What Is Ectoin If you have spent any time on this blog, you know I have little patience for ingredients that seem to exist purely for the algorithm. My roundups on retinoids, vitamin C, and barrier repair products for overexfoliated…
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Best retinol treatments that worked magic on my skin. In my early skincare fascination days, retinol felt like the ingredient everyone whispered about but few explained well. The turning point came in 2006, when I read Jean Godfrey-June’s Free Gift…
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Encapsulated. Liposomal. Time-released. These terms show up constantly in skincare marketing, usually implying better absorption, stronger results, or advanced science. Sometimes that is true. Often, it is just expensive vocabulary. Delivery systems can improve stability, tolerance, and how a product…
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Peptides have become one of skincare’s most overused words. Not because they don’t work, but because the term has been stretched to mean everything and nothing at once. In creams especially, “peptide-powered” can signal anything from a thoughtfully built formula…
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What a year. If you’d told me in December 2024 that 2025 would unfold like this, I probably would have skipped the whole eating-12-grapes-under-the-table-at-midnight ritual in Connecticut for good luck. Clearly, the grapes were feeling bold. What was meant to…
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I’ve always been a fan of the Best of Dermstore curations, but the new Healthy Skin Edit is on another level. The lineup covers cleansing, treatment, moisture, and protection in a way that actually makes sense. It also spotlights some…
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Smoothing and soothing are technically skincare opposites. And opposites attract. Here’s how I combine the two for best results. When it comes to my own skincare efforts, smoothing almost always comes before soothing. My skin isn’t naturally sensitive, so I…
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30 products, rated and reviewed. Some were worth the hype. Some were just… gone. Warning: this post is long. Like, “used up 30 products since May” long. When we moved to Madrid in mid-May, I didn’t expect to go through…
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