MEDIHEAL

Mediheal is a Korean mask brand run by L&P Cosmetic Co., Ltd. from the Mediheal Building in Gangseo-gu, Seoul. Its catalogue is organised like a pharmacy shelf — essential masks, ampoule masks, toner pads, modeling packs, cleansing, sun care — with lines named for one lead ingredient: tea tree, madecassoside, collagen, vitamin C, retinol.

Its product pages publish numbers. The Madecassoside Essential Mask states madecassoside at 98 percent purity and 50 ppm. The Tea Tree Essential Mask states tea tree extract at 12,000 ppm. The madecassoside toner pad states 10.25 ppm of madecassoside beside centella asiatica extract at 1,001 ppm, and names asiaticoside, madecassic acid and asiatic acid separately.

Its directions are just as specific: masks come off after about ten to twenty minutes, and what is left is patted in rather than rinsed.

Three are worth unpacking: what a ppm figure means, why madecassoside is named apart from centella, and why mask timing is an instruction rather than a suggestion.

A ppm figure is more honest than most percentage claims, because it is exact: parts per million, so 50 ppm is 0.005 percent and 12,000 ppm is 1.2 percent. That spread tells you something real — tea tree extract at 1.2 percent works at plant-extract levels, while madecassoside at 0.005 percent is a purified compound used at purified-compound levels. Neither number tells you whether the rest of the formula is any good. The hydration sheet mask below takes the opposite approach: a list short enough to read in one pass.

Naming madecassoside apart from centella is the more useful habit. Centella asiatica extract is a mixture; madecassoside is one of four active compounds in it, alongside asiaticoside, madecassic and asiatic acid. A label naming all four tells you which part of the plant's chemistry you are getting — a labelling advantage rather than a formulation one. The toner pad below names all four.

The ten-to-twenty-minute instruction is real, for a dull reason: a mask holds water against skin under a barrier, and once the sheet dries that barrier is gone and evaporation runs the other way, off your face. So take it off while still damp and pat the residue in. The collagen hydrogel mask below comes off at fifteen to twenty minutes, the eye patches at twenty to thirty; the overnight lip mask is the exception, and stays on.

We don't carry Mediheal itself. For each of these jobs, though, we send an alternative we rate highly — the five picks below.

Mediheal publishes the same two steps across its Essential Mask range: after cleansing, tone the skin, take the sheet out and fit it to your face; after about ten to twenty minutes, peel it off and lightly pat the remaining essence in. For the madecassoside toner pad the direction is shorter — place the pad on the area of concern, then wipe gently along the grain of the skin. The picks above follow that order: pad, then a sheet or hydrogel mask, then eye patches, then the lip mask.