple. It produces small berries that can be cold-pressed into pulp or oil.
One of the unique things about this ingredient is that the berries can contain up to 10 times more vitamin C than an orange, and they are the third-highest source of vitamin E among plants. Both of these nutrients are key for calming and protecting sensitive skin. Vitamin C and E are also antioxidants that protect the skin from free radical damage.
Sea buckthorn oil is a powerful moisturizer. It contains linoleic acid, a fatty acid that is found naturally in sebum (skin oil). The skin drinks it up, which improves overall moisture levels and prevents moisture loss.
All of these properties make sea buckthorn oil very soothing. You may be surprised to find that it also fades your hyperpigmentation and improves overall skin tone.
Skin-Soothing Ingredients 6. Calendula
Calendula is another natural ingredient derived from marigold flowers. The oil contains healthful flavonoids that act as antioxidants, protecting the skin from environmental damage.
It’s also a powerful anti-inflammatory, reducing redness, soothing eczema flare-ups, and helping wounds to heal. Use it to help skin heal from acne, sunburn, rosacea, psoriasis, or eczema.
Calendula has an almost magical ability to increase blood flow and oxygen to the skin. That stimulates healing and regeneration and can have your skin feeling better quickly. It’s ideal for sensitive and acne-prone skin, as the anti-inflammatory and antimicrobial properties banish blemishes and redness.
The oil is light in texture but very moisturizing. It hydrates skin to make dryness and flakiness things of the past and absorbs easily into the deepest layers of skin.
7. Reishi Mushroom
Also called the Lingzhi mushroom, this natural fungus shines when it comes to taming inflammation. But it can do so much more than that.
Polysaccharides—types of sugars in Reishi—have protective and replenishing effects. They promote a healthy skin barrier while improving the skin’s ability to hang onto moisture.
Reishi also has terpenes, antioxidant compounds that have anti-inflammatory and anti-tumor effects. When working together, polysaccharides and terpenes help restore and soothe the skin while helping delay the appearance of aging.
Reishi even contains beta-glucan, which as we noted above, is highly moisturizing.
Finally, Reishi is known to help the skin become less reactive to stress from the environment. After you use it for a while, you may notice that your skin is less sensitive than it used to be.
Find All of These Skin-Soothing Ingredients at CV Skinlabs
Where can you find all these star skin-soothing ingredients? At CV Skinlabs! All of our products contain all of these ingredients, which makes sense. We created them to be soothing and suitable for all types of skin, even the most sensitive.
Do you look for skin-soothing ingredients in your skincare products?
