Ingredient glossary
Cholesterol
On your shelf ✓What Cholesterol does for your skin, who it suits, and what to watch for.
INCI: Cholesterol
In short: Cholesterol delivers barrier support and repair, suits dry and sensitive skin best, and the evidence behind it is strong.
- What it does
- Barrier support, repair
- Best for
- Dry, Sensitive skin
- Evidence
- Strong
- How long
- Straight away
The molecule
The Glow take
One of the ingredients I trust most.
When your goal is repairing a stressed moisture barrier, Cholesterol delivers, and the research properly backs it up. It tends to suit dry skin best.
— Maya
What it does
- barrier support
- repair
- texture
strong evidenceBarrier repair studies show equimolar and cholesterol-enriched ceramide-cholesterol-fatty acid mixtures accelerate recovery of transepidermal water loss in damaged and aged skin and improve atopic dermatitis outcomes.
Who it's for, and who should skip it
Tends to suit
- dry
- compromised barrier
- atopic
- photoaged
- sensitive
Approach with care
No specific group flagged to avoid it.
- Clogs poresLow
- Irritation riskLow
How it fits each skin type
- DrySuits
- CombinationNeutral
- OilyNeutral
- SensitiveSuits
Often chosen for compromised barrier, atopic, photoaged.
Where it fits in your routine
This one works on contact — there is nothing to wait for.
What that covers, and what it does not
Measured on: acceleration of barrier recovery after acute disruption - transepidermal water loss returning toward baseline faster than control.
The cited experiment does have serial readings and they are hourly, not weekly: Zettersten tape-stripped the skin of six volunteers aged 80 plus or minus 5 and read barrier recovery at 3, 6, 24 and 48 hours and one week, with the cholesterol-dominant 3:1:1:1 mixture significantly accelerating recovery by the 6-hour reading (p<0.005). Anything slower than same-day is slower than the paper. Three limits belong on the row: n=6 in one laboratory, the lipids were applied at 2% in a propylene glycol/n-propanol solvent to acutely stripped forearm skin rather than as a cream on a face, and the effect is a property of the complete, correctly proportioned mixture - the same paper shows a fatty-acid-dominant mixture actively delaying recovery, and cholesterol on its own is not what is being timed. Clinical improvement in eczema from ceramide-dominant creams is a separate and much slower outcome for which this column has no controlled evidence to date.
PMID:9308554 (Zettersten EM, Ghadially R, Feingold KR, Crumrine D, Elias PM. Optimal ratios of topical stratum corneum lipids improve barrier recovery in chronologically aged skin. J Am Acad Dermatol 1997;37(3):403-8) - tape-stripped human skin, n=6, aged 80 plus or minus 5, readings at 3, 6, 24 and 48 hours and 1 week; the 3-hour figure in the same paper is murine and is not used here.
Plays well with
- ceramides
- fatty acids
- linoleic acid
Cholesterol, answered
Is Cholesterol safe during pregnancy?
Yes. Cholesterol is considered safe to use during pregnancy and breastfeeding. As with anything, if you are unsure it is worth a quick word with your doctor or midwife.
Who should avoid Cholesterol?
No specific group is flagged to avoid Cholesterol. It is well tolerated by most skin. Still, introduce anything new one product at a time.
What concentration of Cholesterol actually works?
Its concentration is rarely printed on the label, so use the ingredient list as your clue: near the top third it is likely doing real work, near the bottom it is more of a sprinkle.
Can you mix Cholesterol with
This, for every label you own
One ingredient is easy. A full label is where it gets confusing. The Ingredient Decoder reads any product and tells you the honest truth, ingredient by ingredient.