Camellia Sinensis Leaf Extract

Camellia sinensis leaf extract is a green tea extract. To answer your question: yes, it is that green tea. While delicious and loved by millions across the world, green tea also comes with many additional uses, both when ingested and applied to the skin.

There is a vast field of scientific evidence behind the health benefits of green tea. It is one of the best-researched plants in the world. In short, green tea extract is a powerful antioxidant, able to mitigate the effects of photoaging, increase collagen and elastin production, and in turn lead to an anti-wrinkle effect.

In addition to this, green tea is a wonderful astringent, able to reduce the appearance of large pores and dilated blood vessels.

Tea extract, when applied to the skin, affects each layer of skin differently. In the stratum corneum (the top layer), it works majorly as a direct antioxidant. In the deeper layers of the skin, it delays the signs of aging by inhibiting the enzymes responsible for the destruction of collagen, elastin, and hyaluronic acid.

Tea extract protects against ultraviolet radiation from the sun, reduces the redness caused by sunburned skin, and helps with the skin’s healing processes. Tea extract also improves microcirculation in the skin’s blood vessels, resulting in better skin nutrition and oxygenation.

In addition to all of this, tea flavonoids also protect vitamin C from degradation. This is an important issue from a cosmetic point of view because vitamin C is involved in the synthesis of collagen.

Overall, green tea extract is a soothing, moisturizing, and emollient ingredient. It regulates the production of sebum by our skin, which makes it very suitable for oily and acne-prone skin types.

Tea bush originated in Southern China and Northern Myanmar. It is now grown worldwide, and thousands of different cultivars and hybrids have been created to achieve new, exotic tastes. That means, of course, that the tea extract in each of your skincare products will differ slightly, depending on the bush that the leaves were harvested from.

The main active ingredients of the tea leaves are various phenolic compounds: catechins, flavonoids, and organic acids. They have strong antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activities.

The catechins are responsible for the extract’s astringency because they bind to the proteins on the skin surface and cause a tightening in both the pores and the blood vessels. Another important constituent is caffeine, sometimes called theine.

In tea leaves, caffeine is bound to the catechins. This is the main difference between tea and coffee – in coffee, the caffeine molecules are free and not bound to anything.

Green tea extracts need to be carefully formulated before being used in skincare products. This is because several compounds found in the extract are very sensitive to light and oxygen.