Adding Ingredients to Ready-Made Cream

Adding active ingredients like Lactic Acid or Repair Activator (Bifida Ferment Lysate) to a ready-made cream is generally not recommended. Here's why:

• Compatibility and Stability: Finished cosmetic products are carefully formulated with a specific balance of ingredients, pH, and preservative systems to ensure stability and safety over time. Adding new ingredients can disrupt this balance, leading to:
  • Ingredients separating or reacting negatively with each other.
  • Changes in texture, color, or smell.
  • Reduced effectiveness of the original ingredients or the added ones.
  • Compromised preservation, potentially allowing microbial growth.
• Efficacy: The concentration of the added ingredient in the final mixture will be uncertain, making it difficult to achieve the desired effect.
• Safety: The safety assessment of the original product does not account for the added ingredients. Mixing can create unforeseen interactions or concentrations that could cause skin irritation or other adverse reactions.

While providing the ingredient list of your ready-made cream to check for obvious incompatibilities, as requested by the staff, is helpful, it cannot guarantee that adding ingredients will be successful or safe.

• Lactic Acid (AHA): This is an alpha hydroxy acid used for exfoliation. Adding an acid like this can significantly lower the pH of the cream, which can inactivate other pH-sensitive ingredients and potentially cause severe skin irritation if the final pH is too low. LipidSoft™ Lactic is a related ingredient, but it is an ester form and oil-soluble, used for moisturizing and gentle exfoliation.
• Repair Activator (Bifida Ferment Lysate): Ingredients like Bifida Repair Complex™, Repair Activator™ WS, and Repair Activator™ BG are water-soluble and known for helping skin repair, strengthening the barrier, and providing antioxidant benefits. Adding water-based solutions to an emulsion can destabilize it and dilute the preservative system. Some forms also require refrigeration, which might not be suitable for a finished cream.

For the best results, stability, and safety, it is always recommended to use products that are professionally formulated with the desired active ingredients or to formulate your own products from scratch where you can control the compatibility, concentration, and stability of all components.