Stretch marks are no fun at all, but unfortunately, they do happen. Many people think that only women who have gone through pregnancy get stretch marks, which is true for the most part. However, the reality is that anyone who has gained weight rapidly probably has a few of these stretch marks. They can be almost impossible to get rid of, yet there are some good stretch mark creams out there.
Now, we aren’t here to give you a list of the best creams, but instead, we want to tell you what ingredients you need to look for when buying this kind of cream. There are a few different ingredients that you want to see present in the stretch mark cream you get in order to make sure that it is as highly effective as can be.
Aloe Vera
The first ingredient that you want to look for when buying stretch mark cream is Aloe Vera. Aloe Vera is a very important ingredient and has been around for a very long time, often used as a skin soother, to combat irritation, and a something to treat sunburns.
Aloe Vera helps to get rid of the redness that comes with fresh raw stretch marks. It helps make them less visible over time. Also, it helps the damaged collagen in your skin repair itself faster, thus leading to healthier and better skin with fewer stretch marks.
Purified Water
You might not think that water is the best way to go for stretch marks, but the fact of the matter is that your skin needs to be hydrated in order for stretch marks to disappear. The process of purification helps to remove many chemicals and substances from water that can actually be harmful to your skin instead of beneficial.
If you want to make sure that your stretch marks go away, the cream you get should have purified water for hydration, plus you should try to drink a lot of it as well.
Glycolic Acid
Glycolic acid is another ingredient that you should look for in all of your stretch mark creams. Glycolic acid helps to intensify and speed up the natural production of collagen in your skin.
Collagen helps to keep your skin firm, tight, and hydrated, or in other words, it helps stretch marks to heal themselves, to get less red, and to reduce in visibility over time. Even better is that glycolic acid is perfectly safe for pregnant women to apply to their skin.
Glycerin
The next ingredient you should look for is glycerin. In case you don’t see glycerin on the list of ingredients, it may also be called glycerol. This substance is often used as a treatment for various forms of skin irritation. Glycerin is a component that comes naturally in fatty acids and it has the benefit of being a great moisturizer. Having moist skin means that it is more elastic, it can rebound quicker, and it heals faster too, thus reducing the appearance and visibility of stretch marks.
Palmitoyl Tripeptide-5
Palmitoyl Tripeptide-5 is another crucial ingredient that absolutely needs to be in the stretch mark cream that you buy. This particular substance has the neat ability to boost the natural production of collagen and hyaluronic acid in your skin. Both of these substances are known to increase the elasticity and rebounding ability of your skin. Therefore, Palmitoyl Tripeptide-5 will help to reduce the visibility, severity, and the appearance of stretch marks.
Quinoa Seed Extract
This particular ingredient is also quite beneficial when it comes to healing stretch marks. Quinoa seed extract helps to soothe your skin, fight irritation, and moisturize it too. All of these benefits lead to the ultimate benefit which you are looking for, which is the tightening of your skin, the healing of damaged skin, and the soothing of your skin. Ultimately, this is great for reducing the visibility of and the irritation caused by raw and fresh stretch marks.
Panthenol
Panthenol is known to be able to penetrate deep down into the skin, much deeper than most of the other ingredients we have talked about so far. It has the ability to moisturize your skin and to make it more elastic. It also heals damaged skin. Therefore, Panthenol is a good ingredient to be present in stretch mark cream when you are looking to get rid of old stretch marks that have shrunk, become flat, and turned brown.
Collagen
Now, we have talked about the presence of many ingredients and how they help to increase collagen production. However, collagen itself is also a great ingredient to have in stretch mark creams.
The problem is that the production of collagen slowly decreases as you age, therefore making your skin lest elastic, slowing down the healing process, and causing stretch marks to stay around. The addition of collagen in any stretch mark cream will go a long way in helping your skin heal, ultimately reducing the visibility and severity of your stretch marks.
Elastin
Elastin is another important ingredient or substance that is naturally produced by the skin. However, just like collagen, the production of elastin by your skin starts to decrease as you age. As the name implies, elastin is essential for maintaining and retaining the elasticity of your skin. With the addition of both elastin and collagen to a stretch mark cream, it should help heal your skin and reduce the appearance of stretch marks.
Cocoa Butter
The final ingredient, at least one of the most important ones, that needs to be in the stretch mark cream you get is cocoa butter. Cocoa butter is absolutely excellent for helping your skin stay moisturized, plus it can help soothe irritation too.
Cocoa butter is known to penetrate deep down into the skin, well past the epidermis, which is the outer layer of your skin. Cocoa butter is great for helping to get rid of older stretch marks
Conclusion
There are other ingredients, mainly vitamins and minerals, which are also fairly important to have in stretch mark creams. However, the ingredients listed above are by far the most important ones to help you get rid of those unsightly stretch marks.
If you’re looking for the best stretch mark creams on the market you can read my review of the Revitol Stretch Mark Cream and Dermology Stretch Mark Cream.
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