My longtime policy for beauty treatments is, the crazier the better. That’s what propelled me to a spa somewhere in the San Fernando Valley where my cellulite was beaten with wet, knotted bath towels. It’s why in Paris I subjected my muscles to small electric shocks until I tasted metal. For years, I yearned for a bull’s blood facial until I discovered that the bull’s blood in question was actually just Hungarian wine. Boring.
On a sweltering day in August, I lay on a stranger’s bed under a photograph of a cowboy, hoping for something unnerving or at least disgusting to happen. Wishes do come true. Nearly every pore of my face was pierced with tiny needles and then topped with my own plasma. Or, as someone in the stranger’s bedroom called it, “liquid gold.”
Compared to what else is floating around the spa-verse, this isn’t even so crazy. In fact, this is a medically legitimate treatment with clinical studies in scientific journals to back it up.
Plasma is all the rage in dermatologists’ and plastic surgeons’ offices. It’s the hottest thing at the med spa. It’s also a magic word on some of the most compelling products on the shelves at Nordstrom. The hero in Dr. Diamond’s Metacine collection is the Plasma Bioactive Growth Serum. Eighth Day from Dr. Antony Nakhla contains Peptide-rich Plasma, patent pending. U Beauty’s Plasma Lip Compound, in 15 shades plus clear, is a plump, peptide-rich, cushiony goo.
The only hitch: None of these products contains plasma.
How could they, really? Plasma is a substance in human blood. To get it, your blood is drawn, placed in a centrifuge where the plasma is isolated, and either injected or applied to various areas. It’s loaded with all sorts of goodness, including growth hormones.
Doctors inject platelet-rich plasma (PRP) in injured joints, tendons, muscles, and ligaments, and in the scalp to encourage hair growth. They swab it over skin that’s been microneedled or lasered to kick up collagen and elastin production, sometimes in a stranger’s bedroom under a photograph of a cowboy.
But stir plasma into a face cream, as Dr. Barbara Sturm infamously did in hotel rooms around the world, and there’s no certainty it will have any special effects. “Anybody who knows anything about blood knows that that’s not stable,” says Dr. Jason B. Diamond, a board-certified facial plastic surgeon based in Beverly Hills. “Blood dies once it’s out of the body almost instantly.”
Even though many products flash the word “plasma” on their labels, none of them would dare claim they actually bottle the stuff.
Instead, they may be banking on the power of suggestion and perhaps on people’s terrible memory of human biology. “Plasma” draws an enticing connection between cosmetics and medicine, creating a vague sense of scientific performance.
It’s working! Dr. Diamond’s Metacine, in particular, is “killing it,” says Kate Wasserstein, a former executive at a number of different skincare companies and retailers. “Everyone’s obsessed with it.”
The same could be said for U Beauty Plasma, essentially a lip balm with a luxury skincare price tag ($68). Eighth Day has been commended for its “cult products that harness the power of sophisticated, modern skin technology,” according to a statement from L Catterton, an investor.
The Metacine serum uses bioidentical growth factors produced in a lab to replicate human PRP. It may be either alarming or thrilling to see that the liquid is a vivid pink.
“We thought a lot about that. Should it be golden yellow like PRP?” asked Tammy Goodarzi, the co-founder and chief brand officer of Metacine. “Or should it be red to honor the original source of PRP, which is the red blood cells?” She and the doctor had a few qualms. “We didn’t want this to be a Halloween thing, calling it plasma and having it dark red.” Pink it was, the color of radish root extract, a key antioxidant in the serum.
Eighth Day also pays tribute to the power of the human body to heal itself. “We use the word plasma as sort of an homage to the treatments we do that contain real plasma,” says Dr. Nakhla, a board-certified dermatologist in Newport Beach, who created Eighth Day. “What we’re talking about are the growth factors and peptides and amino acids that we use together in this delivery system. So, we borrowed the term.” He calls it Peptide-rich Plasma, three little words, the love language of skincare.
“All skincare is essentially a body hack, right?” says Dr. Nakhla. “It’s understanding what the molecules do to your body and then going for a desired effect. These 24 bio-identical peptides, growth factors, and amino acids, which are really the building blocks of skin, have the ability to repair, renew, and regenerate,” he says. “These different molecules are biomimetic to the real plasma.”
Many skin care products are trying to marry biotechnology with beauty by encouraging the body to heal itself. Alisa Lask, the CEO of Rion Aesthetics, makers of Plated Skin Science, says, “We can leverage the power of the human body to do things that we want to do to renew our skin.” Plated accomplishes this with human-derived exosomes that are packed with growth factors and molecules that signal skin repair and regeneration.
Is it confusing? Yes, it is! “I don’t think consumers understand it,” says Lask. And despite the undeniable sexiness of terms like plasma, PRP, and exosomes, and the ability of some TikTok influencers to rattle them off like med students, it’s science-y rather than science. Or “cognizance without understanding,” says Wasserstein.
We may need a little more ChatGPT in our life to make sense of it all because these science-y products aren’t going away. Dr. Nakhla believes botanicals and plants are passé. Instead, he says, “the future is on the human body and what the human body’s capabilities are innately.” The way to harness that may well be with synthetic ingredients that tell the body to get busy.
Before my microneedling and plasma session in the bedroom, Dr. Diamond asked if I’d like him to evaluate my face for plastic surgery purposes (an occupational hazard). I couldn’t say no. “Smile. Relax. Smile. Relax. Smile. Relax,” he instructed. He placed his hands on both sides of my forehead and cheeks and lifted. Happy news, I guess: I’m a good candidate for a facelift. “There’s not a chance you don’t love it,” says Dr. Diamond, and maybe he’s right. I should have known that all the plasma in the world couldn’t possibly compete with time and gravity.
Linda Wells is the Editor at Air Mail Look
