Hi everybody, so today’s video come by way of Facebook.
I got a question from Christopher Ok and I’m like, okay Christopher!
That is the BEST NAME EVER!!!
I wish my name was Trina Alright!
Woah, er, I don’t know where that came from.
Anyway!
He asked a question about tallow CLA and ceramides. Because I didn’t know a lot about ceramides
and I wanted to learn more, I said…
I will make that a topic of a video.
What is a ceramide?
They are a family!
Awwwh!
A family of waxy lipid molecules.
Lipids are fats and oils that are found in the body.
They look a little something like this…
They consist of a fatty acid linked to a sphingoid base.
I LOVE that word!
And they are connected by an amide bond.
There are at least nine major ceramides present within the stratum corneum.
That is the outer most layer of skin.
They have conveniently named them ceramides 1-9.
Imagine if you had a family and you just named your kids one through nine.
This reminds me of when I was a kid and my dad wanted to name my twin sisters Alpha
and Beta.
My mom was like, “Yeah, NO.”
These ceramides differ by their head group, the length of their chain, by the hydroxylation,
which is the amount of OH groups they have, and whether they’re saturated or not, so that
is the number of double bonds.
You’re probably wondering, where can I find these ceramides.
I was certainly wondering that.
You can find ceramides in the stratum corneum.
Inside there are these layers of dead skin cells, and sandwiched in between them is this
glue, and this glue holds the skin cells together.
It is called the interstitial lipid matrix or intercellular cement.
These lipids form these ordered structures called lamellar sheets and they alternate
between water and lipids.
And that lipid layer is composed of ceramides, cholesterols, and fatty acids.
These waxy lipids help us regulate our water holding capacity, allowing a barrier that
doesn’t easily let fluid pass through it….
and this is important because we want to maintain optimal water levels in our skin.
We also want to make sure we keep disease causing microorganisms out, or for example
if we come in contact with harmful chemicals, we dont want to get them into our body.
Ceramide levels increase as we get older, so as we age we start to struggle with dry
skin.
The outer layer of the stratum corneum starts to decrease, it gets a lot thinner and we
start to notice fine lines.
Also, people who struggle with skin disorders like atopic dermatitis, eczema, and psoriasis.
Those folks seem to have a decreased level of ceramides present in their skin.
The idea behind ceramides in skincare, is that if we’re missing ceramides in our skin,
maybe we can just replenish them, by adding them into products that we use.
And so cosmetic companies have taken this idea and they’ve run with it.
They’ve put ceramides into hundreds of skincare products, that make claims like increases
skin hydration, improves the cutaneous barrier, prevents moisture loss, and reduces dry and
flaking skin.
In our body their produced in the stratum granulosum.
That is below the stratum corneum.
They originally appear as phospholipids, and as they work there way up to the stratum corneum,
There are these enzymes in the stratum corneum that convert them into ceramides.
But nobody is harvesting human bodies to get these ceramides.
Instead we are getting them from other natural and synthetic sources.
Synthetics obviously come from a lab.
For natural sources, They either come from animal sources such as cows, but they are
mostly extracted from plant sources like sweet potatoes, wheat, and brown rice.
What I also learned is that ceramides are expensive, which is why we often seem them
in high end skincare.
Natural ceramides are very unstable substances, and because they are costly to obtain, synthetic
ceramides are frequently used.
Unfortunately synthetic ceramides do not penetrate the skin as well, so companies are looking
into technologies like liposomes to help them penetrate the skin.
But I don’t know, what do you guys think?
Do you think it works?
Do you think it doesn’t?
Tell me in the comments!
From the studies I’ve seen, so far, it looks like ceramides do moisturize, but I haven’t
seen any evidence that they moisturize better than some of the inexpensive ingredients that
are already out on the market.
In some of these studies they’re comparing ceramides to untreated skin -- and that hardly
seems fair.
They’re also using higher concentrations of ceramides, then you’d expect to see
In a normal cosmetic product.
Christopher, I hope I did an okay job with this video.
If you liked this video, give it a thumbs up,
If you want to see more like it, consider subscribing, and lastly, don’t forget to
click that notification bell, especially if you want to leave a comment right when that
video drops.
I will see you soon.
Have a great day.