Have you heard of bearberry before? I have never heard of the fruit, let alone the use of it as a skincare ingredient. The first time I saw and used it was the Alpyn Beauty Bearberry & Vitamin C Glow Serum. It caught my attention because it didn’t seem like other brands are using it as well.
Bearberry comes from 3 different species of shrubs in the Arctostaphylos genus. It has a high concentration of an ingredient you’ve regularly seen: alpha-arbutin.
What Is Alpha-Arbutin?
Alpha-arbutin has been shown to have antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and anti-microbial properties. Arbutin slowly breaks down into hydroquinone and glucose, allowing it to inhibit the synthesis of melanin aka dark spot formation.
Translation: alpha-arbutin will help keep your skin more even toned and has the potential to help with acne prevention through anti-microbial properties.
Some popular products with arbutin:
Plant Extract vs Pure Compound
There’s an age-old debate if plant extracts or pure compounds are more effective. I’m of the opinion that it depends what you’re looking for.
The case for plant extracts
Plant extracts will usually be added in small percentages to formulations to enable brands’ marketing teams to call out a hot new ingredient to match a trend. And while it will have the pure compound within the plant extract, it (likely) won’t be at the same, higher concentration that the pure compound would be at if they same volumes are added.
However, the plant extracts can offer other beneficial compounds that you may not have heard of. But it can also bring along other compounds that you may not enjoy, such as fragrance.
Another reason brands use plant extracts is so they can make claims without registering it as a drug. For example, willow bark extract is a common source for BHAs, also known as salicylic acid. However, when you add salicylic acid to your ingredient to target acne, it has to be registered as an acne drug treatment with the FDA. Willow bark extract is the workaround for that and allows brands to talk about the acne-fighting potential of BHAs without invoking salicylic acid.
Ultimately, it’s up to personal preference, but plant extracts can be good for some people’s uses but not a match for others.
the case for pure compounds
It’s much easier to identify what final % the ingredient is at if the ingredient is added as a pure compound. It also ensures that you are not getting any other hitchhiking compounds along with it (good or bad). The purity for pure compounds is usually like 98% or higher, but the purity for plant extracts ranges depending on the processing for it. Either way, the stability of the ingredient should not be affected by it being a plant extract or being pure compound.
Alpyn Beauty Bearberry & Vitamin C Glow Serum Mini-Review
It’s only fitting that I talk about the Alpyn Beauty serum, since that was my first time using bearberry. I’ve been using it as a morning and night product. The texture is a nice matte cream-like serum. It layers well and has not pilled in my experience.
There is a slight floral fragrance when you apply it (probably from the lavender oil and sage extract). It goes on smoothly, and it has a slight shimmer to it from the mica. And there’s also titanium dioxide in it, which gives it that matte look.
One thing I thought was interesting was that the ingredient list includes glycolic acid, lactic acid, and bakuchiol for this AM + PM product. I think it’s strange when daytime products include exfoliants because they typically will sensitize your skin to the sun. While I have not had any reactions with this, I think it is important to note that potential.
Final Thoughts
Bearberry and albutin definitely are awesome ingredients to incorporate into your skincare routine, particularly if you’re worried about sun spots, PIH, or other dark spots. It’s a good preventative measure to help with that.
It’s a personal preference if you want to choose a plant extract or one that explicitly lists alpha-arbutin in the ingredient list. In the case of the Alpyn Beauty one, I do think that having the plant extract will be less effective than having the pure compound, simply because the bearberry extract is listed as almost the last ingredient.
If you want to get the most for your money from just arbutin, I would look elsewhere than the Alpyn Beauty one. But don’t forget that there are other ingredients in the list that will help dark spots too—because formulations are not just single ingredients!
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