Sodium Citrate

Healthy skin is mildly acidic, sitting at around pH 5. This is not a quirk. It is how the skin works. The enzymes that build the barrier's lipids only function properly in acid conditions. The enzymes that break the barrier down speed up as things turn alkaline. And the microbes you want on your skin prefer acid, while the ones you do not prefer neutral: the research shows Staphylococcus epidermidis, the helpful resident, grows contentedly at pH 4.7, while Staphylococcus aureus, which you would rather not encourage, does best nearer neutral. Even the antimicrobial peptide your own skin makes works far better in acid than out of it.

Which means the pH of anything you leave on your skin is not a technicality. A cream that sits at the wrong acidity is nudging your barrier enzymes, your lipid production and your microbiome in the wrong direction, quietly, every day. Ours is built to sit where your skin already is, and sodium citrate is the buffer that holds it there, not just on the day it was made but through a shelf life, as things shift and settle.

It has a second job as well. Trace metals get into every formula, and they catalyse the oxidation that turns oils rancid. Sodium citrate binds them up. That keeps the oils good, and since oxidised oils are irritating to skin, it keeps them from bothering you too.

Sodium citrate appears in every one of our formulations, and it sits higher in the list than you might expect for something so anonymous. That is deliberate: holding a pH steady over a shelf life takes a real amount rather than a token pinch, and it also works alongside the gluconolactone, which needs a mildly acidic product to preserve properly. Skin pH, preservative pH and oil stability all want the same thing, which is a piece of luck we will happily take. The exact percentage is published on each product page.