Ceramides: myth or real effect on the skin

The myth: you just need to find the right percentage. Ceramides are one of the few ingredients where quantity means almost nothing, and the assortment means everything.

Where they work

In the stratum corneum, the outermost layer of the epidermis. Cells are stacked there like bricks, and the cement that separates them is made of lipids: about half ceramides, the rest being cholesterol and free fatty acids.

When this cement degrades, water escapes and irritants enter. This is the mechanism behind dry skin, tightness, and uncomfortable redness. The skin barrier is not a metaphor: it is a structure, and it repairs itself with the materials it uses.

Why percentage is not enough

The skin uses several types of ceramides, designated by codes — NP, AP, EOP, NS. A product containing only one, even in quantity, does not rebuild the cement in the same way as a product that combines three.

The other two families of lipids are also needed. The often-cited ratio is three to one to one in favor of ceramides. Few brands display this, but the presence of all three in the list is already a good sign — better than an isolated percentage.

What they do, and how quickly

Comfort returns in a few days: it is one of the fastest effects in cosmetics. Better tolerance to external aggressions — cold, wind, products — develops in six to eight weeks.

On reactive skin, discomfort, irritations and redness decrease. The mechanism is indirect and mechanical: a waterproof surface allows fewer irritants to enter. This is not a soothing effect in the sense of an active ingredient, but a consequence of restored impermeability.

What they don't do

Nothing on wrinkles, nothing on spots, nothing on pore diameter. Ceramides work on the barrier function, and that's it. However, they are regularly found in anti-aging arguments, where their role is presented very extensively.

This confusion harms an ingredient that didn't need it: repairing the surface's impermeability is already one of the most solid contributions in the field, and it is measurable.

Naturally present, yet useful to provide

The skin produces them itself. Their production decreases with age, cold, overly harsh cleansers, and certain active ingredients. It is this decrease that a treatment aims to compensate.

Ceramides of plant origin — derived from rice, wheat, or konjac — are structural analogues, not identical molecules. They work, with slightly less data available than identical synthetic ceramides.

So, myth or real effect

A real, solid, and rapid effect, within a narrow scope. The myth is not in the ingredient but in what it is made to carry: neither an anti-aging active, nor a corrector, nor a miracle. A repair material, to keep when changing everything else.

Our repairing night cream with plant ceramides works within this logic, and the ceramides sheet details the barrier structure.