Plant-derived or natural-oriented skin-care ingredients send out a definite siren song to consumers. Anyone developing “natural” alternatives to hydroquinone has an eager audience ready and willing to give them a try. To that end the number of new ingredients that are cropping up is seemingly endless. The following are a few of the ingredients, with their Latin or technical name, that might show up in a skin-care product claiming to inhibit melanin production.
Paper mulberry (Broussonetia kazinoke); Mitracarpe (Mitracarpus scaber, an extract of bearberry); Bearberry (Arctostaphylos uva-ursi); Yellow dock (Rumex crispus or Rumex oc – cidentalis); glutathione; leukocyte extract (a form of peptide); Aspergillus orizae (a fungus); Licorice root (Glycyrrhiza glabra); and the following Chinese plant extracts: Yohimbe (Pausinystaliayohimbe); Cang Zhu (Atractylodes lancea), Bai Xian Pi (Dictamnus dasycarpus root-bark); Hu Zhang (Polygonum cuspidatum or giant knotweed rhizome); Gao Ben (Li – gusticum rhizome or Chinese lovage root); Chuanxiong (Rhizoma ligustici); and Fangfeng (Radix sileris also Radix ledebouriella).
Whether these ingredients can have much impact on skin discolorations is anyone’s guess, though they may indeed have anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties. Theoretically any antioxidant can have overall benefit in improving the way skin cells react to the environment, particularly in regard to sun exposure. Reducing the effect of UV radiation on the skin is a significant benefit for inhibiting melanin production. However, the research about these ingredients is extremely limited and mostly done by the ingredient manufacturers. Even when the research has been independent it did not compare the ingredients to others, so how much more or less effective these may or may not be has not been evaluated.
(Sources: Journal of Investigate Dermatology, Symposium Proceedings, April 2008, pages 20-24; ChineseJournal of Integrated Medicine, September 2007, pages 219-223; Phytotherapy Research, November 2006, pages 921-934; and Household and Personal Products Industry Magazine, April 2001.)