| G. Dzenichristos, LipoTherapeia, London |
Cellulite: the impossible aesthetic condition
Of all aesthetic conditions cellulite is the trickiest, the most “impossible” to treat with any method: diet, exercise, treatments or creams.
Most other aesthetic conditions do not require the client to change their lifestyle much: if you don’t smoke and live generally healthy, you would expect very good results from a quality beauty treatment or cream without any other effort on your part.
With cellulite, you MUST exercise, diet and stop the contraceptive pill, IN ADDITION to having several treatments once a week and/or applying your creams twice a day for several weeks.
Most women don’t. They don’t diet, they don’t exercise, they miss their cellulite treatment appointments and they forget to use their creams. And when they don’t see results, they complain that the treatment or cream doesn’t work.
Cellulite is tricky. It requires a lot from the client, if it is to be significantly reduced. And then you have the marketing lies and exaggerations to make it even worse:
• “Reduce your cellulite by 47% in 15 minutes with the XYZ anti-cellulite serum!”
• “Get rid of cellulite with one (typically very expensive) treatment!”
• “Lose 15 inches off your body with our body wrap!”
• And so on and so forth…
How can any honest company compete with that?
Why (physiologically) is cellulite so tricky?
In the paragraphs above I analysed why is cellulite tricky from a consumer psychology point of view. But cellulite is also tricky from a physiology point of view. Cellulite is defined as “oedematous fibrosclerotic panniculopathy”, i.e. “inflammation of the fat tissue with water retention and tissue hardening”. This, by all means, is not a complete definition, but it is still the most accurate and descriptive one.
Cellulite comprises excess fat accumulation on the dermal-hypodermal junction and on the hypodermis; plus water retention on the hypodermis; plus fibrosis on both those skin layers; plus inflammation, oxidative damage and glycation; plus toxin accumulation on the fat tissue; plus dermal skin looseness, just right next to connective tissue hardening.
It is just an impossible condition!
A comprehensive approach is needed
After reading the above it is easy to see that one-sided approaches are not going to work. Even if you put 10% caffeine (a lipolytic) in a cream, it will not affect all aspects of cellulite. It will only affect some.
The same applies to 10% vitamin C (a collagen booster and antioxidant). Or 10% retinol (that would be dangerous and illegal anyway, due to toxicity; the EU actually only allows a maximum of 0.5% on face products and even less on body products). Or 10% of anything. You need to use multiple actives, in good concentrations and in some kind of easy absorption formula.
And you need to make all these actives relatively affordable for use on almost half the body (most clients are not content to use a cellulite cream juts on the legs), which requires the use of 20x more product than a face cream. And that is also an impossible task. This is the reason why most cosmetic giants go for one or two (cheaper) actives in (usually) low concentrations. Many of the biggest-selling cellulite creams contain almost nothing in the way of active ingredients, and mostly functionals, skin conditioners and emollients.
Balancing cost vs effectiveness
The way I see it as someone who worked with cellulite for 18 years is that to make a real cellulite cream you either have to be a charity and forgo any profits, or you have to sell your cream very expensively. It is very difficult to balance both “a cellulite cream that works” and “a cellulite cream that makes a profit”. Especially given that most users even forget to use the creams or expect to lose cellulite without diet and exercise. C’est la vie!
In my mind, you cannot sell a “real” cellulite cream for less than £150 for a 15-day supply of cream, just for the legs (£250ml), if you sell through distributors and shops. And you cannot sell for less than £90 if you sell direct, through the internet. And consumers need to use a cellulite cream for two weeks minimum to see some results – and ideally for three months for best results. Of course, no cream or treatment will eliminate cellulite for ever, but a good cream or a good treatment can make a visible difference and offer customer satisfaction to en educated buyer, as long as exaggerated promises are not made.
Cellulite creams: expected to make the impossible, possible
So bearing in mind that by manufacturing a cellulite cream you must tread carefully between increased consumer expectations, increased cost for larger quantities of creams for large body areas and consumer apathy and skepticism (consumers previously disappointed by exaggerated claims), here is a my guide of what makes a good cellulite cream.
I would only use widely researched active ingredients
Every year several cosmetic ingredient manufacturers propose a slew of new amazing ingredients for cellulite. Some act on lipolysis, some on circulation, some on skin looseness etc. Most of those actives don’t have any clinical studies on them. Those products may indeed be amazing, but unless you contact your own clinical studies as a manufacturer, you won’t know what works and want not. In this article I will repeatedly use caffeine as an example for different point I make, as it is very well researched (hence its universal use in cellulite creams).
I would only use concentrated actives
There is a difference between a [coffee extract with 1% caffeine concentration] and [liposomal caffeine with a 60% caffeine concentration]. A cream that contains the first caffeine raw material would need to be used 60 times to supply the skin with the same amount of caffeine compared to a cream that contains the second raw material.
I would try to use actives in an enhanced absorption form
Using the caffeine example above, actual 100% pure caffeine is not nearly as good as the 60% liposomal caffeine. As many of you know, 100% pure caffeine tends to go back to a white powder state after the water that diluted it and kept it soluble in the cream is absorbed in the skin (water is absorbed much faster than caffeine). So you end up with an ugly white mark on the surface of the skin and little caffeine inside the skin, which is pointless. Although most natural anti-cellulite actives are small molecules with a molecular weight of less than 500-800 Dalton needed to penetrate skin, some are just tricky and need to be used in some enhanced delivery form. Liposomes, cross-linked hyaluronic acid, different types of maltodextrin, palmitatoylated molecules, silanols, propylene glycols and other delivery forms are used to modulate skin absorption of different actives. It is the job of the formulator of each specific product to choose which, if any, molecules need to be in one of those enhanced absorption forms for the overall formulation to succeed in terms of absorption, sensoriality, and overall stability.
The best anti-cellulite actives
In my opinion the best cellulite actives are (in no special order): Caffeine, horse chestnut extract, butcher’s broom extract, rutin, hesperidin, quercetin, raspberry ketone, green coffee extract, gingko biloba extract, forskolin, genistein, centella asiatica extract, hyaluronic acid (very low molecular weight), d-limonene, ascorbic acid, d-menthol, retinol, pine bark extract, cocoa extract, curcumin, green tea extract, dihydromyricetin, CLA, skin firming peptides (there are dozens of them available these days), and dozens of other, lesser known, and
much less researched, actives.
No secret under the sun
These actives are by no means “secret”. Some have been used for cellulite for decades, in one form or another. The big secret is how to charge £300 a month for that, in order to offer a quality product and make some profit at the same time.
If you try to use economy of scale to reduce costs you must then sell thousands and thousands of bottles, which means most of the savings from economy of scale go towards the marketing that will drive sales of the tens or hundreds of thousands of bottles.
A big corporation, like those that sell facial creams for £250 for a 50ml pot, could do it, as they already are in the luxury market and are in possession of the right marketing and distribution infrastructure. But why should they sell 500ml of product for £300 when they can sell 50ml of product for £250 (i.e. 8.3x more product for the same price), to people who will use the creams for two weeks without any diet and exercise effort and expect miracles?
And of course not even the luxury giants would contemplate charging £500 or £750 for their creams, to maintain their high margins. None of those options makes commercial sense and I don’t blame them for not doing so. So all in all, making and selling an amazing cellulite cream is not so much about an excellent formulation, as it is about an excellent business plan. For even the best product can flop without a good business plan and, vice versa, a poor product can triumph with a great business plan and some smart marketing. And there are plenty of examples of that.
Food for thought…
www.lipotherapeia.com