[Pharma]

Depends also on the country you’re selling in.

As an example, Eucerin AtopiControl is okay in EU but in Switzerland, the word AtopiC in the name is enough to make it a drug, hence the Swiss version is called Eucerin AtoControl.

Eczema may be genetic, which means either you’ve got it and therefore have eczema-prone skin (= need a doctor) or you don’t have it (= don’t need your product). Other forms of eczema may simply be cause by dry skin (= only need your product)… As layers usually say: Two layers, three opinions. Give your administration a call (would work here, dunno how cooperative yours is).

[Pharma]

Nope, I’m playing around making my own but it’s o/w. Easier than it first sounded (once you got the principle) but still harder than a simple emulsion (it’s a bit finicky to prepare and has its own rules).

The basic ingredients are a nonionic high HLB emulsifier with not too long a headgroup and a nonionic low HLB emulsifier, glycerol and magnesium sulphate each at +/- the right %. You don’t necessarily have to do the whole HIPE, if you D-phase fails, ditch it, if not, you’ve got a fair chance at a decent product (long term stability is a different story).

Alternatively, combos of PEG-derivatives like Brij plus Span are what’s commonly used. Alchemy goes with poylglycerols (I like those, more eco).

[Pharma]

Import from Italy ‘talco non talco’… wait, if you’re going to import from Italy, you could as well import talc…

Suppose the market wasn’t that great to begin with or they wouldn’t discontinue a product just because of bad publicity. Or they suspect that maybe, just maybe, their proof of innocuousness ain’t bulletproof.

Here in Switzerland, you can only find one last wound powder (anthroposophical brand), everything else has been, well, not banned but err… disencouraged. For one, dry wound care is obsolete and indications point to mineral powders growing into skin may cause issues (cancer at the worst) a few decades later. Baby powder is still a thing but sales are declining from what I see.

[Pharma]

I meant gum or polymer blends, not emulsifier blends because, like EVchem said, the feel is not super great but mixing different gums can help.

Alchemy Ingredients had a w/o HIPE… discontinued or temporarily unavailable? Anyway, PDF HERE. Ask @ngarayeva001 for help, she likes those but I guess she goes for silicones and polyacrylates…

[Pharma]

Well, if you remove the alcohol and leave chlorhexidine (assuming that’s what you mean by ACH) to the pros, then you’ll get a nice bodylotion which does what it’s supposed to do, sooth and care.

@Belassi diplomatic enough? :smiley:

[Pharma]

A glycol sounds good and in order to increase pH, add a base (NaOH or KOH will do). Alternatively, don’t add pure lactic acid but a blend of lactic acid and a lactate salt (sodium lactate). This however requires that you calculate it (knowing about buffers will help) though it won’t be super accurate even with the right formula.

[Pharma]

It should slow down degradation. If you have water in your product, also use a good chelate.

[Pharma]

Sure, subtract 2.5 g from your water phase and that keeps everything at the amounts it should be.

[Pharma]

I like Olionatura.de: Assuming you’re not German speaking, here a short translation of what she says about Olivem 900:

Olivem 900 is a w/o emulsifier supposedly good for oil phases above 50% and requires at least 75°C. Given your description of a liquid product implies a o/w emulsion which won’t be stable. The required HLB values posted by @Perry are only valid for o/w emulsions, not w/o (they tend to be lower there) . For o/w emulsions you might have to add more Olivem and more cetyl alcohol, not less.

Try using more than 50% oil phase, 7-8% Olivem, cetyl alcohol is optional but might boost stability and creaminess.

As @EVchem said, add the water phase very slowly and make sure everything is homogeneous before you add more. Keep on mixing until cold and don’t cool too fast. BTW Bamix are kitchen stick blenders with an astonishing RPM for such tools (depends on the model, somewhere between 12’000 and 17’000 RPM).

[Pharma]

Okay, so you’ve got enough oils to produce an emulsion which will look like a cream (white). All you need is a thickener or gelling agent to turn that lotion into a gel-cream. There are many non-acrylate products to choose from (sure, acrylates are easier and more reliable to work with and have often a more pleasing skin feel). Because you’re going to need higher %, blends might be favourable in terms of how they feel when applied.

Second approach would be a w/o HIPE. You’d be a tad higher than 5% counting oil+emulsifiers…

[Pharma]

Sounds like you’d be better off with version B then .

Add locust bean gum aka carob, guar gum, or tara gum. These three show synergism with xanthan gum. Hardness/stiffness/viscosity of a xanthan gum blend decreases in the following order LBG>guar>tara whilst smoothness/softness/slip increases. Typical ratios are 1:1 - 1:2.

Someone here on board said that mixing xanthan with sclerotium gum (1:1 - 1:4) reduces soaping/whitening sometimes seen with pure xanthan.

[Pharma]

Preserved foods are typically labelled with an expiration date which, depending on packaging (hot fill in sealed jars, canned, or pasteurised), may well be longer than 1 year with that low pH (there’s a huge difference between pH 3 and 4!) and your preservative blend. And then the label reads: Store in fridge after opening and consume within a few days…

What’s also required if you intend keeping it microbiologically clean for a long time during which consumers put their dirty fingers in it every day is a low water activity. 5% polyols won’t suffice.

Read recommendations for food preservation.

[Pharma]

Right, cetyl alcohol is more effective in this regard and I’d also start with replacing 4% cetyl esters with 2 % C esters and 1% C alcohol. But regarding oil gelling and, in my experience or rather my personal preference, skin feel and that’s why I use 1% cetyl alcohol for 0.5% cetyl palmitate or vice versa… Try it out! If you have glyceryl stearate on your shelf, you could give that also a trial.

[Pharma]

Are you looking for something without any oil phase?

[Pharma]

The amount of Tween 80 and DPG will be so diluted once in a bath that you don’t have to bother with any accelerated transdermal delivery although this would be exactly what you want . BTW, magnesium doesn’t work, it’s just a nice claim ingredient people rave about. The main active for sore muscles is wintergreen oil (like in all those products) and it goes through skin like nothing.

[Pharma]

chemicalmatt said:

Curious: where and how does Epsom Salt detract insects?

It’s used as fertiliser, not pesticide .

[Pharma]

You could use the Uzo effect to your advantage. First, it’s better to turn menthol liquid by creating an eutectic mixture. This is easy because mixtures with many essential oils shows that effect. Camphor would be the standard for this experiment (did it at university too) -> see also publication showing growth stimulation by applying menthol/camphor to Thale cress . Then you make a concentrated solution of menthol in ethanol or methanol. Yes, correct, methanol. Plants love foliar methanol (10-30% once a week) way more than ethanol (10-20% max.)! You simply put that stock solution into water and *ZAPP*, it turns milky just like Uzo turns milky when diluted. This microemulsion is only stable for maybe 15 minutes or so, just enough time to drink the Uzo or spray your brew, respectively.

Do not add Epsom salt to the water, it will break the emulsion faster like it breaks most o/w emulsions.

Another approach is using a solubiliser. These are added to most lipophilic agricultural pesticides (synthetic ones are usually very lipophilic and poorly soluble). If you take a too good one, you hurt the plants and if it’s a not so good one… well, you don’t want to treat the plants but the bugs and hence, that’ll be what you’re looking for. A not so good one means one which doesn’t reduce surface tension below a certain level which would allow the brew to enter stomata and/or dissolve cuticular waxes. Take for example common potassium soap (most plants don’t like sodium!) and use it at the lowest possible concentration. No harm to the plants and you’ll kill some aphids along the way too! How does that sound 🙂 ?

BTW I started mixing fertilisers and ‘plant growth cocktails’ well before I really went into cosmetics. Half the shake additives I bought ended up on my plants instead of me and now I use them in my creams too LoL. My personal notes regarding plant stimulants and fertilisers are better organised an longer than the ones for my cosmetics hobby.

[Pharma]

Some cationic detergents might react with aldehydes in EOs. These are less common in synthetic fragrances due to their inherent instability.

[Pharma]

Looking at the facts I know about your product (also from other posts and if memory serves me right):

Very white, pearlising/whitening agents don’t seem to work, product requires thickener, colour of inner phase (oils) is not visible, lotions not cream, low % emulsifier 165 with low % oil and no fatty alcohol or fatty acids added: You have a pure w/o emulsion in the traditional sense (tiny oil droplets, no lamellar phase).

Adding cetyl ester or other high melting wax will only increase viscosity of those droplets. Although cetyl esters can increase lamellar phase, they aren’t sufficient alone. Ever played that game where you try to grab apples out of a basket full of water with your mouth? How hard the apples are isn’t important, only how liquid water is. What you need is a more viscous outer phase. You’ve got three options (longer version of exactly the same as @ngarayeva001 said).

A: Change emulsifier which changes your emulsion type. A hard decision at a late stage of development.

B: Add more xanthan or use a synergistic thickener combo. I wouldn’t opt for particle based gelling (e.g. bentonite). This won’t affect the overall appearance of your lotion but might change sensorial profile. IMHO this is your best choice.

C: Create a lamellar network which is easy because emulsifier 165 responds well to that. However, cetyl esters alone might not suffice because of the very large hydrophilic groups of 165. You will have to add cetyl alcohol or stearic acid to make it work (it’s just a matter of how much you add), if glycerol palmitate or cosmetic grade glycerol stearate (a mix of mono- and distearate) work, I don’t know, 165 already contains a lot glycerol stearate. Pros/cons for stearic acid: likely stronger effect but likely electrolyte sensitive. But then again, you change the type of emulsion and it may well be that you’ll start to see the inherent colour of your oils. One option might be octyldodecanol which supposedly forms a unique type of lamellar network and affects the oil phase less… Unlike fatty alcohols/acids, octyldodecanol is liquid and less draggy/greasy. My personal (unsubstantiated) impression is that it plays nicer in thicker creams than low viscosity lotions, it doesn’t up viscosity as much as solid thickeners and has to be added at higher amounts (up to 20% are possible).

BTW lamellar networks have become very frequent in cosmetics and the ready to use DIY emulsifiers and emulsifier blends are usually building lamellar networks. Such emulsions are less susceptible to creaming and coalescence and allow for a larger playground (just a rule of thumbs). Imagine you add plastic foil sheets to your apple water bucket, the game goes from waterboarding to cakewalk. On the other hand, ‘true’ emulsions of tiny oil droplets in water are what you learn first when hearing about emulsions. These become more liquid the smaller droplets get and the narrower size distribution is (imagine cherries instead of apples). They usually require a gellant in the outer phase (like picking apples out of a JellyO). Another option would be worm-like micelles (like fishing for bananas, also quite easy)… but such formulations are not simple to predict and somewhat susceptible to many things such as ingredient type, amount of oil phase, ratio emulsifier/oil etc.

Questions?

[Pharma]

Not much time, doggies need to do what doggies do… More tomorrow?

In short: Cupuacu is triglycerides = chemically reacted fatty acids whereas stearic acid is free acid. Both increase melting point but stearic acid tends to form more/better crystals which thicken the oil even better.

Beeswax? Gellant combo instead of pure xanthan? Different emulsifier… meh… maybe don’t change that. Try different shear force, droplet size matters, although… if it’s at the cost of stability… (I like … too, especially when in a hurry )

[Pharma]

Good question, very good question! I’m not convinced and am wondering the same… theory doesn’t add up. BTW I’ve bought some meadowfoam oil (I like it, feels nice, dunno about usability without actually turning it into a useful cream) and some crambe oil (not sure what to think of that, doesn’t feel special) too, just to try them out. Although expiration dates on the re-packed bottles are in far future (well, they usually refer to expiration of the unopened and with inert gas filled original container), the allegedly scentless crambe oil smelled rancid upon arrival… Ah, well… the other stuff I’ve bought was okay so I don’t complain just because of a few bucks.

Maybe it’s marketing, maybe ‘averaging’ really helps… In which case adding olive or high oleic sunflower oil should do the same trick. Maybe it’s just acting through dilution of the highly unsaturated aka unstable oils or only boosts marketing so that the pots and tubes stand less long on the shelves?

@microformulation or other pros might know better.

[Pharma]

If you don’t want to swap some of your oils with highly spreading ester oils (see reply to your Q on my wall ), you should give it a try.

[Pharma]

Cafe33 said:

BASF

Now that you mention BASF, that’s where I found the ‘re-assembled’ ones 🙂 !

@ngarayeva001 Very different polarities? BASF offers different ‘remade’ capric/caprylic triglycerides (Myritol 312 and 318) with different polarities but I assume they are not THAT different, let alone less different between themselves than between fractionated coconut oil (the chemist in me can’t see how ‘pure’ C/C triglycerides could have different polarities unless they aren’t pure). From what I know about cosmetic industries, fractionated coconut oil may even be understood as hydrolysed, fractionated, esterified coconut oil = exactly the same process as for any MCT and capric/caprylic triglyceride… just that they don’t explicitly point out that there is de- and reassembling involved which leads consumers believe that virgin coconut oil is easy-peasy split into different products. Economically speaking, the more synthetic approach is favourable in terms of most everything unless ‘non-chemical’ fractionation is done anyway in order to obtain a product with good demand.

EDIT: According to Wikipedia, fractionation is usually done by the chemical approach. Minor differences in polarity and fair differences in viscosity reflect the ratio between capric and caprylic acid. Major differences in polarity are, from a chemical point of view, only possible with a certain amount of mono- and/or diglycerides present.

[Pharma]

‘Dissolving’ is this case is a rather colloquial term. Triethyl citrate acts as solvent and dissolves or solubilises EOs, alkyl benzoate (from what I understand) leans more towards detergent-like behaviour forming micelles, Tween 20 would be fully on that side. The visual aspect is the same, EO droplets disappear and don’t cream. Which (sub-)microscopic effect is more effective for your purpose remains to be tested because both have pros and cons. Stable (= intact after application) micelles/oil droplets especially if they are solid, liquid crystalline, or otherwise rigid (e.g. pickering emulsions), will keep EOs trapped. Release is sustained/prolonged and the ‘smell/deter curve’ flatter but longer lasting. A good solubiliser/solvent which does neither evaporate nor penetrate skin too deeply and/or too quickly will do basically the same but differently… hard to explain… Many solvents evaporate and ‘normal’ emulsions tend to break during ‘pulling in’ (having a blackout here, how do you call it in English when the lotion ‘dries’ and disappears on your skin?) and thereby release trapped EO quickly. This results in a strong repellent effect for mosquitoes but does it last long enough?

[Pharma]

Skimmed through that link of yours: Stem cells are used to produce verbascoside which has nothing to do with stem cells but is found in many plants. The advantages of using plant stem cells for production of phytochemicals are A: consistent yield due to controlled growth conditions, B: no pests, C: limited amount of secondary plant metabolites and no fibre and stuff allowing for easy isolation, D : sometimes also higher yields, and E: plant stem cells can be immortal without tendency to differentiate (a common issue with animal cell lines). A drawback may be that only a limited number of secondary metabolites is actually produced in sufficient quantities by undifferentiated cells.

BTW verbascoside is prone to oxidation and autoxidation (one of the most unstable cosmetic ingredients) but a great chelate for iron (one of the best in cosmetic ingredients).