My Updated Skincare Routine and Starting a Fungal Acne Skincare Line!

Alrighty. Last week I promised I’d be going over my updated skincare routine, so here it is in all its glory! Are you ready?

Featuring just TWO products. :p

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**drum roll round two**

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(That luxury packaging though….)

AM

• Rinse with water
• DIY Urea Cream

PM

• Oil Cleanse with DIY Salicylic Acid Oil
• DIY Urea Cream

When if I’m feeling extra naughty I’ll use the oil as a serum too. And that’s it!

Anti-climatic much? Worry not fellow skin warrior. If all goes right both these products will be available early next year! 😀

That’s right! After 3 years of researching and blogging about malassezia, I finally feel confident enough in my own formulations to launch a fungal-acne safe skincare line! 🙂

For those interested, here’s the ingredient list of the Urea moisturizer:

Water, Caprylic/Capric Triglyceride, Urea, Glycerin, Dimethicone, Sodium Polyacrylate, Cyclopentasiloxane, Trideceth-6, PEG/PPG-18/18 Dimethicone, Allantoin, Hyaluronic Acid, Propylene Glycol, Diazolidinyl Urea, Iodopropynyl Butylcarbamate

 

UPDATED VERSION AS OF 9/14/2020:

 

Water, Caprylic/Capric Triglyceride, Urea, Glycerin, Dimethicone, Sodium Polyacrylate, Cyclopentasiloxane, Trideceth-6, PEG/PPG-18/18 Dimethicone, Phenoxyethanol, Allantoin, Hyaluronic Acid, Ethylhexylglycerin

I must have gone through 50+ prototypes in the past couple years trying to perfect this one, but boy was it worth it! To give you an example of how effective its been for me, check out these before and afters that are only two weeks apart:

The first photo is my irritated / broken out face after trying to acclimate my skin to tretinoin for 8 months, and using copious amounts of CeraVe Cream. The second photo is just two weeks after I dropped everything and introduced the two DIY products above.

And because I know there will be skeptics out there, here are the screenshots of those pictures in my phone with their respective dates for proof! 🙂

My girlfriend is also on the same routine as me (plus sunscreen because she’s very fair and does not have a melanin — yes, not even one). Here’s the current state of her skin:

UPDATE 9/14/20: here’s a more recent picture of her skin, which has continued to improve! 🙂

Now before you get excited, there is some bad news…. I won’t be able to adequately scale and manufacture everything on my own, which means I’ll have to hire an outside lab. This will add a few months to the entire process, but the goal is to launch sometime late March / early April 2020. I don’t know how realistic that is, but damn it I’ll die trying!

UPDATE 3/9/2020: unfortunately that wasn’t realistic. I’m now aiming for December! You can follow me on instagram for updates.

I currently have 3 candidates I’ll be reaching out to, but if anybody reading has a lead or works in the industry — by all means, please email me at fc@simpleskincarescience.com. I’m looking for a lab that’s very cooperative, can produce my formulas in bulk, source unique ingredients if required, and provide stability testing.

Alternatively, if you are a cosmetic chemist that would like to collaborate with me, please send a message! 🙂

Why I’m Doing This.

Throughout the last couple years of vetting products, and constantly being asked if something is “safe” I realized something troubling: it’s almost impossible to know for sure.

Hear me out.

Even IF an ingredient list checks out and looks great on paper (or Sezia.co :p), there’s still the problem of purity or cross contamination.

For example, let’s consider something incredibly safe like Caprylic/Capric Triglyceride — an ingredient studies have shown is directly anti-fungal against malassezia. (1)

Turns out, that’s not always true! Depending on the manufacture, it may contain upwards of 4% C12 / C14 fatty acid triglycerides, (2) which as you all know is extremely unsafe! And this problem exists across a whole host of ingredients.

Really, when people ask me if something is safe I’m assuming the best case scenario. The only way to know for sure, would be by asking companies about their individual ingredients and manufactures….. and ain’t nobody got time for that!

One of the benefits of starting my own skincare line (aside from making badass products that don’t exist yet :p), is that I’ll be able to control for every confounding variable like quality ingredients.

It’s also why I’m currently not using sunscreen or cleanser!! I don’t necessarily recommend doing this (haha), but I wanted to give my products their due diligence. What better way to test this, than being my own guinea pig?

Furthermore, I’ve committed to only using my products moving forward because the goal is to eventually expand the skincare line to include everything: cleansers, body washes, serums, treatments, sunscreen, makeup (not that I wear makeup :p), shampoo, conditioner etc.

However, this will obviously depend on how much demand and funding there is once things get rolling. It goes with saying that every dollar spent by you guys will go back into the research and development phase of new skincare items.

So…. if you want this to happen, let me know by signing up below!

The people that subscribe to that list will also be given a preorder code before the official launch. This will be especially useful because given the traffic of this blog, there is a possibility (slight as it may be), that inventory sells out the first month given the amount I can currently invest upfront.

Signing up to that list will also keep you involved in the development process. For example, I might send out a survey here and there asking stuff like, “if we made an oil cleanser, would you prefer its base to be MCT or Squalane ?” OR “should we make a niacinamide or azelaic acid serum?” etc.

It will be a good way to crowdsource product ideas and what ingredients you’d like to see in them! If all goes to plan, we could be the first community-built skincare line for malassezia!! 😀

Anyway, that does it for this blogpost. I hope you join me on this endeavor, and I wish you the loveliest Thanksgiving week!

Cheers,

—f.c.