hi it's Michelle from Lab Muffin Beauty science here chemistry PhD skincare nerd
and oxygen breather today we're going to talk about oxygen masks how do they work
and what do they do apart from making you look fluffy if you like this sort of
video please give it a thumbs up subscribe to my channel and make sure
you click on the notification bell so you don't miss any of my videos let's
talk about O2 now 2 first up what exactly is an oxygen mask oxygen masks
are products which come out of the bottle like a gel but they start
bubbling with oxygen gas after you put them on your skin for a bit as you wait
your skin gets covered in tickly bubbles and you sort of start to look like a
cloud they're pretty darn entertaining lots of brands have come out with oxygen
masks there's brands like bliss Peter Thomas Roth dr. Brandt Oseque
Sephora and philosophy how exactly do they get the oxygen into the bottle
these oxygen products work a lot like soda water gas gets dissolved in the
water under pressure so for example carbon dioxide gas is in soda water
this gas gets released when the pressure drops so when you open the soda water
bottle
unlike carbon dioxide oxygen doesn't really dissolve that well in water
instead you have solvents in these products called perfluorocarbons these
are stable unreactive carbon-based compounds that have lots of fluorine on
them compared to water they can dissolve about 20 times more oxygen and they've
been investigated for use in artificial blood
these perfluorocarbons can be mixed with the oxygen and then sealed in a
pressurized bottle so when it comes out the oxygen will start fizzing out slowly
like a bubbly soft drink if you have a thicker product you might not even need
a pressurized bottle the thickness of the product can trap the oxygen inside
the oxygen gas only comes out when you massage it over your skin it's a little
bit like pop rocks there are a lot of different perfluorocarbon products in
these oxygen masks the most common ones are probably perfluorodecalin and
methyl perfluorobutyl ether but pretty much anything in the ingredients list
with the word perfluoro in it will be a perfluorocarbon there are also some
oxygen masks that get oxygen from hydrogen peroxide composing so for
example philosophy's oxygen peels are like this you'll want to keep these
products away from dark fabrics because peroxide will bleach them but the ones
that have perfluorocarbons will be safe I'm using this bubble purifying and
charcoal face sheet mask the key ingredients in this there are some
humectants so dipropylene glycol and glycerin
there's also methyl perfluorobutyl ether methyl perfluoroisobutyl ether
and these two ingredients will dissolve the oxygen and make it foam up again
when I put this on there are also some other cool ingredients in this like
centella and a bunch of other fruit extracts as well
this is massively sped up I forgot to rub it to activate the bubbles before
putting it on and I got bored so I only left it on for seven minutes instead of
10 to 15 if you want the full cloud experience you should do both of these
things so what exactly is the point of having oxygen in these products one of
the reasons is because the amount of oxygen in your skin decreases as you get
older it also decreases if you smoke or if you get a lot of UV exposure from the
Sun it's estimated that there's a quarter less oxygen in your skin by the
time you're 30 and only half of it remains by the time you're 40 you need
oxygen in your skin to produce collagen so it's possible that if you don't have
enough oxygen then your collagen levels will drop and you'll end up with thinner
saggy duller skin and wrinkles there's been
some research that found that extra oxygen can help with wound healing and
it increases something called filaggrin this is a protein in your skin
that's important for keeping a healthy skin barrier oxygen could also
potentially help kill acne bacteria there was an animal study as well which
found that oxygen reduced wrinkles caused by UV the problem with oxygen is
that there haven't been any convincing studies done on humans about how it can
help your skin there's also a potential side effect which is that the extra
oxygen could increase the amount of reactive oxygen species or ROS in your
skin these oxidants are important for lots of biological processes but if you
have too many they can attack and damage the proteins and DNA in your skin and
this leads to premature aging I've talked about oxidative stress before in
my video on antioxidants and skincare a few wound healing studies have looked at
whether this side effect is significant and they found out it wasn't
so now that we know that oxygen can be good for your skin the question is is
there really enough in these products that can get into your skin to make a
difference there are a few studies on using oxygenated perfluorocarbons for
wound healing and there's also been one very basic one on whether or not it can
reduce wrinkles but these studies were all done using topical gels which are
things that you leave on your skin not using wash off products like these masks
so in these studies there was probably more oxygen getting into the skin most
studies that have been done on oxygen and wound healing used other methods for
getting oxygen into the skin like oxygen producing bandages rather than
perfluorocarbons the fact that you see all these bubbles coming up when you use
an oxygen mask could mean that most of the oxygen is going into the air and not
into your skin so in other words they're not really getting to where they can
make a difference but the tickling feeling does make it feel like it's doing
more the bubbling action could also potentially loosen dirt so the product
can get deeper into your pore and then the bubbles can help unclog it sort of
like how baking soda can unclog a drain so I think overall until there's be more
studies done on these oxygen masks they're mostly just a fun product that
might help you clean your face better but I think they're unlikely to have any
anti-aging benefits I hope you like this video if you
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more about beauty science let me know what else you want me to talk about in
the comments and I'll see you next time