The best moisturizing lotions

Faced with a wide range of cosmetic products, it's hard to find your way around, especially when it comes to lotions and moisturizers. Is it really worth adding another step to your skincare routine? How do you choose the lotion that suits you best, and how do you integrate it into your skincare routine? I'm going to give you my point of view and share my product recommendations with you.

Definition: Lotion, essence, toner

Let's start with a definition of lotions, essences and toners, because definitions are numerous, vague and often don't mean much. The definitions of essences, lotions and toners I'm about to present correspond to moisturizers that are often rich in humectants, and which should provide active ingredients that correspond to your problem.

How to incorporate moisturizing lotion into your skincare routine :

An essence is used after your cleansing or just after using a pure vitamin C skincare product, it will essentially provide humectants that will moisturize your skin and all this hydration must be sealed by the application of a product richer in emollient or occlusive depending on your skin type, this can quite easily be a sun cream or a moisturizer.

Between the two, you can incorporate a serum that targets a particular problem: anti-aging, anti-spot, anti-acne.

Do we really need an essence or a moisturizing lotion?

The answer is yes, if the product we're adding contains an ingredient or ingredients that aren't already present in your skincare routine, in which case we'll really be adding value to your skin, otherwise it's a waste of time and money.

For example, if you're using a moisturizing serum with niacinamide and hyaluronic acid, there's not much point in using an essence that also contains these two ingredients. If you're using a cleanser with salicylic acid and your lotion also contains salicylic acid, there's not much point either.

Adding another step to your skincare routine increases the risk of irritation, even though essences are generally well tolerated. Be careful, however, with essences containing extremely small hyaluronic acid molecules, as this type of product can actually cause irritation.
Also, to maximize the effectiveness of your moisturizing essence, it should be used on damp skin, as this will enable it to capture as much water as possible and, above all, maximize its penetration into the skin.

The moisturizing essences I can recommend.

Moisturizing lotions with fermented ingredients :

And we naturally start with what the Asians call first or pre essence. These contain fermented ingredients. Fermentation is the transformation of a substance such as rice or soy, for example, in the absence of oxygen and under the influence of micro-organisms, the best known of which are bifida, saccharomyces, Lactobacile and Aspergillus oryzae.

Fermented ingredients are generally useful in cosmetics to help rebuild the cutaneous barrier of sensitized skin, are excellent humectants as they are rich in amino acids, are packed with antioxidants that protect the skin from pollution and oxidative stress, and have an action on pigmentation. That's why this type of essence is so popular in Asia.

But is there any scientific proof of their effectiveness? And the answer is yes: a study published in 2014 shows that most fermented ingredients reduce tyrosinase activity and melanogenesis, which scientifically supports the impression that our complexion is brighter when we use this type of essence.

On the other hand, rice ferment extracts are relatively effective in the fight against blemishes and anti-aging thanks to their anti-oxidant properties.

This study, published in 2015, studied the effectiveness of rice fermentation extracts to understand the efficacy of these cosmetic products, and they found numerous anti-oxidant acids; phenolic acids including the famous ferulic acid, and organic acids such as citric acid.

Black rice extracts are also rich in Kojic acid, a melanogenesis inhibitor. The high presence of these acids explains the antioxidant effect of rice ferment extracts and their ability to illuminate the complexion.

And I'm going to introduce you to an essence based on yeast ferments, bifida ferment extracts and rice ferment extracts.

On the other hand, if you already use a product based on ferment extracts in your skincare routine, it's probably wiser to choose another type of essence. For example, the Mishha website recommends continuing your routine with night repair ampoule, which also contains ferment extracts and niacinamide. I don't think this is a good recommendation, as I prefer to multiply the active ingredients rather than use the same ones throughout my skincare routine.

With this type of essence, you can easily continue your skincare routine with a moisturizing serum or treatment serum, or put on your moisturizer or sunscreen directly to seal in all that moisture.

Snail mucin lotion:

Now we're going to talk about another type of ingredient, snail mucin, an ingredient that is not as scientifically studied as others, but the craze for this type of cosmetics in Asia is arousing more and more interest. The main benefit of snail mucin is hydration and increased collagen production.

In the 1970s, a Spanish oncologist applied snail mucin to irradiated skin and observed skin improvement. In vitro studies also demonstrated that this mucin triggers the differentiation of mesenchymal stem cells, promotes the migration of dermal fibroblasts, prevents oxidative damage and regulates collagen-destroying metallo protases.

I've read several clinical studies which show that this is an interesting active ingredient in more ways than one, and I'm going to present one to you. 120 patients were enrolled and divided into several groups according to their skin type. Those taking part in the study were given products based on snail mucin and other anti-oxidant ingredients.

This confocal photograph shows an improvement in the parallelism of collagen fibers, while this photograph shows an improvement in luminosity, suggesting an increase in the presence of collagen. The perception of improvement after 90 days was greater in the group with normal to dry skin.

On the other hand, 63% of the group noticed an improvement in periorbital coloration.

Moisturizing spot lotions :

Now we're going to talk about hyperpigmentation. As we saw in a previous video, reducing blemishes is a relatively long process, and you need to multiply the number of active ingredients to hope for results. In this context, we'd like to incorporate an essence that will provide us with anti-pigmentation active ingredients, and if possible not niacinamide, which can already be found just about everywhere.

Exfoliating lotion for blackheads:

Moisturizing lotion to improve texture:

If you use this type of toner, you remove any gentle daily exfoliator so as not to duplicate it, but I would advise using a moisturizing serum, after which a choice that might be wise is to use Paula's choice Omega Complex serum which contains ceramides, shea butter and linoleic acid to strengthen and soothe your skin barrier, as this toner can be irritating with daily use especially if you use a retinoid in the evening.

Moisturizing lotion with hyaluronic acid:

I wouldn't advise you to follow up with another hyaluronic acid-based moisturizing serum, such as green kératin, vichy minéral or hylamide, as you'll still be using a long-winded routine with no real added value.

Instead, I recommend a peptide serum or an anti-oxidant serum like NIOD survival, which contains lutein, superoxide dismutase and fractionated melanin to help fight visible light aggression, prebiotics and moisturizing ingredients like squalane and glycerin.
It can be ordered with or without mineral sunscreens.

An example of a morning anti-aging skin care routine:

In an anti-aging routine, it's easy to start with pure vitamin C, then apply hada labo lotion, follow with Niod survival serum and finish with a sun cream.
Of course, there are many other lotions and essences I haven't mentioned that are very effective.

Lactic Acid Bacteria and Lactic Acid for Skin Health and Melanogenesis Inhibition
Huey-Chun Huang 1 , I Jung Lee 2 , Chen Huang 3 , Tsong-Min Chang 4

Topical effects of SCA® (Cryptomphalus aspersa secretion) associated with regenerative and antioxidant ingredients on aged skin: evaluation by confocal and clinical microscopy. Clin Cosmet Investig Dermatol. 2019 Feb 14;12:133-140. doi: 10.2147/CCID.S191153. PMID: 30858719; PMCID: PMC6386352.

Miyazawa, M., Oshima, T., Koshio, K., Itsuzaki, Y., Anzai, J., 2003. Tyrosinase inhibitor from black rice bran. J. Agric. Food Chem. 51, 6953-6956.

Manosroi, A., Ruksiriwanich, W., Abe, M., Sakai, H., Manosroi, W., Manosroi, J., 2010. Biological activities of the rice bran extract and physical characteristics of its entrapment in niosomes by supercrit- ical carbon dioxide fluid. J. Supercrit. Fluid 54, 137-144.