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Care for sensitive skin

28th August 2014 Print

When people with sensitive skin come into contact with irritants, that often means that their skin burns or prickles and sometimes you can see redness or areas of flaking. Beiersdorf R&D has gotten to the bottom this phenomenon and discovered the active ingredient SymSitive to sooth very sensitive skin. It stops irritation before it’s felt and calms nerves in the skin and that’s why it’s in all the products of the Eucerin UltraSensitive and AntiRedness care series.

“My team studied sensitive skin very carefully in recent years and discovered notable differences from normal skin,” says Dr. Gitta Neufang, Head of R&D Medical Management at Beiersdorf. “Sensitive skin reacts much stronger to irritants. We used capsaicin, the pungent component of black pepper to mimic skin irritation.” When capsaicin is applied to the skin surface it activates a protein on sensory nerve fiber endings, the TRPV1 channel. After bonding, the channel becomes permeable to calcium ions that then flow into the nerve fibers, transferring the irritation further along the fibers until it can be felt. “We have tested a series of ingredients to see if they can prevent this calcium stream caused by capsaicin and the irritation that results from it,” Neufang explains. “SymSitive was clearly the best. When used nerve fibers hardly reacted at all and the irritation was not transferred further.”

Studies on test subjects also confirm that SymSitive has a calming effect on very sensitive skin: the prickling or burning sensation of the skin from the irritant capsaicin is soothed just minutes after using SymSitive-containing products or doesn’t even occur when SysmSitive is used beforehand.

Intensive Skin Research as a Basis for Effective Products

This intensive skin research – the systematic search for ingredients in a lab and proving their effectiveness in test subject studies are the basis of the care series Eucerin UltraSensitive and AntiRedness. “The results are very positive and seem to speak for themselves. The products can noticeably and sustainably help people with hypersensitive skin,” says Dr. Gitta Neufang. This is good news for the up to 70 percent of women who describe their skin as very sensitive.

Eucerin UltraSensitive and Eucerin AntiRedness

The series Eucerin UltraSensitive became available this summer and reduces the symptoms of extremely sensitive facial skin like pricking or burning. The skin’s irritation threshold is increased and skin discomfort disappears permanently. Additionally, all care products in the series strengthen the weakened and more permeable barrier layer of hypersensitive skin. This prevents the skin from drying out thus counteracting flaking of the skin and the penetration of irritants. And of course, all the products in the Eucerin UltraSensitive series are themselves free from irritants.

For those who suffer from very sensitive skin and redness as a result of rosacea or couperose Eucerin AntiRedness was developed. In addition to the balancing ingredient SymSitive Eucerin AntiRedness also contains licochalcone A, which effectively reduces redness and soothes inflammation.

For more information, visit eucerin.co.uk.