Top Care Sensitive Skin Nourishing Body Wash ingredients (Explained) (2025)

Read more on how to read an ingredient list >>

Alcohol Free

Anti-acne: Lauric Acid

Skin-identical ingredient: Glycerin

Other Ingredients

Water (Aqua)

Good old water, aka H2O. The most common skincare ingredient of all. You can usually find it right in the very first spot of the ingredient list, meaning it’s the biggest thing out of all the stuff that makes up the product.

It’s mainly a solvent for ingredients that do not like to dissolve in oils but rather in water.

Cocamidopropyl Betaine

What-it-does: surfactant/cleansing

Super common ingredient in all kinds of cleansing products: face and body washes, shampoos and foam baths.

Number one reason for its popularity has to do with bubbles. Everyone loves bubbles. And cocamidopropyl betaine is great at stabilizing them.

Sodium Hydroxypropyl Starch Phosphate

What-it-does: abrasive/scrub, viscosity controlling

Lauric Acid - goodie

What-it-does: anti-acne, surfactant/cleansing, emulsifying | Irritancy: 1 | Comedogenicity: 4

A 12 carbon length fatty acid that can be found naturallyin coconut milk, coconut oil, laurel oil, and palm kernel oil. It's also in breast milk. As a skincare ingredient, it can be used as an emulsifier or as a cleansing agent.

What's more, there is emerging research about lauric acid being a good anti-acne ingredient. A 2009 study found thatthe lowest concentration to prevent evil acne-causing P. acnesgrowth of lauric acidis over 15 times lower than that of gold standard anti-acne ingredient benzoyl peroxide.

Though the studies are only in-vitro(made in the lab, not on real people), and it also has a high comedogenicity index, itmightbe worth a try if you are prone to inflamed acne (the type that's caused by P. acnes bacteria).

Sodium Lauroyl Methyl Isethionate

What-it-does: surfactant/cleansing

Sodium Lauroyl Glycinate

What-it-does: surfactant/cleansing, surfactant/cleansing

Glycine Soja (Soybean) Oil - goodie

Hydrogenated Castor Oil

What-it-does: emollient, viscosity controlling, emulsifying, surfactant/cleansing | Irritancy: 0 | Comedogenicity: 1

A chemically modified version of castor oil that results in a solid, waxy material that serves as an emollient and consistency building material.

It also has some unique moisturizing properties as it is bothocclusive and humectant. The former one is common for oils and waxes and it means that it sits on top of the skin hindering water to evaporate out of the top layers. The latter one, the humectant property,issurprising and comes from the unique property ofricinoleic acid (the dominant fatty acid in castor oil) having an extra water-loving -OH group on its otherwise oil-loving fatty chain. We have some more info about this at castor oil, so if you are interested, read on here.

Fragrance (Parfum) - icky

Exactly what it sounds: nice smelling stuff put into cosmetic products so that the end product also smells nice. Fragrance in the US and parfum in the EU is a generic term on the ingredient list that is made up of 30 to 50 chemicals on average (but it can have as much as 200 components!).

If you are someone who likes to know what you put on your face then fragrance is not your best friend - there's no way to know what’s really in it.

Also, if your skin is sensitive, fragrance is again not your best friend. It’s the number one cause of contact allergy to cosmetics. It’s definitely a smart thing to avoid with sensitive skin (and fragrance of any type - natural is just as allergic as synthetic, if not worse!).

Guar Hydroxypropyltrimonium Chloride

What-it-does: viscosity controlling

Stearic Acid

What-it-does: emollient, viscosity controlling | Irritancy: 0 | Comedogenicity: 2-3

Glycerin - superstar

Also-called: Glycerol | What-it-does: skin-identical ingredient, moisturizer/humectant | Irritancy: 0 | Comedogenicity: 0

• A natural moisturizer that’s also in our skin
• A super common, safe, effective and cheap molecule used for more than 50 years
• Not only a simple moisturizer but knows much more: keeps the skin lipids between our skin cells in a healthy (liquid crystal) state, protects against irritation, helps to restore barrier
• Effective from as low as 3% with even more benefits for dry skin at higher concentrations up to 20-40%
• High-glycerin moisturizers are awesome for treating severely dry skin

Read all the geeky details about Glycerin here >>

Tetrasodium EDTA

What-it-does: chelating

Methylchloroisothiazolinone - icky

What-it-does: preservative

This totally unpronounceable ingredient (let’s take a shortcut: MCI) is a super effective preservative with both antibacterial and antifungal effects that works at very low concentrations.

The bad news with it though is that it can sensitize the skin easily (it’s a so-called non-fragrance allergen). It’s not permitted to be used alone, but only with its BFF, methylisothiazolinone (MI), another icky preservative. Together they have a broad spectrum antimicrobial effect but are permitted to be usedonly in rinse-off products (under 0.0015%).

Methylisothiazolinone - icky

What-it-does: preservative

As you may guess, if something is only recommended in products that you rinse off (cleansers and shampoos), then it’s probably not the best ingredientfor the skin.

Methylisothiazolinone (MI) is a preservative that' super efficient against bacteria at surprisingly low concentrations. The problem with it though is that itcan also sensitize and irritate the skinquite easily when it comes in leave-on formulas.

Currently,some countries are considering to ban it entirely (like Denmark) and the permitted use level is very low(under 0.01%). Luckily there are plenty of products on the market with other preservative options so if you are a better safe than sorry typeit's probably best to avoid it.