Skin care has never felt more high tech. We have peptides engineered to target specific pathways, sophisticated delivery systems to get ingredients where they need to go, and buzzy biotech ingredients like exosomes and growth factors promising to take skin care into the future. Against all that innovation, botanical ingredients can seem almost primitive — and like a less effective alternative.
I was thinking about this during a recent Tammy Fender facial at the Pridwin Hotel on Shelter Island. Listening to the aesthetician talk about the many benefits of the plant extracts in the products she was massaging into my skin reminded me that botanicals aren’t just a gentle alternative to more potent actives; some have a surprisingly robust body of research behind them.
But “has science behind it” can mean a lot of different things in skin care. An ingredient can have anti-oxidant or anti-inflammatory activity in a laboratory, for example, but that doesn’t mean it will do anything meaningful on your face. “A mechanism in a lab does not translate into visible improvement in someone’s skin,” says dermatologist Dr. Kseniya Kobets, director of cosmetic dermatology at Montefiore Einstein Advanced Care.
