We seem to wake up every day to another new superfood and another brand-new unique blend of plant-based phytoestrogens, emollients, and potent peptides aimed at addressing the effects of hormonal changes in skin aging.
What super-new miracle ingredient will be hyped next?
We’ve had squalene, niacinamide, açaí, broccoli seed oil, avocado oil, and bee venom, to name a few. So what’s left? Fungi? It seems wood-growth fruiting bodies might provide the next cure-all bio-active extracts.
According to well-being companies like Rainbo, Dr. Andre Weil, and Kate Siebervich, the next trend in beauty products will be functional ‘shrooms. These companies want to alter our perceptions by absorption as well as ingestion. While mushrooms are still associated with yoga, harem pants, cheesecloth, and the Grateful Dead, they are unfairly linked with an overpowering cosmic love for everything.
Few things offer true fulfillment or open the gates to understanding, love, compassion, and great skin than fungi which are predicted to become a staple of our skin wellness as much as hyaluronic acid. Companies are using mushrooms in their products claiming that they make you look better due to their skin-plumping capacities. Fill up your heart with love and your skin with radiance.
Mushrooms reportedly contain adaptogens that allow our bodies to adapt to and fight off chemical, biological, and physical stress.
The mushroom market generated $7.9 billion in 2020 and is growing. At a time when more people are looking to partner with nature in a more symbiotic way, something that has been growing for 2.4 billion years and “used” for centuries across traditional Chinese medicine is now taking off worldwide.
Brooklyn-based “Biophile” represents a new generation of biologically advanced, sustainable skincare that balances the microbiome, activates the skin’s regenerative abilities, and strengthens skin barrier function. Biophile’s breakthrough trio of products: Root Bionic Refining Essence, Bio-Shroom Rejuvenating Serum, and Bio Barrier Nourishing Oil, feed the skin with probiotic bacteria and botanicals, fungi, and superfoods to boost skin immunity and hydration, increase cellular energy, reduce wrinkles and pigmentation, and increase smoothness. The company is the brainchild of biologist Alison Cutlan, formerly of Kiehl.
Each Biophile product is designed to work synergistically to bring skin to life. First, the Root Bionic Refining Essence resurfaces and regenerates to prepare skin for the award-winning Bio-Shroom Rejuvenating Serum. Next, the Bio-Shroom Serum feeds and supports the skin with three powerful mushrooms and age-defying actives and peptides, supporting the skin’s barrier and microbiome. Finally, the Bio Barrier Nourishing Oil strengthens and fortifies for a plump-and-seal effect.
Two other mushroom-inclusive companies of note are Pennsylvania’s Wei Beauty which makes Black Mushroom Beauty Therapy Re-lasticing Cream, and Toronto-based, Russian-born Vladimir Druts’ FRWRD Skincare produces a hand-foraged mushroom multi-corrective super serum. Druts notes, “Our organic acreage is also in northern Ontario. I’ve always been deeply fascinated with the mushrooms’ broad utility. I started researching them for beauty when I came across a link between beta-glucans and redness reduction for my rosacea.”