Biotherm Life Plankton Essence Review, Ingredients Analysis and Q&A

Biotherm's Life Plankton Essence was launched last year, and is billed on the Biotherm website as a "Fundamental Skin Treatment". The description for the product goes on to say, "For the first time, Life Plankton is infused at its highest concentration within Life Plankton Essence (5% for anyone wondering). In 8 days, see and feel a new-born skin: more radiant, more even, smoother, hydrated, with greater resilience and fine lines faded. Immediately, the skin is soothed and softened." So essentially, this is a lotion-style essence product, with a high concentration of Life Plankton. This is meant to be used before other skincare products, like moisturizer.

Biotherm Life Plankton Essence: A lotion that claims to improve skin in 8 days

The Biotherm Life Plankton Essence was launched end of last year to much fanfare and raves, and this year has continued to get a steady stream of attention from both mainstream press and bloggers. So I figured it's probably a good time for me to finally get around to reviewing it! How does this product work, and what is inside the product? What is this Life Plankton, anyway?


Biotherm Life Plankton Essence: Contains the highest concentration of Life Plankton at 5%
To answer those questions and more, there's only one place to start looking - the ingredients list! Biotherm has also very kindly helped to answer a few of my questions on the product, to fill in some of the gaps and questions I had when analysing the ingredients list, and I'm really happy that they did - I mean, I'm just a random blogger, not Anna Wintour or anything, and I'm sure the PR people have lots on their plate, so I really appreciate it when I get to ask questions and they get answered! For this review though, I've incorporated some of the answers into my review, rather than having them as a separate standalone section, in order to keep the length of the review shorter and the flow less disjointed, but where the information has been provided by Biotherm, you'll see me mention it (e.g. "Biotherm/the company/the brand informed me that" or something similar). So, without further ado, let's jump right into the review!

SKII Facial Treatment Essence, Clear Lotion, Mask Review and Ingredients Analysis (on Pitera)

SKII (also written SK-II) is a Japanese brand of skincare and beauty products, and is famous for incorporating the ingredient "Pitera" into its products. In particular, its star product, the Facial Treatment Essence, has been massively popular in Asia. As a result, SKII has become something of a cult brand, with lots of fans swearing that it gives them skin that looks everything from younger, to fairer, to bouncier (I'm not making any of these up, by the way - I actually have real-life friends and colleagues who really swear by this). So, I was pretty excited to try this out for myself, and review it!

SKII has something of a cult following, particularly with its Facial Treatment Essence

The products I have are SKII's Facial Treatment Essence, the famous cult product, as well as SKII's Facial Treatment Clear Lotion, which is something akin to a toner (you also apply it with a cotton pad and swipe it on your face like a toner). Also, I have the SKII Facial Treatment Mask. You're supposed to apply the Facial Treatment Clear Lotion, and then the Facial Treatment Essence, as part of your daily routine, with the Facial Treatment Mask being more of a periodic treatment as opposed to part of your everyday routine.


One of SKII's claims to fame is their use of "Pitera" in all their products
Even before I began this review, I had multiple people asking me about "Pitera", and whether it really worked or not. I had been contemplating a review of the science on Pitera for awhile, and I figured this would be the perfect way to start the post!

La Roche Posay Serozinc Ingredients Review and Analysis: What Does the Science Say About Zinc Sulphate?

La Roche Posay Serozinc has been making quite the waves on the blogosphere, and many bloggers seem to be raving about this product, and following a twitter conversation with Ling, who has her own blog, I got the idea that, in light of all the raves Serozinc has been getting, it would be good for me to take a more analytical approach to the product. La Roche Posay claims that the product "cleanses superficial skin irritations" on their website, and the product is promoted as an anti-blemish toner. You apply it to cleansed skin, wait for a while, and then continue on with the rest of your regime.

La Roche Posay's Serozinc is highly anticipated and highly raved (Source)

Escentual's site promotes Serozinc as "created with just three ingredients: La Roche-Posay’s ultra-soothing thermal spring water, healing zinc sulphate (0.10%) and astringent sodium chloride (0.75%). Together, these three ingredients target blemishes, marks and excess oiliness, ensuring your complexion feels fresh and comfortable at any time of day." So I guess we already know what the product is made of, and what the claims are. A lot of the rave reviews for Serozinc seem to have come from the fact that it is so simply formulated, which I suppose must be refreshing in a sea of products making complicated ingredient claims.

Serozinc is really getting a lot of hype despite the simple formulation (Source)

But before I start, I must clarify that I have never actually tried this product myself personally. Although ideally a more complete "review" (in the sense of a blog review) would have my own personal experience with the product woven in (as I do with my normal reviews), for the purposes of this post, we are looking at what the science says about the usefulness of Zinc Sulphate, which will in turn help consumers (like you and me!) decide whether it's really worth spending your hard-earned money on the product. So just take this as me doing your science homework for you, to help you make an educated decision before you buy the product! So, without further ado, let's take a look at the ingredients in the product!

The Face Shop SMIM Fermentation Concentrate Treatment, Toner, Emulsion Special Set Review and Ingredients Analysis

The Face Shop, the Korean brand known for its skincare and makeup, has released a few sets for Christmas, and one of the sets (which I predict is is going to be pretty popular, if it isn't already!) is The SMIM Fermentation Concentrate Special Set ($69.90), which consists of bottles of The SMIM Fermentation Concentrate Total Treatment, The SMIM Fermentation Concentrate Toner, and The SMIM Ferementation Concentrate Emulsion. If you're wondering what SMIM stands for, it's apparently a shortened way of the Korean phrase "seu-myeo-deul-da", which means to absorb and penetrate, which is what the products are advertised to do. The SMIM product line consists of Yeast Ferment Extract, which apparently is the feature ingredient here.

The Face Shop SMIM Fermentation Concentrate Special Set: Just in time for Christmas, too!

And apparently, I've been told by other bloggers at a previous Face Shop event sometime back (and documented on my Instagram) that apparently, The SMIM Fermentation Concentrate Treatment is very similar to the fabled SKII Facial Treatment Essence, although I've no idea if that is true or not. I suppose that is where all the similarities to SKII come about - after all, SKII has their story about Pitera too (I have to file that Pitera thing for another post - I've been getting some friends asking me whether pitera really works).


The Face Shop SMIM Fermentation Concentrate Special Set: With Treatment, Toner, and Emulsion
But in any case, you can see why the product set is going to sell well - aesthetically speaking, these are lightweight, lotion-formula products that feel great on the skin, and the Yeast Fermentation concept, are definitely attractive to consumers. The comparisons to SKII can't hurt either! So, I thought it's high time I did my review on this, seeing that Christmas is approaching. I've been so caught up this holiday season that I haven't been blogging about the Christmas things as much as I'd like, but I thought this was worth a review!

And of course, we're going to review this my style, and start at my favourite part of the product - the ingredients lists!

Etude House Wonder Pore Freshner Review and Ingredients Analysis

Etude House's new Wonder Pore Freshner (yes it is actually spelled wrongly, as in "Freshner" not "Freshener" (which would be the correct spelling) - don't ask me why!), billed as an "Ultra Pore Solution" with "10-in-1 benefits" already seems to be getting a lot of interest from people. Etude House claims the new Wonder Pore Freshner is an improvement over Etude House's existing Wonder Pore Product (also called Wonder Pore Freshner, but with a mere 7 in 1 benefits instead of 10), and the moment I posted about this on my Instagram and Facebook, I immediately got comments on both sites asking me how it was, and how did it compare to the original Wonder Pore Freshner. So I suppose there's no better time for a review than now!

Etude House Wonder Pore Freshner: New and improved with 10-in-1 benefits

Etude House's Wonder Pore Freshner (gosh I just want to type "Freshener" sooo badly throughout this review!) comes with pretty high expectations which the product sets for itself. The blurb on the back of the product claims that it is a "total solution product", and there's another line that says, "I'm the Wonder Woman for Your Pores, More Powerful!" (again, this is me quoting verbatim from the product - I'm assuming something got lost in translation, but you get the point). You're supposed to use this much like a toner - after cleansing, but before other skincare products, you apply this to a cotton pad (Etude House also sells this in sets with a special type of cotton pad that has holes on the surface to better exfoliate the skin), and you do this twice a day, and it's supposed to help your pores.


Etude House Wonder Pore Freshner: Not sure if you can see it from here, but the cotton pads have special holes in them to aid exfoliation
Sounds like a lot for one product, right? I guess if it even does half of what it says it will, it would be quite an interesting product. But let's take a deeper look at the product itself, and see if it lives up to the hype!