Health and wellness brand Ritual has completed its clinical trial on its daily skin support supplement, HyaCera. The ingestible beauty supplement was the subject of a twelve-week study on the supplement’s efficacy in reducing wrinkles and increasing skin smoothness.
The study’s results were promising: "Participants reported an improvement in skin elasticity, glow/radiance, fine lines and wrinkles and general signs of aging,” said Dr. Mastaneh Sharafi, PhD RD, VP of Scientific and Clinical Affairs at Ritual.
To learn more about the R&D process behind HyaCera’s development and launch, the reasons why the brand chose to conduct a clinical trial on the supplement’s efficacy, and Ritual’s plans for further innovation and development in the ingestible beauty space, we spoke to Dr. Sharafi for her insights.
Dr. Sharafi is a registered dietician with a Ph.D. in nutritional sciences, and her industry experience includes nutrition-related product innovation (i.e., ingestible beauty products), cosmetic ingredient evaluation, partnership with skin researchers, and clinical trials.
R&D and development process
While “ingestible beauty is one of the fastest growing segments in the supplement category, predicted to reach 9.2 billion by the year 2031,” said Dr. Sharafi, the Ritual R&D team had some initial reservations regarding formulating a skin care supplement for the brand.
“Despite its rapid growth,” she explained, “we were highly skeptical of creating a product for this category [as] we reviewed numerous ingredients, but either found ingredients with clinical studies that were poorly conducted or ingredients with no clinical support at all.”
She continued that the initial R&D process was challenging, as “it was hard to find something that was truly validated by our standards.” However, the team eventually met the Ritual’s high expectations for efficacy and performance. “After extensive research,” she explained, “we selected Ceratiq, a wheat oil extract, and Hyabest, a lower molecular weight hyaluronic acid.”
These ingredients were selected “because they had human clinical evidence to support their efficacy, met our standards for traceability, and were ingredients we felt confident putting to the test in our own clinical trial,” she said.
Having chosen the ingredients for the skin care supplement’s formulation, the R&D team then needed to find the best solution for the supplement’s delivery format, ultimately landing on “a capsule-in-capsule technology designed to help maintain ingredient integrity of the 2-in-1 formula by acting as a barrier system to keep the inner dry ingredients separated from the outer oil,” she explained.
Although the R&D team had first considered a gummy option, “it proved challenging because we were working with a lower molecular weight hygroscopic HA,” said Dr. Sharafi. Instead, the researchers ultimately “pivoted to using our nestled capsule technology, which protected both of the ingredients, [and was] a win-win for the consumer and for stability,” she shared, and the result was HyaCera.
The clinical study
For Ritual, “selecting evidence-based ingredients has always been a priority for [the brand], which is why each of our ingredients have their own clinical studies, and they are separated within the capsule so their integrity is intact,” Dr. Sharafi said. In HyaCera’s case, however, “conducting a gold-standard clinical trial on the finished formula for HyaCera takes that commitment one step further,” she continued.
In addition to reaffirming “our dedication to producing high-quality products,” explained Dr. Sharafi, the clinical study “also ensures that our customers can trust in the validated benefits of HyaCera.”
Furthermore, she added, the clinical study also “provides robust scientific evidence on the efficacy of a skin supplement, a category that previously has had limited clinical support,” and is “another step forward in our commitment to have gold-standard human clinical trials in partnership with leading universities and research organizations from around the world on all our products by 2030.”
While “this is not a requirement in the category,” she clarified, “it’s something we believe is important to ensure our customers can feel confident in the efficacy of their products.”
The study itself was a “randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled design (widely acknowledged as the gold standard in human research) [which] spanned a duration of 12 weeks,” explained Dr. Sharafi. Its participants comprised “63 healthy women and men ranging in age from 26 to 64,” and “multiple skin-related assessments were made at baseline, four weeks, eight weeks, and 12 weeks after the commencement of the supplementation protocol,” she said.
In addition to overall improvements in skin elasticity, glow/radiance, fine lines, wrinkles, and general signs of again, Dr. Sharafi shared, the results determined that there was a “356% reduction in crow’s feet wrinkles, and a 290% increase in facial skin smoothness within 90 days when compared to placebo.”
She added that Ritual’s researchers “are developing a manuscript based on the clinical study results to submit to a peer-reviewed journal."
Following the positive results from the HyaCera clinical study, Ritual’s plans for growth in the ingestible beauty space include creating “innovative products that address our consumer’s most pressing needs… that meet the uncompromising standards that Ritual has become known for: traceable science and traceable sourcing,” Dr. Sharafi concluded.