The moisture barrier goes by many (many, many) names, including the lipid barrier, the water barrier, the skin water barrier, the acid mantle (which really refers to the acidic outermost layer of the stratum corneum), the barrier function or just the stratum corneum. To be honest, for a very long time I thought these all referred to different things, but after quite a bit of research it just seems like everyone decided to pick their own name but they all refer to the same skin function or a part of the same function.

Skincare advertising is notorious for its use of buzzwords and over-hyped ingredients, as well as a tendency to sell a solution to a ‘problem’ that was created to invent a solution.

Such is the case with free radicals, which according to advertising are very bad and you need to protect yourself from them, but most of us don’t really don’t know why they’re so bad for us, let alone what they actually are.