In our world of skin health, there are several hardworking ingredients that get very little attention but can be vital to the performance of skin care products. Glycerin is one such ingredient.

Colorless and odorless, glycerin usually comes from plant sources and falls into a category of ingredients known as humectants. These hydrating ingredients work by attracting moisture from the air and drawing it to your skin (hyaluronic acid is another example). According to scientists, that means that not only does glycerin deliver an initial dose of moisture, but it is also giving your skin the ability to keep attracting moisture. Despite glycerin use as an intense hydrator, the skin-care ingredient is still very lightweight and is non-comedogenic, which means it won’t clog your pores. It is also safe enough for sensitive skin types. In other words, no matter whether your complexion is oily, acne-prone, dry, or sensitive, you can feel safe using glycerin.

Glycerin skin benefits go far beyond just moisturization. It also plays a vital role in the skin’s microbiome – all of the billions of microorganisms that live on the surface of skin and are a vital component for skin health. When glycerin is first applied on the skin, it helps to support the balance of the microbiome, allowing it to stay healthy and resilient. Essentially, glycerin helps keep the microbiome healthy, which translates to skin that’s stronger and better able to protect itself against dryness and fatigue. And not only will that keep your skin healthy, but it will smooth the look of fine lines and miniscule cracks on the skin, even out the skin tone to lighten darker areas, and diminish the appearance of unwanted spots and marks.

Last but not least, Glycerin cools, soothes, and facilitates the healing of skin discomforts and conditions, such as scratches, cuts, blemishes, burns, itching, hives, rashes, sores, eczema, psoriasis, and other ailments that are characterized by itchiness, or inflammation. It creates a protective barrier on the skin to guard against environmental contaminants and pollutants.

DÉCAAR Mega Moisture

Taking all of the above into consideration, Glycerin is great in cleansers, as it works overtime to maintain moisture in the skin and prevent any skin irritation or dryness during the cleansing process. That’s why DÉCAAR includes it in its unique formulas of Cleansers: Cleansing Milk, Purifying Cleansing Gel, Make-up remover Micellar lotion and Natural Exfoliation Scrub.

While glycerin can be added to any part of skincare routine, the beauty ingredient shines brightest when it’s in moisturizers because of its ability to lock in water in the skin. Thus, more than half of DÉCAAR products – masks, serums, eye creams and creams – contain this extremely beneficial ingredient.

The ins and outs of everyday life take a toll on your skin. Sun damage and the natural aging process can leave you with fine lines, wrinkles, discoloration. While you can’t stop the hands of time, you can do something about your skin. To choose the wrinkle-fighting products best suited for individual needs and concerns, it is essential to first understand the different types of wrinkles and what causes them. Here, the three most common types and how to outfight them.

Time & Gravity

As the skin loses firmness with age it begins to sag, pulling away from the underlying fat and muscle. This creates folds that are particularly prominent on the neck, chin, and jowls. Products that work to support the skin’s natural renewal process by promoting the production of collagen, elastin and hyaluronic acid can help combat the impact of gravity on the skin.

Expression

The facial muscles – more than thirty of them – are often called upon to express emotions, such as joy, sadness, anger, doubt, and disbelief. Over time, these constantly repeated expressions cause the contraction of the facial muscles even when they’re at rest. That’s why expression lines appear on the forehead and nose and around the eyes and mouth. One way of guarding against expression lines is to impede facial muscle movement, but that requires dermatological procedures in a specialist’s office. Another effective way is to look for products that contain peptides that help to inhibit the signaling pathways of facial muscles, relaxing the surface of the skin and smoothing out existing expression lines.

Sun

Repeated exposure to ultraviolet radiation (UV rays) causes the premature aging of your skin – photoaging. The sun hits us with these harmful UV rays naturally, but the artificial UV rays from tanning beds are just as damaging. Guarding against the sun’s UVA and UVB rays is fundamental to skin health, as both are responsible for long-term damage, including wrinkles. Scientists have also recently learned that within the solar spectrum, longer wavelengths such as Infrared Radiation (IRA) have been shown to alter the collagen equilibrium, while decreasing the synthesis of collagen itself. Choose products that contain an SPF of 30 or more with UVA, UVB and IRA protection to stop photoaging.

Décaar Solutions

Décaar targets all three types of wrinkles with its unique Oxygen and Age Reverse line. The day formulas focus on expression lines and helps protect against line-causing UV rays, while the accompanying night formula fights vertical lines. The complete line-defying ritual begins with the Elixir Serum, which is followed by Youth Elixir Day Cream, Lift Firming Eye cream, Neck And Décolleté Lifting Cream and BB Oxygen Cream SPF 50, and which ends with the Youth Elixir Night Rich Nourishing.

After a long, cold winter we all long for the warmth of spring. Unfortunately, weather changes from cold to warm come with their own challenges. An estimated 235 million people suffer from allergies each year, but it isn’t just your lungs that can suffer during the changing seasons – so can your skin. Changes in temperature, pollen levels, humidity, and sun exposure during the spring can wreak havoc on your skin, triggering irritation and breakouts, all while aggravating existing skin problems.

Learn what’s actually happening to your skin through the changing weather and how you can ease it through the transition with Décaar at-home products.

How Does Spring Weather Affect Your Skin?

Spring weather can be just as volatile as winter, going back and forth from beautiful sunny days to harsh downpours with blowing wind. On those sunny days, you want to spend as much time outside as possible but more time outside means more UV exposure. This can be particularly damaging to your skin if you haven’t quite transitioned out of the habit of bundling up, trying to cover every bit of exposed skin to keep out the cold.

Fluctuations in spring temperatures can lead to problems as well. When the sun’s out and you find yourself enjoying the warm weather, you may relish the opportunity to finally get out and go for a run or a hike. Being more active often means more sweat than your body’s been used to for the past few months and that can lead to clogged pores and breakouts. The combination of increased exercise, more sweating, and increased humidity in the air may also increase your skin’s oil production which can further exacerbate these and other existing skin challenges.

Of course, in all this talk about the unexpected challenges that come with the spring season, we would be remiss if we didn’t mention allergies. If you suffer from allergies, you’ll find yourself dealing with everything from itchy eyes to a runny nose which means your hands are going to encounter your face a lot. When that happens, bacteria and dirt can easily transfer to your skin where they can contribute to any number of skin problems.

While spring has its share of skin obstacles to avoid, there are precautions you can take to keep your youthful glow going.

Décaar routine

Maintaining clear and glowing skin is all about consistency. Using the right products for your skin type and following a skin care routine is the best way to go. Here are some Décaar products you can use at home to prepare your skin for spring and to keep it glowing well into summer:

Purifying Cleansing gel – A gentle cleanser for greasy irritated skin with clogged pores or signs of acne. Removes dirt, pollution and makeup leaving any skin type feeling fresh, soft and comfortable.

Elixir Serum – Repair your skin from the damaging effects of winter with this nutrient-dense serum. It boosts the effects of your daily moisturizer to nourish and regenerate skin, softening the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles at the same time.

Oxygen Gel – Protect your skin against the changing weather and seasonal allergies with this protective concentrate. This product boosts the effects of your daily moisturizer, enhancing your skin’s resistance to external aggressors (like pollution) and reinforcing its natural protective barrier.

Oxygen Hydro 24hr – This easily absorbable light textured cream guarantees the restoration of the skin’s hydro balance as well as an intense cellular revitalisation.

Energizing Eye Cream – This regenerating crema repairs damage to all skin types, revitalizing and remineralizing skin to diminish the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles. Offering intense moisturizing action, this vitamin-packed elixir improves the microcirculation provides an effective solution against bags and other signs of aging and fatigue around the eye area.

Oxygen Cream SPF 30 – Before you head out into the sun, protect your skin with SPF 30, a broad-spectrum medium protection sunscreen cream for all skin types. Suitable for both face and body, this product filters harmful UVA and UVB rays with the added benefit of powerful hydrating and nourishing ingredients.

Skin is made up mostly of collagen – it is the foundation that gives your skin its support and thickness. Young people have lots of collagen and taut, smooth skin. In contrast, older people have much less collagen and thin, wrinkled skin. Collagen is protein and is made up long chains of amino acids strung together, like chains of linked building blocks. When it is broken down, short segments of 3-5 amino acids form, called peptides. Peptides are not just junk collagen; these “mini proteins” are active molecules and no matter your skin type, peptides might be the anti-aging, hydrating, plumping, skin-renewing, fortifying skincare addition you’ve been seeking.

What are peptides?

Proteins, such as collagen, are made up of amino acids and arranged in a long chain-like format. This chain of amino acids is made up of peptides. The chain is then broken down into smaller chains, which are able to penetrate the top layer of skin, sending signals to skin cells and letting them know how to function.

As these smaller peptide chains effectively penetrate into skin’s deeper layers, they get to work on a cellular level and the signals they send can change the way skin cells function.

While peptides can be natural or synthetic, the ones used in skincare tend to be synthetic as they offer more control over how stable and effective the peptide is, as well as how it behaves.

How do peptides benefit from the skin?

Peptides signal our cells to create more proteins. They’re very specific and can only signal a cell that has the associated receptor. All cells in our bodies have receptors, but they’re only receptive to the right peptide. This is why it’s key to know which peptides to integrate into our skincare routine. Choosing the peptide that targets specific cells is how we can garner the exact benefits we want.

Collagen production; the pinnacle of anti-aging skincare

Our skin is mostly composed of a particular protein—the protein we seek in our skincare products; the protein that is produced at a significantly slower rate as we age; the protein that gives our skin its brilliant youthfulness—collagen.

Peptides are the source that feeds and stimulates new collagen production. They signal our bodies to generate more collagen proteins as collagen breaks down, so you can imagine how instrumental peptides are in maintaining young, healthy, and beautiful skin. Specific peptides will signal elastin and collagen proteins to look and act ‘younger’. Not only do collagen proteins give our skin its youthful and fresh appearance, but they enable our skin cells to behave in a tight, firm, and resilient manner.

Wrinkles and fine lines eradication

Skincare gurus often rave over anti-aging products, like tripeptide 5 cream, that stimulate collagen synthesis by use of specific peptides known to firm the skin and correct wrinkle – or, if you really want to give your skin some love, be a glow-getter. Studies showed intense reduction of wrinkles in subjects who used collagen-like peptides.

Skin hydration

When we absorb or ingest peptides, they know where to travel in our bodies to provide us with the utmost benefit. Peptides are essentially magnetized to our needs. If our skin is lacking in hydration or moisture, our bodies will reorganize the amino acids in the peptides we consume or apply and reassemble them into hydrating structures. Peptides that are small enough in composition for our skin to absorb will signal our skin to repair itself and alleviate dehydration by producing more water-retaining cells and proteins.

Not only do these intelligent protein-builders prompt our skin to produce new collagen, but they boost our hyaluronic acid production too. Hyaluronic acid is key to retaining moisture in our skin. A single gram of hyaluronic acid can hold up to six liters of water, and peptides effectively increase our natural production of this miraculously hydrating substance.

Neck and Décolleté Lifting Cream

There are many different peptides and countless benefits of peptides when it comes to skincare. Different groups of peptides will benefit the skin in different ways. DÉCAAR Age Reverse Line uses Neuropeptides, Palmitoyl tripeptides and Hyaluronic Acid to deliver a multifunction outcome by hydrating the skin, removing oiliness, regaining skin elasticity and reducing wrinkles.

Neuropeptides dramatically improve the appearance of skin’s resilience, tone and texture, while decreasing the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles. It combats the appearance of crepiness by reenergizing and hydrating the skin, while increasing firmness. It is safe for damaged, mature or fragile skin.

Some of the most popular anti-inflammatory peptides for skincare, Palmitoyl tripeptides , work to hydrate the skin, reduce the appearance of wrinkles and fine lines, and reduce signs of skin damage caused by the sun and environmental pollution.

Affecting over 400 million people world-wide according to the most recent studies, rosacea is a skin condition caused by excessive inflammation and vascular dysfunction. This means that the capillaries on the face become enlarged and cause frequent blushing and redness, particularly on the cheeks, nose and forehead. Unfortunately, managing this skin condition can be a challenge since what triggers skin redness and inflammation in one person may not trigger it in another. Indeed, there are many other skin disorders often misdiagnosed as rosacea and vice versa, leaving sufferers at a loss as how best to care for their skin. However, all is not lost and there are things you can do (and not do) to alleviate your symptoms and keep your reactive skin under control.

Caring for highly sensitive skin

Use a gentle cleanser morning and night. Getting into a regular routine will really help you to manage your skin and using the right products will help you avoid flare ups or worsen the condition further. A soap-free cleanser with a pH of 5 is best. Rinse with lukewarm water and wait for your skin to dry completely before you put on makeup or other products.

Take good care of your skin. Avoid rubbing, scrubbing or massaging the face.

Protect your face from wind and cold. Using a scarf to cover your face will help to protect your skin. Just make sure that any material touching your face is not made of wool or a fabric that feels rough to the touch, as these fabrics can irritate the skin.

Change your skincare products. Look for products that are specifically formulated for redness-prone or sensitive skin containing antioxidants, bisabolol, panthenol, mallow and allantoin, as these products usually help calm and soothe the skin. Also, products that can strengthen the skin barrier (like niacinamide or unsaponifiable oils) can be real game changers for rosacea sufferers. Azelaic acid (also known as Potassium Azeloyl Diglycinate) works as a natural antibiotic and could be used as a green alternative to metronidazole gels (dermatologists’ first choice).

Wear sunscreen. Choose a natural sunscreen packed with soothing zinc oxide that will protect your skin without aggravating it. However, keep your time sunbathing time to a minimum as rosacea is very often aggravated by sun exposure.

Eat a rainbow diet. A very colourful diet with plenty fruits and veggies provides much needed antioxidant protection.

Stay calm. Stress can aggravate rosacea as it increases production of cortisol, the main stress hormone. Cortisol has an inflammatory effect on skin and can contribute to flare ups. Reduce your stress levels by using daily management practices such as yoga, meditation, and breathing exercises. Gentle exercise can also help regulate cortisol levels.

What to avoid

Be ingredient savvy. As rosacea can be easily aggravated by commonly found skincare ingredients, it is especially important to get the correct information and make the right choices. It’s best to avoid harsh exfoliants or soaps, alcohol containing toners, astringent formulas or products that are rich in fragrances, witch hazel, eucalyptus oil, camphor, clove oil. Even some laundry detergents can aggravate this skin condition.

Avoid extreme temperature changes. Excessive climatic shifts including high heat (such as sunbathing, saunas, hot baths/showers and hot drinks), strong winds, extreme cold and high humidity can all aggravate sensitive skin.

Keep make up to the minimum. Although make up comes in handy to cover the excessive redness, some pigments can cause a flare up. We always recommend you do a small skin test on your upper arm before wearing any make up products.

Our best skin care products for Rosacea

Calming Mask

Removes dead cells, reduces inflammation and improves the blood circulation of the skin. The advanced formula revitalises the skin from all sorts of damage including sun damage, excoriation, rosacea and other inflammatory dermatosis.

Algae Peeling Regimen

The combination of the natural ingredients based on algae, herbs and perfluorocarbon is considered to be the most advanced and effective treatment on the market for the most common skin problems like acne, oily skin, wrinkles/sagging or dry skin, pigmentation and age spots, couperose and rosacea, scars and enlarged pores. It is even suitable for the most sensitive skins.

DÉCAAR Algae Peeling Regimen works biologically, providing a 100% safe treatment process. The micro-fibres of the peeling powder penetrate the skin, increasing the blood flow and production of new cells. As these cells are found in the keratin layer, the DÉCAAR Algae Peeling can also be applied to sensitive or rosacea skin. The decrease of keratin cells reduces the redness in the skin. Furthermore, as the Langerhans cells are also stimulated and the bacteria overgrowth killed, acne, eczema and rosacea can also be treated and, in most cases, reduced.

Vitamin C is that wonder vitamin that not only fights cold and flu from the inside, but also defends skin against dark spots, signs of ageing and sun damage when applied topically. It is a vital and multi-functional ingredient for glowing skin and a radiant complexion. It can assist in helping the skin’s ability to heal itself and minimise scar formation. Normal skin contains high concentrations of vitamin C, which supports collagen synthesis and antioxidant protection. However as we age, our levels of vitamin C and collagen production decrease, so it should be included in our skin care routine.

The importance of Vitamin C

Vitamin C (L-ascorbic acid) is a water-soluble vitamin. It’s a powerful antioxidant present in both the epidermis and dermis of the skin. As it’s water soluble, it’s not stored in your body in significant quantities and the excess that is consumed gets eliminated through the body. This is also why regular replenishment is important.

As an antioxidant, Vitamin C neutralises free radicals in the skin. It is anti-inflammatory, so it heals and hydrates the skin too. It also has an anti-ageing effect as it boosts collagen production, which in turns helps to reduce the formation of wrinkles.

Vitamin C application has been known to improve fine lines and reduces both pigmentation and inflammation. The vitamin also empowers skin with potent antioxidant activity, which helps neutralise the oxidative stress developed due to various environmental stressors and pollution. You can use it for photo protection as well—it’s equally effective against both UVA and UVB damage and to ward off pigmentation. Vitamin C works beautifully on pigmentation and uneven skin tones as it inhibits the tyrosinase activity (oxidation), thus decreasing the melanin production.

If retinoids are the gold standard then Vitamin C is the silver standard for reversing photo-ageing of skin. Although Vitamin C in itself is not sun protective, topical application protects you against the photo damage. The vitamin works by deactivating UV-induced free radicals.

Vitamin C in Décaar products

Taking all the above and more into consideration, we include Vitamin C in some of our special products: the Energizing Eye Cream,  the Brightening Cream 24hr, Youth Elixir Day Cream and Youth Elixir Night Rich Nourishing. Discover more in our brandbook.