What is Time-Release Skincare?
Skincare is becoming more advanced every day. Scientific active ingredients have now made there way into most skincare routines, however, not all skincare formulations are created to support the stability and effectiveness of actives.
Time-release skincare technologies are found in newer and more advanced skincare formulations to control and protect active ingredient penetration.
Dermoi's Chief Scientific Officer, Eve Casha - MSc Pharmaceutical Formulation, outlines a few key points about time-release skincare.
What is Time-Release Skincare?
Time release skincare can also be called “extended release” or "slow-release" skincare.
This is because time-release skincare is designed to release active ingredients into the skin slowly, but over many hours.
This means rather than receiving a high concentration of an active into the skin all at once after application, a smaller concentration of the active is constantly supplied to the skin over a 6-12 hours period, depending on the formulation.
How Does it Work?
In most cases, time-release skincare is designed with a delivery system.
A delivery system is a mechanism that is incorporated into the formulation that controls when, how, and the depth an ingredient is absorbed by the skin. A delivery system will often encapsulate or wrap around active ingredients to do this.
A time-release delivery system can be designed in many different ways in which friction, heat, moisture, or pressure can stimulate the release of actives from the delivery system.
A common example is a liposome. These are oil-based bubbles that wrap ingredients.
What Are The Benefits of Time-Release Skincare?
Time-release skincare has many important benefits.
As these formulations release active ingredients into the skin at low doses over many hours, the skincare is still working hours after it is applied. This is beneficial for products with antioxidants as they have the ability to protect the skin - all day long. In addition, this prevents irritation or side effects from active ingredients as the skin is not receiving high doses of actives all at once.
As time-release formulations also commonly encapsulate active ingredients, this protects their efficacy and allows the formula to remain stable when exposed to air or light.
Lastly, time-release formulations often have the added benefits of increase penetration of active ingredients through their delivery system.