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Want to know why hyaluronic acid is not the best ingredient for hydration? Keep reading to find out.
Hyaluronic acid is well known for its hydrating properties and it’s basically present in every skincare product out there, but is it really as good as they want us to think?
A few months ago I watched a youtube video that suggested hyaluronic acid is a scam and I absolutely needed to know if it was true as I was consistently spending on hyaluronic acid serums.
I dug deep into research only to find a disappointing truth.
Hyaluronic acid is a humectant and, therefore, is able to minimize transepidermal water loss. Nevertheless, it’s not the most effective humectant out there since it has a molecular weight higher than 500 daltons. This is the cut-off weight after which skin care ingredients are not able to penetrate the skin barrier.
What does all of this mean? Keep reading to understand better and to know the truth about hyaluronic acid.
What is hyaluronic acid
Basically, if you don’t know about hyaluronic acid where are living my friend? Don’t worry though, if you don’t know about it I’m here to explain it to you.
Hyaluronic acid, or HA, is a humectant. Humectants are ingredients or molecules that grab onto water. This is their purpose in a moisturizer: holding to as much water as they can.
Basically, they help in avoiding transepidermal water loss which is the loss of water that passes from inside a body through the epidermis (i.e. our skin) to the atmosphere.
More specifically it is a GAG (glycosaminoglycan) which is a sugary carb useful for holding onto water but also they greedily keep the water to themself. This means in the long run and if not used correctly, HA can actually dehydrate your skin as opposed to hydrating it!
The many names of HA
After reading this article I want you to be able to recognize if any of your products contain HA for reasons you will understand later.
So, here are all of the names you can find hyaluronic acid under in the ingredient list of your skincare products.
- Hyaluronic acid
- HA
- Hyaluronan
- Hydrolyzed hyaluronic acid
- Sodium hyaluronate (this is the cheaper, salt version of HA)
What’s all of the attention about?
Hyaluronic acid has been around for so many years and, in the last decade, it’s been one of the most talked about ingredients.
It’s supposedly one of the best out there and is present in basically every step of our skincare routine.
Seriously, I challenge you to take out all of your hydrating products and read your ingredient list to find out how many of them contain hyaluronic acid because I bet it’s in most of them.
So, to my understanding, HA is not that great of an ingredient as it can
- Dehydrate your skin if not used correctly
- Make you more sensitive when used with potentially irritating products such as retinoids
This brings me to believe that hyaluronic acid is a scam, pumped by the media for their personal gain since there are far better ingredients for hydration.
I feel like the media is making us feel like we absolutely need this ingredient for hydration while this absolutely not the case.
I just quickly want to say that I don’t think hyaluronic acid is useless because it is not, but I think we can spend our money on better skincare ingredients and that we absolutely do not need a HA serum!!
Why is hyaluronic acid a scam, according to science?
There is a simple answer to this question and it comes down to the 500 Dalton rule.
500 Dalton rule
for a substance to be able to cross the skin barrier – meaning, for an ingredient to be able to penetrate our skin – it must have a molecular weight of fewer than 500 Daltons.
As we already said briefly, hyaluronic acid weight is ALWAYS over 500 Dalton as opposed to other humectants such as glycerin whose molecular weight is approximately 93 Daltons.
If you are interested in being on your A game for hydration I have an entire article about glycerin and its wonderful properties.
How to use HA the right way
For the finale, if you actually would like to use HA, here is the proper way to use it. Honestly, I think that before a big event or an evening/day you are particularly excited about it can be useful.
This is simply because hyaluronic acid swells when it grabs water therefore it can make your skin temporarily more plump and juicy.
- Apply it to a wet face
- Seal it in with a strong occlusive (look for moisturizers with petrolatum, silicones, and waxes)
This is the only way to guarantee that the water that HA grabs onto stays on your skin and also that it doesn’t steal water from your skin.
If you are still adamant about using HA just make sure you don’t use it in every single product of your skincare routine as it will dehydrate your skin. Just limit yourself to one product.
