Biovene Vitamin C Review

Biovene Age-Defying Vitamin C 27% Facial Serum

Age-Defying Vitamin C 27% Facial Serum

Nourish your skin with a potent 27% Vitamin C concentrate, an effective antioxidant in its pure form of L-Ascorbic Acid which has been proven to reduce visible signs of aging. The Vitamin C serum helps to boost the skin's radiance for a firmer, more luminous complexion with the help of additional top-quality ingredients such as Hyaluronic Acid, Aloe Vera, Panthenol, Ferulic Acid and Vitamin E.

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Ingredients overview

Aqua(Water), Ascorbic Acid, Glycerin, Tyrosine, Betaine, Zinc Sulfate, Aloe Barbadensis Leaf Extract, Beta-Glucan, Tocopheryl Acetate, Panthenol, Hyaluronic Acid, Phenoxyethanol, Hydroxyethylcellulose, Ubiquinone, Ferulic Acid

Highlights

#alcohol-free #fragrance & essentialoil-free

Key Ingredients

Other Ingredients

Skim through

Ingredient name what-it-does irr., com. ID-Rating
Aqua(Water) solvent
Ascorbic Acid antioxidant, skin brightening, buffering superstar
Glycerin skin-identical ingredient, moisturizer/​humectant 0, 0 superstar
Tyrosine
Betaine moisturizer/​humectant goodie
Zinc Sulfate antimicrobial/​antibacterial
Aloe Barbadensis Leaf Extract soothing, emollient, moisturizer/​humectant goodie
Beta-Glucan soothing, moisturizer/​humectant goodie
Tocopheryl Acetate antioxidant 0, 0
Panthenol soothing, moisturizer/​humectant 0, 0 goodie
Hyaluronic Acid skin-identical ingredient, moisturizer/​humectant goodie
Phenoxyethanol preservative
Hydroxyethylcellulose viscosity controlling
Ubiquinone antioxidant goodie
Ferulic Acid antioxidant, antimicrobial/​antibacterial goodie

Biovene Age-Defying Vitamin C 27% Facial Serum

Ingredients explained

Also-called: Water | What-it-does: solvent

Good old water, aka H2O. The most common skincare ingredient of all. You can usually find it right in the very first spot of the ingredient list, meaning it's the biggest thing out of all the stuff that makes up the product.

It's mainly a solvent for ingredients that do not like to dissolve in oils but rather in water.

Once inside the skin, it hydrates, but not from the outside - putting pure water on the skin (hello long baths!) is drying.

One more thing: the water used in cosmetics is purified and deionized (it means that almost all of the mineral ions inside it is removed). Like this, the products can stay more stable over time.

  • Works best between a concentration of 5-20%
  • Boosts the skin's own collagen production
  • Fades pigmentation and brown spots
  • If used under sunscreen it boosts its UV protection
  • Extremely unstable and oxidizes very easily in presence of light or air
  • Stable in solutions with water only if pH is less than 3.5 or in waterless formulations
  • Vit E + C work in synergy and provide superb photoprotection
  • Ferulic acid doubles the photoprotection effect of Vit C+E and helps to stabilize Vit C
  • Potent Vit. C serums might cause a slight tingling on sensitive skin

Read all the geeky details about Ascorbic Acid here >>

  • A natural moisturizer that's also in our skin
  • A super common, safe, effective and cheap molecule used for more than 50 years
  • Not only a simple moisturizer but knows much more: keeps the skin lipids between our skin cells in a healthy (liquid crystal) state, protects against irritation, helps to restore barrier
  • Effective from as low as 3% with even more benefits at higher concentrations up to 20-40% (around 10% is a good usability-effectiveness sweet spot)
  • High-glycerin moisturizers are awesome for treating severely dry skin

Read all the geeky details about Glycerin here >>

We don't have description for this ingredient yet.

A sugar beet derived amino acid derivative with nice skin protection and moisturization properties. Betain's special thing is being an osmolyte, a molecule that helps to control cell-water balance.  It is also a natural osmoprotectant, meaning that it attracts water away from the protein surface and thus protects them from denaturation and increases their thermodynamic stability.

It also gives sensorial benefits to the formula and when used in cleansers, it helps to make them milder and gentler.

We don't have description for this ingredient yet.

Beta-Glucan is a nice big molecule composed of many smaller sugar molecules (called polysaccharide). It's in the cell walls of yeast, some mushrooms, seaweeds, and cereals.

It's a real goodie no matter if you eat it or put it on your face. Eating it is anti-diabetic, anti-cancer, and even lowers blood cholesterol.

Putting it on your face also does a bunch of good things: it's shown to have intensive skin repairing & wound healing properties, it's a mild antioxidant, a great skin soother, and moisturizer, and it even shows promising anti-aging benefits.

The manufacturer of the ingredient did a published study with 27 people and examined the effect of 0.1% beta-glucan. They found that despite the large molecular size the smaller factions of beta-glucan penetrate into the skin, even into the dermis (the middle layer of the skin where wrinkles form). After 8 weeks there was a significant reduction of wrinkle depth and height and skin roughness has also improved greatly.

Bottom line: Beta-glucan is a great ingredient, especially for sensitive or damaged skin. It soothes, moisturizes, and has some anti-aging magic properties.

Also-called: Vitamin E Acetate | What-it-does: antioxidant | Irritancy: 0 | Comedogenicity: 0

It's the most commonly used version of pure vitamin E in cosmetics. You can read all about the pure form here. This one is the so-called esterified version.

According to famous dermatologist, Leslie Baumann while tocopheryl acetate is more stable and has a longer shelf life, it's also more poorly absorbed by the skin and may not have the same awesome photoprotective effects as pure Vit E.

An easy-to-formulate, commonly used, nice to have ingredient that's also called pro-vitamin B5. As you might guess from the "pro" part, it's a precursor to vitamin B5 (whose fancy name is pantothenic acid).

Its main job in skincare products is to moisturise the skin. It's a humectant meaning that it can help the skin to attract water and then hold onto it. There is also research showing that panthenol can help our skin to produce more lovely lipids that are important for a strong and healthy skin barrier.

Another great thing about panthenol is that it has anti-inflammatory and skin protecting abilities. A study shows that it can reduce the irritation caused by less-nice other ingredients (e.g. fragrance, preservatives or chemical sunscreens) in the product.

Research also shows that it might be useful for wound healing as it promotes fibroblast (nice type of cells in our skin that produce skin-firming collagen) proliferation.

If that wasn't enough panthenol is also useful in nail and hair care products. A study shows that a nail treatment liquide with 2% panthenol could effectively get into the nail and significantly increase the hydration of it.

As for the hair the hydration effect is also true there. Panthenol might make your hair softer, more elastic and helps to comb your hair more easily.

  • It's naturally in our skin and behaves there like a sponge
  • It can bind up to 1000 times its own weight in water
  • It is a big molecule from repeated subunits (polymer) so different molecular weight versions exist (unfortunately there is no way to determine MW from INCI list only)
  • High-molecular-weight-HA (>500 kDa) is an excellent surface hydrator, skin protectant and can act as an osmotic pump helping water-soluble actives to penetrate deeper into the skin
  • Low-molecular-weight-HA (< 500 kDa) can hydrate the skin somewhat deeper though it is still a big molecule and works mainly in the epidermis (outer layer of the skin)
  • Low-molecular-weight-HA might also help the skin to repair itself by increasing its self-defense (~ 200kDa used in the study)
  • Ultra-low-molecular-weight-HA (<50kDa) is a controversial ingredient and might work as a pro-inflammatory signal molecule

Read all the geeky details about Hyaluronic Acid here >>

It's pretty much the current IT-preservative. It's safe and gentle, but even more importantly, it's not a feared-by-everyone-mostly-without-scientific-reason paraben.

It's not something new: it was introduced around 1950 and today it can be used up to 1% worldwide. It can be found in nature - in green tea - but the version used in cosmetics is synthetic.

Other than having a good safety profile and being quite gentle to the skin it has some other advantages too. It can be used in many types of formulations as it has great thermal stability (can be heated up to 85°C) and works on a wide range of pH levels (ph 3-10).

It's often used together with ethylhexylglycerin as it nicely improves the preservative activity of phenoxyethanol.

A nice little helper ingredient that can thicken up cosmetic products and create beautiful gel formulas. It's derived from cellulose, the major component of the cell wall of green plants. It is compatible with most co-ingredients and gives a very good slip to the formulas.

Also-called: Coenzyme Q10 | What-it-does: antioxidant

Thanks to Nivea, Q10 is a pretty well-known ingredient and the fame and Beiersdorf's (the parent company of Nivea) obsession with it are not for no reason. It's an antioxidant found naturally in human cells where it plays a bigrole in energy production.

In fact, it's so important for energy production that if taken as an oral supplement it has a caffeine-like effect and if taken at night you will probably not sleep very well (so you should take it in the morning). Q10 supplementation is not a bad idea: it not only gives you energy but research also shows that oral Q10 increases the Q10 level of the skin (of course, it decreases with age like pretty much every good thing in the skin) and may help to reduce wrinkles. If you are not for supplements, dietary sources include fish, spinach, and nuts.

As for skincare, Q10 comes in the form of a yellow, oil-soluble powder that's shown to absorb into the upper layer of the skin and act there like an awesome antioxidant. Itnot only has preventative effects but might also be able to reduce the depth of wrinkles, though 0.3% Q10 was used in the study that counts as really high (products containing that much should be very yellow!).

Ferulic Acid (FA) is a goodie that can be found naturally in plant cell walls. There is a lot of it especially in the bran of grasses such as rice, wheat and oats.

FA - whose main job is to be an antioxidant - owes its fame to a 2005 research that discovered that adding in 0.5% FA to a 15% Vitamin C + 1% Vitamin E solution not only stabilizes the highly unstable, divaish Vit C, but it also doubles the photoprotection abilities of the formula.

Couple of other studies show that FA just by itself is also a nice addition to cosmetic formulations: it can penetrate the skin (which is kind of important to do the job) and it has protecting properties against UV caused skin damage.

So if you spot it on the ingredient list be happy about it. :)

You may also want to take a look at...

Normal (well kind of - it's purified and deionized) water. Usually the main solvent in cosmetic products. [more]

Pure Vitamin C. A skincare superstar that is clinically proven to boost collagen production (in 5-20% concentration), fade hyperpigmentation and boost UV protection under sunscreen. Also, it's extremely unstable and hard to formulate. [more]

A real oldie but a goodie. Great natural moisturizer and skin-identical ingredient that plays an important role in skin hydration and general skin health. [more]

A sugar beet derived amino acid derivative with nice skin protection and moisturization properties. Its special thing is being an osmolyte, a molecule that helps to control cell-water balance.  [more]

A great skin soother and moisturizer, and it even shows promising anti-aging benefits. It's also shown to have wound healing properties and is a mild antioxidant. [more]

A form of vitamin E that works as an antioxidant. Compared to the pure form it's more stable, has longer shelf life, but it's also more poorly absorbed by the skin. [more]

Pro-Vitamin B5 is a goodie that moisturises the skin, has anti-inflammatory, skin protecting and wound healing properties. [more]

A famous natural moisturizing factor that can bind up to 1000 times its own weight in water. Works as an excellent surface hydrator in skincare. [more]

Pretty much the current IT-preservative. It's safe and gentle, and can be used up to 1% worldwide. [more]

A nice little helper ingredient that can thicken up cosmetic products and create beautiful gel formulas. It's derived from cellulose, the major component of the cell wall of green plants. [more]

Q10 - an antioxidant found naturally in human cells where it plays an important role in energy production. As for skincare, it works as an awesome antioxidant that might also be able to reduce wrinkle depth. [more]

A great antioxidant that is most famous for stabilizing the highly unstable Vitamin C. It also doubles the photoprotection abilities of Vit C+E formulas. [more]

Biovene Vitamin C Review

Source: https://incidecoder.com/products/biovene-age-defying-vitamin-c-27-facial-serum