Triisononanoin

triisononanoinI get a lot of people arriving at this blog looking for information about triisononanoin.   I think the main reason is it used in Bio-Oil which always seems to generate interest. Who wouldn’t be curious about a cosmetic ingredient with such a strange name?  It would be great if the ingredient itself were equally curious.   I could then do a ‘Triisononanoin?  Crazy name, crazy guy!’ kind of a post.

As it is, despite its exotic sounding name it is about as dull a chemical as they come.  It is simply one particular triglyceride oil.   Most of the oils you come into contact with on a daily basis are triglycerides, things like sunflower oil, olive oil etc.  It is one of nature’s most basic of building blocks and energy stores.  There are a great many varieties of them, but most of them are fairly similar.

The main way they vary is in viscosity, so by blending oils which contain different levels of various triglycerides you can get exactly the skin feel you are looking for.  They are all perfectly safe and so similar that it is possible to review the safety of the whole class in one fell swoop, as you will see in the link below.

Why the makers of Bio-Oil decided to pick on this particular one I have no idea, but it seems to have served them well enough.

[hana-code-insert name=’Ingredients’ /]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11800053

2 thoughts on “Triisononanoin”

  1. I love the way you make everything understandable – and throw in a bit of humor while you’re at it. Thanks Colin. 🙂

    (OMG – I sound like a total fan! Wait a minute.. I am!)

  2. Rats! I’m not a fan of Bio-Oil so I was hoping this was their comeuppance. Ah well.

    On the other hand, I love it when someone else does the grunt work and explains what the ingredients actually are, thereby saving me the trouble. Honestly, its to the point you need a degree in Chemistry to understand the labels.

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