Today it’s time for some all-new DIY content! That’s right, Skin Actives Scientific is back in a big way with a method to make a DIY Ceramides cream you may find very useful. Now, this DIY blog exists at a level that is a bit beyond what we normally get up to, but don’t worry! It’s not that bad. If you can cook macaroni and cheese, you use today’s great tip, so keep on reading.

Before we roll up our sleeves and get into the nitty gritty, let’s take a look at what we’ll be making. 

Today’s DIY recipe deals with making a nice, smooth Ceramides Cream. But before we get started, let’s unpack ceramides for a bit.

What Are Ceramides in Skincare?

Ceramides are actually a type of lipid. By their broadest definition, lipids are any chemical that cannot be dissolved in water. This includes but is not limited to different types of oil, wax, fat, other compounds that occur naturally.

With a definition that broad it should come as no surprise that we humans actually have ceramides that occur naturally in our own skin. Depending on the resource you look at, ceramides actually make up between 30 - 50% of our epidermis. 

Since humans make their own ceramides, we don’t rely on getting them from external sources, such as say, topical application. In fact, ceramides won’t integrate into your skin. This doesn’t mean that topically applied ceramides are useless to us however, as they can create temporary support to our skin helping to keep our skin hydrated.

What Do Ceramides Do For Skin?

As we have learned from many Skin Actives blog entries, the epidermis serves a vital function, not just of keeping the important bodily functions that make us healthy and strong in, but also of keeping the environment out.

Because so much of our skin is composed of ceramides, ceramides are vital for accumulating and locking in moisture. Additionally there is some evidence that suggests ceramides or more complex chemicals containing ceramides could play a limited antimicrobial role in your skin as well.

But for today we’ll be focusing on the more visible function of ceramides which is moisturizing and hydration.

Skin that is well hydrated and flexible does not display fine lines and wrinkles as much as skin that is dry and brittle. Additionally, dry, flakey skin is thinner and more permeable by chemicals of all kinds floating around in the environment.

So your skin needs all the help it can get to stay hydrated.

What Ceramides Should I Use?

Sometimes when you are looking into a particular active, you’ll start to see information about different types of that active, usually based on where the active is derived.

For decades there has been this war of perception and information about the concepts of “natural” versus “synthetic”. This big battle is really over an idea, is something that comes from nature “better” than something that comes from a lab?

Well, as we talked about in last week’s blog, it really depends on how it interacts with your skin.

In the case of ceramides specifically, the synthetic product is no “worse” for you than the “natural”. In fact, since you create your own ceramides naturally anyway, the only ceramides available to source outside of a lab come from plants that have radically different genetics than we do.

Ceramides sourced from labs are chemically identical to the ones that we make for ourselves, not plants. And if that doesn’t convince you, the vast preponderance of ceramides found in the skincare industry are lab made to boot.

If you are less concerned about reinforcing your ceramides topically, and more interested in buffering your home-grown ceramides, there are some foods you can add to your diet that will help. Soy, brown rice, and beans have all been cited as natural sources for ceramides, as well as sweet potato. But do remember that your body de-prioritizes your skin when handing out the beneficial goodies.

DIY Ceramide Cream

So on to the fun part. This week our Founder, Dr. Hannah Sivak, is sharing with us her recipe on how to integrate ceramides into your DIY skincare projects. 

(If DIY is not your thing, we have plenty of products with ceramides in them, here.)

Ceramides can be sort of tough to work with because, as we stated at the jump, by definition they do not dissolve in water. This means if you are going to get ceramides nice and smooth in your cream or serum, you are going to have to find a way to dissolve those crystals and lose that gravelly texture. 

Here is what Dr. Sivak has to say:

“1.2 grams may not look like much but it will go a long way…This ingredient is recommended for use at up to 1% in formulations. We recommend adding this ingredient to the heated oil phase of an emulsion for best results. The ingredient can be added to completed formulations, but it will require heating in a separate oil before adding to any cream or oil-based serum. We recommend heating the ingredient in rosehip seed oil until the solution is visibly free of any granules. The solution must be added to the cream while it is still warm or the solution will cool to a butter-like consistency that does not easily mix into a base cream.

You can mix some powder with rosehip oil and leave it overnight or warm it up for 5 seconds or so in the microwave.”

Let’s break that down to some easy step-by-step instructions.

So, let’s imagine that we’re going to be adding ceramides to a 4 oz Base Cream like our European or Canvas Cream. This is an example, so that you can replicate at home.

You will need: a 4 oz base cream, for this example let’s say European for its silky texture which will go well with the rosehip oil, a 1 oz DIY Rosehip Oil, a 1.2 gram vial of ceramides, and a clean workspace.

1. First, the cream comes in oz, and ceramides come in grams, so we’ll need to do a little math here. Ounces is a unit of volume, and grams is a unit of weight, so this is not exact, but will do.
   4 ounces of cream comes out to about 113.3 grams. Our ceramides are packaged at 1.2 grams for ease of use. With that 1% ratio that Hannah suggests, this means we are looking for 1.13 grams, so the 1.2 grams of ceramides will work out nicely.
2. Empty your vial of ceramides into a clean bowl in your workspace. 
3. Using the glass dropper included with your 1 oz DIY Rosehip Seed Oil, add in 8 - 10 droppers of rosehip to the bowl, mixing to get all the ceramides gathered up. (You can add more rosehip in this step if you like, but we’re trying to keep the total amount of oil low so that when we add it to the cream, it won’t become too liquid-y).
4. Warm in a saucepan or for 5 seconds in the microwave, stirring gently until the granules have dissolved and are no longer visible.
5. When your mixture is ready, pour into your still warm mixture into the 4 oz cream and mix thoroughly. Remember, if you are adding to a fresh 4 oz cream, make sure you have some room for the extra volume in the container.
6. Now you have a new hydrating ceramide cream to enjoy!

Reminder: Because you may be heating up rosehip seed oil on your range, keep in mind that it is an oil but that it’s flash point is 212 degrees fahrenheit (100 degrees celsius). That’s pretty hot! And you shouldn’t need to get your rosehip oil to that level in order to see results, but please keep an eye on it while you are working.

If you would like to hear more from Dr. Sivak, check out her personal blog where she talks science and the skincare industry, here.

Thanks for reading all the way to the bottom Skin Actives Family, we hope that today’s DIY tip helps you in your future projects. Stay tuned next week when we have more great things to share with you Tuesday and Friday, right here!