[Pharma]

Could you find quercetin? Also yellow, also nice for claims/disguise.

BTW what I proposed was to use some turmeric extract to give customers the impression that your lotion should be yellow, not to actually colour it yellow. Because turmeric (or rather curcumin in there) is highly lipophilic, it will only colour oils (which is invisible because it’s the inner phase) and it will colour skin too!

So, get some fancy label ingredient which is associated with the colour yellow (add trace amounts so it’s not going to be bug food) and combine that with a water soluble yellow colour. According to US law (from what @Perry mentioned) you are only allowed to use a very few colourants in cosmetics!

[Pharma]

katerinak said:

…Can the KOH be substituted for NaOH?…

…so maybe I’ll have to go hunt it down…

Usually yes. There are certain differences regarding rheology but in mixtures you usually can substitute.
No need for hunting, just CLICK ME.

[Pharma]

If it’s white, it’s no longer quercetin. Depending on the position(-s) at which quercetin is esterified with caprylic acid, it will still be yellow, just better oil soluble and hence stain skin even better.

Why or for what purpose do you need quercetin anyway?

[Pharma]

Caprylyl glycol is an antimicrobial (stronger against bacteria, hence the combo with sorbic acid) and a preservative booster. You could replace it with a similar multifunctional.

Sorbic acid requires a low pH… just saying .

Optiphen plus isn’t the only combo of ‘modern/alternative’ preservatives (it’s one of the first, if I got that right, and made of rather old preservatives which ‘by coincidence’ hit the right spot between good efficacy and not on the ‘ugly’ list). IMHO its main advantage is availability and being quite well known. Given that availability is off your list, I see no point in trying to duplicate that blend.

[Pharma]

Red seaweed extract is actually an INCI for what I would define as less purified carrageenan.

The rice proteins might do something if mixed with carrageenan??? But honestly, I concur with the others, the LOI ‘looks rather liquid’.

[Pharma]

@chemicalmatt Boric acid and borax are, with a few exceptions, prohibited in the EU and several other European countries for several years now . Any water soluble alkali will do instead of borax (though borax has a few perks other bases don’t offer).

[Pharma]

Ascorbic acid

[Pharma]

I also like choline (though the fishy smell is quite pronounced :disappointed: )… weird enough that in some countries (Canada, if memory serves me right) it is still not allowed in cosmetics due to some old and false data..

Proline is also nice but very pricey.

Did someone already mention sorbitol (not my favourite but way less tacky, nice in hydroalcoholic gels)?

I usually use blends to reduce unwanted effects.

[Pharma]

Belassi said:

aloe vera is vegan

Not necessarily Mexican aloe… that one might come with gusano de acíbar :smiley: !

[Pharma]

Stability (physical and microbial) is an issue. Such creams for pharmaceutical preparations have a shelf life of 1 months if filled in tubes and are often stored in the fridge (for physical and microbiological reasons). They will not survive freeze-thaw cycles, heat stability testing, microbial challenges, or centrifugation. They are meant to be freshly prepared and produced under ‘clean’ conditions.

An older Swiss formulation (European cold creams usually don’t use borax but some use emulsifiers to increase stability) is as follows (Dermatologische Magistralrezepturen der Schweiz, page 59 and 60 -> book pages, not PDF pages, does also exist in French but not English):

A Beesway 7 g

B Cetylpalmitate 8 g

C Almond oil 60 g

D Tocopherol 0.03 g

E Water 24.97 g

Should be stored in the fridge!

And a version with antioxidants of a Swiss pharmacopoeia variety (a nice formulation which is still in use):

A Beeswax, bleached 8 g

B Hydrated peanut oil (a partially hydrogenated oil common in CH) 17 g

C Peanut oil, refined 49.978 g

D Castor oil native 5 g

E Ascorbyl palmitate 0.012 g

F Ethanol 96% v/v 0.4 g (used to dissolve N° E and will evaporate)

G Sodium lauryl sulfat 0.1 g

H Water 19.9 g

I Tocopherol 0.01 g

It is supposed to work without SLS but is rather shear sensitive and tricky to prepare without.

@Pattsi There is beeswax and sodium carbonate in your example = sodium cerotate/melissinate = emulsifier/soap. To my knowledge, almond oil will go rancid before meadowfoam oil but there’s tocopherol in the product too.

[Pharma]

I don’t know by heart, I would have to look it up in a pharmacopoeia (you may drop by at my work place any time)… or you go to a pharmacy near you and ask there .

With o/w creams of lower viscosity, direct measurement is accurate and feasible. Slight dilution like 10x will give a negligibly different pH (good enough for cosmetics) and may be preferred in lamellar emulsions aka liquid crystal networks or when dealing with unknown or mixed type emulsions.

In w/o emulsions, sufficient dilution is mandatory. You have to add enough water to break the emulsion and centrifuge if needed (which is also a cleaner approach because no oils sticking to the electrode).

Alcohol, though it has ‘no measurable pH’, is not optimal because it can actually change the pH in some formulations like such containing free fatty acids or poorly water but alcohol soluble pH active ingredients (ferulic acid comes to mind).

[Pharma]

Personally, I’d add it to food .

It’s a nice antioxidant with similar solubility than ferulic acid, partially water soluble, partially oil soluble, and well soluble in diols/glycols and hence ‘better’ than purely oil soluble tocopherol or purely water soluble ascorbic acid.

I’d combine it with ascorbic acid to keep it from oxidising and simultaneously protect the oil phase using AA: resveratrol will redox-cycle between AA and oils and therefore, 0.1% will suffice to perform that trick.

[Pharma]

Water, oil, and beeswax sounds like traditional cold cream which is stabilised by the oil phase becoming hard enough to trap water droplets .

[Pharma]

If you can reflux, you don’t need much catalyst (usually an acid or base), just a way to constantly removing water from the equation, How are you going to do that? Do you have something like a Dean-Stark apparatus?

There is no point in telling you which acid and alcohol you should take to get a certain fragrance if you can’t buy one or both educts. Might be easier if you looked up the acids and alcohols available to you, ‘combine’ them in theory and look up their scents on the internet. If you need help with determining the right chemical names of said products, don’t hesitate asking.

Regarding the list you provided:

- Esters usually without odour and/or taste (mainly due to too low volatility): Citric, oxalic, ascorbic, phosporic, and oleic acid, glycerol, propylenglycol, and sorbitol

- Useless as odour compound because lewis acid and toxic: boric acid (also, playing with oxalic acid might result in something toxic)

- Often not a very strong odour: malic and lactic acid esters. Although, diethyl malate has a fruity taste .

- Form fragrant esters: acetic, propionic, bezoic acid, methyl, ethyl, propyl, and benzyl alcohol -> This results in 12 possible candidates of which methyl, ethyl, and propyl acetate are useless as odour compounds (although they’re not scentless). Propionic and benzoic acid esters of the four alcohols all have an odour (benzyl benzoate only slightly but is a good perfume fixative). You can look up all on Wikipedia.

Which propyl alcohol do you have? n-Propyl or isopropyl?

BTW: Phosphoric acid can be used as acid catalyst.

[Pharma]

Or cool it fast once you come back from your trip in the sun. It requires slow cooling for grains to form and simply placing your tube/pot in the freezer might do the trick for your personal pleasure (not so much for customers, should you sell your balm).

[Pharma]

Reformulate so it doesn’t get too soft, make a cream instead of a balm, or buy an A/C .

Allegedly, mango butter instead of shea butter helps too because mango butter is said to not ‘grain’.

[Pharma]

If you add too much citric acid (or any acid), pH drops and reverts TRIS stearate back to non-emulsifying stearic acid.

[Pharma]

If your balm becomes grainy, it has nothing to do with oxidation. Softisan 378 doesn’t protect anything from oxidation, anyway.

Store your balm at a cooler place or rework its composition. To prevent it from oxidising, add an antioxidant.

[Pharma]

Depends… usually, one uses blends in order to not just broaden the spectrum but also to be able to use lower amounts for the single constituents.

A preservative (or a blend thereof) should be used at the minimal required amount, not the maximum. Do some microbial contamination testing to figure out how much your product actually requires.

[Pharma]

Mixing stearic acid with trolamine results in TRIS stearate, a soap or in other words a high HLB emulsifier.

Just based on composition, it can be either. Lanolin does bind water nicely and 25% oil soluble actives… a water saturated ‘oil’ would be my guess.

[Pharma]

Benzyl alcohol is pH independent .

[Pharma]

ngarayeva001 said:

…The industry can remove the word but they cannot (and should not because it’s not a task of the business) remove the desire to change skin color one way or another…

Sure about that? I honestly doubt that they couldn’t change it because they were the ones who pushed the original believe of bright being better (at least in India) to the point where the requirement for getting hiring (or married) got the following decreasing order: having fair skin > looking beautiful > what-was-it-again? ah, yea, having an appropriate education for the respective field and probably also being actually good in it.

Not just that some fear that their daughters won’t find a husband or a job because of scars but it’s a common phenomenon in India that many have the same real fear because of naturally darker skin.

Cosmetic industries (most of all the big western multinationals) heavily contribute to and intensify that stupidity, just see how aggressive their marketing is, like vultures over dead horses. Sure, they originally didn’t kill the first horse but that doesn’t justify what they are doing. Given the huge market there, I don’t think they really plan on dropping that feast. And if they do, then there will be even more dangerous products by small uncontrolled manufacturers. IMHO they have the obligation to change marketing to keep mostly the young people from (ab-)using such products… would be great if they did!

As a side note: Here in Switzerland, bleaching products are long over their peak. Such products and advertisements therefore have become scarce and the concentration of bleaching ingredients in OTC products have gone down. We have a max of 5% benzoylperoxide, azelaic acid is a prescription drug and so is hydroquinone though with no available product, and kojic acid is not even approved. People with hyperpigmentation or other similar issues go to the dermatologist to get treatments and/or products on prescription.

[Pharma]

I honestly didn’t read everything in your post cause I intended on not replying any further… anyway: The artificial colours you mention are all closely related azo dyes which can give cross-sensitivity and they are not polyphenols. Benzoate is not even a simple phenol whilst vitamin E would be a phenol and is mandatory for life.

There is no single enzyme which breaks down polyphenols because there are so many different polyphenols that comparing one with another would be like having a ‘pet allergy’ against dogs, cats, birds, lizards, fish, spiders… just any animal you could possibly keep as pet. Besides, many polyphenols aren’t metabolised (no need to), some aren’t even assimilated, and others are detoxified by a broad set of your most basic liver enzymes. There is no enzyme in your digestive tract which is supposed to break down polyphenols, hence, there is no point in using a supplement which allegedly does that .

If you want food without polyphenols and you don’t even tolerate oils, then you, my dear, are in deep troubles because most polyphenols aren’t oil soluble but are part of the water soluble fraction. Hence, ALL fruits, ALL veggies, and ALL grains contain large amounts of polyphenols. Only more or less purified starches like white rice or white wheat flour contain negligible amounts. Your diet will hence be animal fat, animal proteins (meat), and starch. In other words, the typical diet of modern civilisation which causes so many problems, most notably of digestion. Eat healthy, eat a lot of fruits and veggies, omit artificial additives (who eats azo dyies, anyway, they even look unnatural and disgusting) and you’ll do a lot better. If you have an intolerance which is hard to pin down and which is not related to synthetic additives such as the aforementioned azo dyes, then you should look into FODMAP aka fructose malabsorption.

Oh, and one last thing: Natural oil without polyphenols = lard and cod liver oil. Others would be fractionated and/or transesterified derivatives such as fractionated coconut oil or ester oils and these are no longer ‘natural’, let alone organic. If you’re an ‘organic’ person, then your diet is extremely heavy in polyphenols! Go McDonalds .

[Pharma]

Graillotion said:

…even with brief opening of the bag it is stored in, it is such an effective humectant, that it was gathering moisture.  Keep in mind that I live on the wet side of Hawaii…so relative humidity essentially never drops below 90.
…

Same thing happens with glycerol (especially the 99.8%, less so the 85%) only that you’re not going to see much given that glycerol is already liquid.

BTW I have also calcium chloride and choline chloride and they are even worse… they turned liquid over time even in a seemingly tightly closed container. Drying choline chloride sucks because it has to be done with desiccants. Reminds me that I have to change the desiccant bag for my proline.

Betaine can be heated to dryness more easily without degradation. You could make smaller aliquots which you tightly seal so that you don’t have to open and close the whole bag till it all gets sticky.

[Pharma]

Polyphenols are an important food constituent which is increasingly lacking in modern food. Polyphenols comprise an extremely broad variety of very different constituents and there is NO possibility to develop a collective sensitivity.

Hence, I’m not commenting any further…