Kypris Moonlight Catatlyst –review from a sceptic

This is the first of five part reviews for Kypris products.

1. Moonlight Catalyst – You’re reading it now 🙂
2. Antioxidant Dew
3. Clearing serum
4. Elixir II the healing bouquet
5. Results with before and after pics

My skin: combination, sensitive, oily T-zone, PIH, sunspots.

A little background of my journey…

I have always been a fan of Korean skincare and used their products for many years (in addition to other none Korean brands).  However, last year, I went through a ‘natural skincare’ phase after a bad break out from P50 toner.  It was way too harsh on my skin.  Because of that, I started thinking about ingredients and sought out better alternatives.  I do not believe in the saying that everything that we put on our skin will get absorbed into our body.  Many ingredients have different molecule size that are too big to even penetrate our top layer of skin. Our skin is very resilient, our protector! In able for something to penetrate our skin barrier it needs to be specially formulated with specific penetration enhancer. I won’t go into detail here; it is way too long. Anyway, I was never an ingredients junkie, I read food labels but not cosmetics. During this time green beauty was gaining momentum on the market.  It makes sense to me, if I can have safer, gentler yet effective products so why not switch?  I came in the ‘natural skincare’ world with great expectations! I spend thousands on DIY ingredients and products but the results was not what I had expected.  My skin did not like it one bit. I was stubborn I stuck out for one whole year. In the end it was getting to the point that I was scared to look in the mirror. That’s when I decided to come back to my roots, to what I know best, Korean skincare care, in hope to heal my skin.

Through my journey I found that not everything labelled ‘natural’ is better or safer. That word ‘natural’ get abused and tossed around so much; it’s lost its meaning. There are many factors that determine whether a product is effective or not… the quality of the raw ingredients, the formulation, and most important your skin. Some products might be formulated with world’s best ingredients but if your skin doesn’t like it then it doesn’t like it.   You know your body and your skin best. Listen to it, work with it don’t force it into submission and injure it. You should do your own research and don’t fall for any marketing gimmicks.

My skin is slowly getting better but I’m always on the lookout for new products to try.  I was scared to try a ‘green’ product again after my previous experience.  I know my breakout wasn’t due to ‘green beauty’ it was because I didn’t do research on the products or listen to my skin and picked the wrong one.  I just try whichever products people were raving about. Also, I tried a very small portion of the brands out there.   I was very intrigued when reading up on Kypris beauty.  I couldn’t help myself and made a purchase…

This post is not meant to sway you either way regarding the Kypris products. It’s never been my intention when creating this website. I have the opportunity to access books, and research journals so it’s only the right thing to share what I find. I’m not a writer and I tend to wander off when writing so bear with me 🙂

You might notice that I don’t have a lot of description on some ingredients, it’s because I’m planning to create a page of each ingredient.

Speaking of ingredients we better get back to our topic- Moonlight Catalyst…

Ingredients for Moonlight Catalyst from Kypris website:

I like to put the ingredients list this way because ingredients are always listed in a decreasing order, so I know what I’m getting the most of.

Water/Aqua,
Glycerin,
Lactobacillus/Pumpkin Fruit Ferment Filtrate,
Xylitylglucoside,
Sclerotium Gum,
Algae,
Anhydroxylitol,
Xylitol,
sh-Oligopeptide-1,
Prunus Persica (Peach) Fruit Extract,
Rosa Canina (Rosehip) Flower Extract,
Vigna Aconitifolia Seed Extract,
Hippophae Rhamnoides (Sea Buckthorn) Extract,
Prunus Domestica (Plum) Fruit Extract,
Salix Alba (Willow) Bark Extract,
Citrus Aurantium Amara (Bitter Orange) Flower Water Extract,
Hydrolyzed Fucus Vesiculosus Protein,
Sodium Chloride,
Trehalose,
Sodium Levulinate,
Maltodextrin,
Leuconostoc/Radish Root Ferment Filtrate,
Sodium Anisate,
Sodium Citrate

Ingredients break down:

Glycerin: is the same as glycerine, glycerol.

• It is a natural component of all vegetable and animal fats and oils. It can also be synthesized. The process of creating biodiesel fuel produces a lot of low grade vegetable glycerin as a byproduct.
• Glycerin is a humectant which reduces the loss of moisture and protects our skin. It can help reduce viscosity in formula, which just means it reduces the thickness of the product so it can be easily spread.
• With Kypris Beauty undoubtedly they use vegetable sources maybe coconut oil or palm oil?
• It also tastes sweet? I’ve never tasted pure glycerine before…I have some at home so maybe in the name of science… lol

Lactobacillus/Pumpkin Fruit Ferment Filtrate

• For exfoliation and conditioning.
• Many fruits such as pumpkins, papaya, or pineapples contain enzymes. I have seen many products use papain from papaya and bromelain from pineapple but pumpkin is very new to me.  Anyway, pumpkin does contain their own proteases.  Proteases are enzymes that can breakdown other protein.
• When fermenting the pumpkin fruit with lactobacillus it helps break down big molecules into individual phytochemicals. Phytochemicals are naturally occurrings chemical compound in plants that give the colors and smell.
• Through special filtration methods the proteolytic fractions can be isolated and concentrated. I really want to see this! I wish these labs would let me watch it just once!
• When proper formulated with the optimum pH and ingredients they are very effective in exfoliating (cleaving peptide bonds of the skin cells to remove the dead cells from the stratum corneum) and they are much gentler than AHAs.

Xylitylglucoside/ Anhydroxylitol/ Xylitol

• Is a sugar found in wheat and olives that acts as a humectant to help skin absorbs and retains moisture and skin conditioning agent.
• I can’t find much information about these L sorry! If anyone have any materials please let me know. Thanks!

Sclerotium Gum

• Same as Sclerotium rolfssii gum
• It’s a polysaccharide gum produced by the bacterium Sclerotium rolfssii.
• Use as emulsion stabilizer, thickener, emulsifier.

Algae

• As moisturizer, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant

sh-Oligopeptide-1

• It is exactly what stated from Kypris website:

“ Biomimetic Epidermal Growth Factor (EGF)- This beautiful peptide is created via synthesis to mimic the renewing benefits of your skin’s naturally occurring EGF.”

• This article “Improved texture and appearance of humar facial skin after daily topical application of barley produced, synthetic, human-like epidermal growth factor (EGF) serum” contains all the information you would want to know about EGF. It’s really interesting! From the study the subjects showed significant improvement in their fine lines, skin texture and pore size.

Prunus Persica (Peach) Fruit Extract

• Helps hydrate and conditioning the skin.
• Contains natural AHA (malic acid, citric and quinic acid) promotes desquamation, exfoliator helps cell regenerate.
• Contains vitamins and antioxidants
  • Vitamin B (B1,B2,B3), vitamin B3 is well known niacin helps with lines and wrinkles
  • Vitamin C helps stimulate collagen synthesis, acts as free radical scavenger.
  • Carotenoids work against free radical, prevents their regeneration, reduces oxidative stress.

Rosa Canina (Rosehip) Flower Extract

• Sooths skin and reduces transepidermal water loss
• Antioxidants
• linoleic acid and α-linolenic acid
• anti-inflammation

Vigna Aconitifolia Seed Extract

• Commonly known as Moth bean
• skin conditioning
• antioxidants

Hippophae Rhamnoides (Sea Buckthorn) Extract

• antimicrobial
• antioxidants
• phytochemicals

Prunus Domestica (Plum) Fruit Extract

• antioxidants
• phytochemicals

Salix Alba (Willow) Bark Extract

• Also known as White willow
• Anti-inflammation
• Different grade of extract that contains different percentage of salicin. Salicin is precursor of salicylic acid, a natural BHA, has exfoliate property. Helps shed dead skin cells and cleans pores
• Antiseptic
• Contains phenolic acids aids skin rejuvenation.

Citrus Aurantium Amara (Bitter Orange) Flower Water Extract

• Also known as Neroli
• Antioxidants

Hydrolyzed Fucus Vesiculosus Protein

• Skin Conditioning
• hydrolysate of the protein obtained from the Bladderwrack, a type of seaweed.

Sodium Chloride

• Found in most tissues and body fluids.
• Used to increase thickness of the water portion of the products

Trehalose

• A sugar found in plants and fungi
• Hydrating and water binding

Sodium Levulinate

• the sodium salt of levulinic acid
• used as a preservative
• skin conditioning

Maltodextrin

• a polysaccharide and carbohydrate derived from rice, corn, or potato starch.
• Anti-irritant
• Stabilizes the product
• Possible enhances the anti-aging of other active in a formula

Leuconostoc/Radish Root Ferment Filtrate

• Preservative

Sodium Anisate

• Derived from fennel
• Preservative

Sodium Citrate

• Preservative
• Control pH level

 

  

Moonlight catalyst is a very light gel that spreads easy. You can really smell the scent of Neroli. It smells sweet and floral with a hint of citrusy. It’s very uplifting 🙂

Moonlight catalyst tests at pH of 4.5-5. Our skin pH is normally between 4.5-6 so that’s right in the range of making our skin happy.

How I use it:  I use moonlight catalyst right after washing my face at night.  I don’t mix this with other Kypris products but apply as a single layer. If there’s any Korean skincare fanatics reading this they might scream at me because I skipped the toner step. If you want you can use you acid toner and then this. For me I want to test out Kypris products alone so I didn’t use a toner.

My results:  Moonlight Catalyst didn’t irritate my skin at all.  I had these pesky sebaceous filaments on sides of my nose that won’t go away (not even with my acid toner of other AHA products) but Moonlight Catalyst was able to do that for me.  It helps clean pores and renew my skin.  My PIH (Postinflamatory Hyperpigmentation) went away much faster.  My skin looked much brighter the next morning!

Would I buy this again? Yes! This one is a keeper for sure.

Price: Moonlight Catalyst cost $72 for 1.50 fl. Oz or 47 ml. so it’s about $1.53/ml. One bottle will last you ~2.5 to 3 months.

Where to buy: it’s available on Kypris website and many other online curated shops.

My thought:

Moonlight catalyst was wonderfully formulated! This is what I’m talking about, safe, gentle, yet efficient product with results backed up by science 🙂 Kypris is composed of beauty and brain-a wonderful combination 😉 Thank you for restoring my trust in green beauty! Thank you thank you!!

I’m still using Antioxidant Dew, Clearing Serum, and Healing Boutique.  I’ll be reviewing those when I’m ready to write a review that they deserve.  Right now I’m having a love-hate relationship with those products. I used them in the beginning with the trial size of Clearing Serum and Healing Boutique for two weeks and saw wonderful results. I couldn’t recommend those enough to people. That prompted me to purchase the full size…but I’m not getting the same results! It’s so frustrating! The only thing I can think of is that unlike the Moonlight Catalyst and Antioxidant Dew bought from Kypris website, I purchased the Clearing Serum and the Healing Boutique from a different vendor.  Could the later products from an old batch and the potency had decreased? I would love to test that theory out except I’m out of my fun money L so I’ll wait a little bit longer and see….  I haven’t tried all of the green beauty brands out there but those that I tried there’s no lot number, batch number, or manufacturing date on the products bottle.  I only see the expiration month after open. What will happened if one batch had gone bad during the manufacturing process and had to be recall? How would they know which one to notify the customer? I’m just curious…I would love to see the manufacturing date to be included on the label so I know how fresh the products are especially when there are many extracts and oil being used in green beauty and some oil’s lifetime is only as short as 3 or 6 months.  That doesn’t count the time it was sitting at the producer.

Have you used Kypris Beauty products before? What are your thoughts? If not, are you looking into trying it? 

Sources:

Advance in botanical research (book)
Analysis of Cosmetic Products (book)
Handbook of Rheology Modifiers (2006) (book)
Handbook of Textile Processing Chemicals (2013) (book)
Effect of glycerin on drying stresses in human stratum corneum
The extract of the flowers of Prunus persica, a new cosmetic ingredient, protects against solar ultraviolet-induced skin damage in vivo
Characterization of bioactive compounds in Tunisian bitter orange (Citrus aurantium L.) peel and juice and determination of their antioxidant activities
Botanical in dermatology (book)
Antioxidant, cytoprotective and antibacterial effects of Sea buckthorn (Hippophae rhamnoides L.) leaves
Phytosterol content of sea buckthorn (Hippophae rhamnoides L.) seed oil: Extraction and identification
Instrumental and dermatologist evaluation of the effect of glycerine and urea on dry skin in atopic dermatitis
The influence of a cream containing 20% glycerin and its vehicle on skin barrier properities
http://www.cosmeticsinfo.org/ingredient/glycerin-0
http://www.cosdna.com/eng/f0132039.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytochemical
http://ec.europa.eu/growth/tools-databases/cosing/index.cfm?fuseaction=search.details_v2&id=56614