Mushrooms for skin hydration

The early laboratory work on Tremella polysaccharides and their water-binding capacity is encouraging, and human trials would be a welcome addition. What it already has is over a thousand years of documented use for the skin, in a culture that recorded its food and medicine carefully.

They work on the same principle: both bind and hold a great deal of water. Tremella is the one people have been eating for a millennium, which is why it is so often called the plant-based answer to hyaluronic acid.

Because the polysaccharides are doing what they are taken for. Tremella holds water, which is why the traditional dish is a soup that sets as it cools. If you would rather avoid it, take the capsules.

Almost nothing, with a faint sweetness. It is the most neutral extract we sell and goes into anything.

Because sleep and stress show on your face, and Reishi is the extract we sell for the evening. That is an indirect argument and we have written it as one rather than implying Reishi acts on skin, which it has not been shown to do.

Skin renews over weeks, so four to twelve weeks of daily use is the window worth judging it on. That is how it has always been eaten: daily, as a habit, not as a course.