What exactly is an anti-cellulite cream?

Our Beachy Legs articles are a nice way to share our experience in cellulite and skin tightening, from our London clinic with everyone in the world. Check all our articles here. And if you do live in London, book an assessment, consultation or treatment with us here.

• An anti-cellulite cream is a cream with anti-cellulite active ingredients

• An ideal cellulite cream is a cream with multiple actives to work on multiple aspects of cellulite

• A real anti-cellulite cream must contain relevant actives

• A cellulite cream should contain widely-researched actives, to ensure that the active definitely works on one or more aspects of cellulite

• A proper anti-cellulite cream is one with high-purity actives, to ensure the active ingredients are, well, pure enough

• A cellulite cream worth its name should have high concentrations of actives, to ensure there is enough quantity of that ingredient in every ml you apply on your skin

• An anti-cellulite cream, should have a well-absorbable cream base to help active ingredients penetrate into the skin

• The typical cellulite cream: exactly the opposite of all the above

• A cellulite cream only in name

• Price is not a good indicator, as what sells a cosmetic product is packaging and fluffy marketing, not quality actives

• Will a cellulite cream eliminate all the cellulite then?

• So what makes a good anti-cellulite cream? What active ingredients shall I look for?

• So do your research, look for quality anti-cellulite actives…

• Check our professional consultancy, for a masterclass in radiofrequency, ultrasound cavitation, cellulite and skin tightening

An anti-cellulite cream is a cream with anti-cellulite active ingredients

A cream formulation is basically a mix of oil, water, emulsifier (to mix water and oil) and a stabiliser, to stabilise the emulsified mix.

A cream can be made to absorb:

• Very little (example: sunscreen)

• Slowly (examples: a thick, rich moisturiser or a just poorly formulated anti-ageing/anti-cellulite cream)

• Fast (examples: a anti-good cellulite / anti-ageing cream)

So this is what makes a cellulite cream: a fast absorbable cream formulation with - ideally a high concentration of anti-cellulite active ingredients in it. It’s as simple as that.

Without anti-cellulite active ingredients - or with very little in the way of active ingredients - we are talking about a simple body moisturiser.

I am sorry to break it to you, but 99% of the so-called cellulite creams on the market are exactly that, basically a body moisturiser.

And this is the main reason why most people maintain that cellulite creams do not work: because they are not even cellulite creams, they are moisturisers with something very little “anti-cellulite” in them just to support the fluffy/shallow/misleading marketing.

The other reason is that most people expect results with a couple of applications, i.e. “magical thinking”.

But let’s look at things in detail.

An ideal cellulite cream is a cream with multiple actives to work on multiple aspects of cellulite

One active is never enough, because cellulite is a multi-factorial aesthetic condition. However, and unfortunately, most cellulite creams have just one or two actives.

A real anti-cellulite cream must contain relevant actives

You would be surprised by how many so-called cellulite creams are based on irrelevant ingredients, such as shea butter or Vitamin B5 etc. No matter how nice those ingredients are for your skin, they are irrelevant to cellulite. Unfortunately, again, many “cellulite creams” contain irrelevant ingredients.

A cellulite cream should contain widely-researched actives, to ensure that the active definitely works on one or more aspects of cellulite

Every year cosmetic ingredient manufacturers invent a slew of new “miracle” anti-cellulite actives, based on some limited, manipulated, proprietary research (basically no public, peer-reviewed research papers).

Then they forget about it the following year for the sake of another secret miracle ingredient based on yet more shoddy, not published or peer-reviewed research.

I would not believe any of those claims, as a lot of them are made up.

(Unfortunately, many cellulite creams contain such unproven “actives”.)

A proper anti-cellulite cream is one with high-purity actives, to ensure the active ingredients are, well, pure enough…

A good example of a low purity active ingredient is guarana (found in those ridiculous, so-called “bum-bum” creams), typically containing 20% caffeine (as opposed to 95% pure caffeine, which is ideal). With the 20% version you would need to use 5x more cream quantity for the same result.

And given that the 20% guarana extract has a not very nice brown colour, you also have to use very little of the 20% extract - meaning that very little caffeine will be present in the cream…

Another example is a generic centella asiatica extract that contains 1% triterpenes (as opposed to 95% pure asiatic acid, asiaticoside, madecassic acid, madecassoside, the actives in centella asiatica) With the 1% version you would need to use 95x times more cream quantity for the same result. BIG difference.

Unfortunately, the VAST majority of cellulite creams contain such low purity extracts.

A cellulite cream worth its name should have high concentrations of actives, to ensure there is enough quantity of that active in every ml you apply on your skin

If an active is included at 0.1% concentration in one cream and at, say, 3% in another cream, then you would need to use 30x more quantity of the first cream to achieve the result of the second cream.

Again, BIG difference.

Again, unfortunately, the VAST majority of cellulite creams contain actives at very low concentrations.

An anti-cellulite cream, should have a well-absorbable cream base to help active ingredients penetrate into the skin

Again, if a cream stays on top of the skin and does not get absorbed, then regardless of what is in it, it won’t work.

Most so-called cellulite creams are made in such away so that skin feels instantly soft. However, the same type of formulation also prevents actives from being absorbed.

So yes, you have an instant nice skin feel when you apply the cream, but you get no results in regard to cellulite.

Unfortunately, many cellulite creams are more about instant skin texturing rather than being a vehicle for the absorption of actives into the skin, which they should be.

The typical anti-cellulite cream: exactly the opposite of all the above

As mentioned earlier, 99% of cellulite creams on the market are NOT as above, i.e. they are moisturisers not worthy of being called a “cellulite cream”.

This is usually:

• Due to cost: “Why spend money on actives when we can spend it on luxurious packaging, misleading marketing and retail distribution, which is what actually sells cosmetics?” Good point, right? Give the public what they want: luxury packaging and marketing fluff…

• Or due to ignorance: Most “cellulite creams” are designed by the same people who also formulate shampoos, nail polish, hair products and pointless facial “serums”, not by people who have spent decades researching cellulite. That decision process is not much different to that of choosing paint colours from a swatch when redecorating a house.

And that’s one of the reasons most cellulite creams don’t “work”. Because they are not real cellulite creams, they are “cellulite creams” just in name.

(The other reason for a cellulite cream not working is when the buyer doesn’t “work”, i.e. when the buyer only applies the cream occasionally or for just a couple of weeks. Or when they don’t change their diet, inactivity and other lifestyle habits that initially led to the creation of cellulite and expect the cream to do all the work, while eating unhealthy food, living unhealthily and being inactive. Obviously nothing works like that.)

A cellulite cream only in name

If any of the above 6 factors is taken away, e.g. if irrelevant or low purity actives are used or in low concentrations or in a cream base that sticks on the surface of your skin and goes nowhere inside the skin, then you have a poorly performing anti-cellulite cream.

And if you do not put ANY active ingredients in the cream then AT ALL, as mentioned above, you have a plain moisturiser.

(Or, in actual fact, you have one of the top selling cellulite creams worldwide. Yes, zero actives, yet top selling and with an obviously fake clinical study and thousands of questionable reviews too. That’s reality.)

If you just use ONE active ingredient, either irrelevant, poorly absorbed, at low concentration, low purity or all of the above, then you have a description for the vast majority of “cellulite creams” on the market, selling from £10 to £200 per bottle.

Both examples above are not examples of cellulite creams, they are examples of profit vehicles.

Of course there is nothing wrong with fat profits, if you also provide a quality product or service. But when you mislead people that they buy an X product and you sell them Y, i.e. when you promise a cellulite cream (a cream with anti-cellulite ingredients) and you sell them a moisturiser, then this is downright unethical.

Price is not a good indicator, as what sells a cosmetic product is packaging and fluffy marketing, not quality actives

Of course, a high quality cellulite cream, by definition, cannot be cheap:

• 95% purity actives cost 10x, 20x or 50x times more than 0.1% purity actives

• And actives included at 5% concentration in the final product will obviously cost 50x times more than actives included at 0.1% concentration

On the other hand, a high price may just mean marketing hype, luxurious packaging and nothing else.

An expensive cream may be expensive because of the amazing packaging and manipulative marketing and not necessarily because it has amazing active ingredients in high concentrations and in a fast absorbing formulation.

However, last time I checked, cellulite was not reduced by rubbing expensive, wasteful packaging on anyone’s legs or by sweet nothings whispered to someone’s ears by crafty marketers.

Will a cellulite cream eliminate all the cellulite then?

No, for the vast majority of cellulite cases this impossible to do with any product or service of any kind - not even with surgery (especially not with surgery).

It is all about reducing cellulite, not eliminating it and a good cellulite cream with the right formulation can help with that - always in combination with diet, exercise and an overall healthy lifestyle.

Will people exercise? Will people diet? Will people even apply the cream every day for 6-12 weeks, which is the prerequisite for good results?

Perhaps not, but at least people have the right to buy the real deal - not a moisturiser with expensive marketing attached.

And then it’s up to the client how the use it and make the most of it.

So what makes a good anti-cellulite cream? What active ingredients shall I look for?

The best anti-cellulite active ingredients that can be used in cellulite creams are 95% pure molecules, not 1-40% crude extracts:

• Forskolin

• Caffeine

• Asiatic acid, asiaticoside, madecassic acid, madecassoside

• Curcumin

• EGCG

• Quercetin

• Pine bark extract

• Escin

• Ruscogenin

• Esculoside

• Hesperidin

• Rutin

• Cocoa flavanols

• Hydroxyproline

• among a few more others

(Of course actives of the 1%, 2%, 10% or even 40% purity varieties will not work, it has to be 90-95%.)

The above actives are all well researched for decades to act on one or more aspects of cellulite, i.e.:

• Fat accumulation

• Fibrosis

• Skin laxity

• Poor circulation

• Free radical damage

• Inflammation

• Glycation

A high concentration of several of those actives together, in high purity form and in a highly absorbable base makes a good cellulite cream.

However, the vast majority of cellulite creams on the market are not like that, mainly because of cost, as mentioned above.

If, as a skincare manufacturer, you are used to 1,000% gross profit margin by selling 50ml of a face cream for a 3-month use, why go down to 50% gross profit by selling 600ml of cellulite cream for also a 3-month use?

Especially when marketing can help you sell a diluted body moisturiser with a little bit of guarana at low concentrations as a cellulite / bum-bum cream?

Exactly. Almost no one will do it, unless they care and they have the passion to produce a great product.

And you won’t find those people in multi-nationals, where accountants rule and CEOs dream of billions.

So do your research, look for quality anti-cellulite actives…

…and when you decide and buy your ideal cellulite cream, make sure you use it daily and also exercise and eat/live healthily to make the most of it.

Check our professional consultancy, for a masterclass in radiofrequency, ultrasound cavitation, cellulite and skin tightening

Do you want to deeply understand radiofrequency, ultrasound cavitation, cellulite and skin tightening? Attend a half-day, 1-day or 2-day or 3-day professional consultancy / one-to-one training and confidently offer your clients the safest, strongest and most effective treatment possible. Service available via Zoom or at our central London practice.