How do the active ingredients in Chuang Luo Oil penetrate the skin barrier to reach the bursitis lesion?
Publish Time: 2025-11-27
Bursitis is a common aseptic inflammation, often caused by repeated friction, pressure, or strain, leading to fluid accumulation, swelling, and pain within the bursa. It commonly occurs in areas such as the shoulder, elbow, and hip joints. Because the bursa is located deep under the skin, traditional topical medications often struggle to effectively penetrate the affected area. Chuang Luo Oil, a widely recognized topical traditional Chinese medicine preparation, demonstrates good efficacy in relieving bursitis symptoms. Its key lies in the fact that its multiple active ingredients can efficiently penetrate multiple skin barriers and precisely target deep inflamed tissues. This process integrates transdermal enhancement technology, optimized drug physicochemical properties, and the traditional Chinese medicine concept of "guiding the meridians and delivering the essence," achieving a treatment logic of "from the surface to the interior, directly reaching the site of the disease."
1. The Natural Defense of the Skin Barrier and the Challenge of Transdermal Transmission
Human skin consists of the stratum corneum, epidermis, and dermis, with the outermost stratum corneum being the main obstacle to drug penetration. Its "brick-mortar" structure provides a strong barrier against water-soluble and large molecular substances. Bursae are typically located several millimeters to centimeters deep under the skin. If the active ingredients in ordinary ointments cannot penetrate the stratum corneum and diffuse deeper, they cannot achieve an effective concentration at the lesion site. Therefore, one of the core design principles of Chuang Luo Oil is to solve the three major challenges of "penetration, retention, and depth."
2. Natural Transdermal Transdermal Enhancers: Opening the "Door" to the Skin
Chuang Luo Oil formulas often contain volatile natural ingredients such as menthol, camphor, borneol, and eucalyptus oil. These substances are not only active ingredients for cooling and analgesia but also highly effective natural transdermal transdermal enhancers. For example, borneol can reversibly alter the lipid arrangement of the stratum corneum, increasing intercellular permeability; menthol, by temporarily dilating local capillaries and raising skin temperature, enhances blood perfusion, indirectly promoting drug delivery to deeper tissues. These ingredients work synergistically to significantly improve the penetration rate and depth of other anti-inflammatory and blood-activating ingredients without damaging the skin structure.
3. Lipid-Soluble Formulation Design: Adapting to the Skin's Lipophilic Nature
Chuang Luo Oil primarily uses plant oils or volatile oils as its base, resulting in an overall oil-based system. This design cleverly utilizes the lipid-rich nature of the stratum corneum—lipid-soluble components dissolve more easily and penetrate the lipid bilayer. The active ingredients from traditional Chinese medicines such as tanshinone, ligustrazine, and curcumin, after extraction and purification, possess good lipid solubility, allowing them to be stably dispersed in the oil-based carrier and penetrate along with the base. Simultaneously, the oil-based base itself has a sealing and moisturizing effect, prolonging the drug's residence time on the skin surface, creating a "slow-release penetration" effect, and preventing rapid evaporation and loss.
4. Microemulsion and Nano-Encapsulation Technology
Some modern modified versions of Chuang Luo Oil incorporate microemulsion technology, encapsulating active ingredients in oil droplets with a particle size of less than 100 nanometers, forming a thermodynamically stable and transparent system. This nanoscale carrier not only significantly improves the solubility of poorly soluble components but also bypasses the main barrier of the stratum corneum through appendages such as hair follicles and sweat glands, achieving "bypass penetration." Experiments show that microemulsion formulations can increase the transdermal penetration rate by 3-5 times compared to traditional oils, allowing active ingredients to reach the depth of the bursa more quickly.
5. Synergistic Efficacy: A Closed Loop from Penetration to Anti-inflammatory Repair
Once the active ingredients penetrate the skin barrier, their pharmacological effects unfold rapidly: blood-activating and stasis-removing ingredients improve local microcirculation and accelerate the absorption of inflammatory exudates; anti-inflammatory and analgesic ingredients inhibit prostaglandin synthesis, relieving swelling and pain; while the cooling sensation of borneol and menthol activates the TRPM8 cold receptor, producing a neuro-analgesic effect. This synergistic effect of multiple mechanisms not only "reaches the lesion" but also "solves the problem."
The key to Chuang Luo Oil's significant efficacy in treating deep soft tissue inflammations such as bursitis lies in its multi-strategy approach—using natural transdermal penetration enhancers, lipid-soluble formulations, and modern delivery technologies—to overcome the skin barrier limitations and achieve highly efficient targeted delivery of active ingredients. It inherits the holistic view of traditional Chinese medicine that "external treatment is the same as internal treatment," and integrates the transdermal science of modern pharmacy, truly achieving "the medicine penetrates deeply and treats the affected area." In today's increasingly popular non-invasive treatment concept, this safe, convenient, and effective external treatment provides bursitis patients with a reliable home care option.
