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After decades of slathering Retin-A on our faces, the idea of a non-topical retinol blew our little minds! We didn’t know retinol could exist in gummy form! 🤯
But as soon as we heard about embody’s Retinol gummies, we knew it was a lifestyle choice for us.
If you’re not familiar with retinol and its various forms: retinol is used to, among other things, increase collagen production. One of the plusses of retinol is that it minimizes the appearance of sun damage, but when you apply retinol skin products, it actually increases your skin’s sun sensitivity, which can lead to irritation and damage!
But, when you take retinol as a gummy, you can avoid all of these pitfalls.
And surface level retinol application will only lead to surface level results! When you ingest retinol, you also get other, internal benefits.
Getting beneath the surface
Here are some ways that internal retinol can benefit more than just the skin:
Retinol also benefits your eyes! We’re sure you’re familiar with taking Vitamin A for your eyes. Well, retinol is Vitamin A, or more specifically, “Vitamin A” is the name given to a group of fat-soluble retinoids that includes retinol.
These retinoids are responsible for a variety of important tasks in the body: everything from producing collagen to producing new blood vessels.
(Fun fact: The word retinol is derived from the word retina because retinol is the substance that produces pigments in the retina! 👁👋🏻)
But that’s not all retinol does! It works to keep allll of your organs healthy and functioning properly, from your immune system to the reproductive system,1 and it’s a potent antioxidant.
But wait there’s more!
And not only does the Embody gummy support younger-looking skin from the inside out with retinol, it’s also packed with a litany of other vitamins for boosting your skin health and immune system. Show-stopping immune boosters like Vitamin C, D3 and Zinc, plus 4000 mcg of D-Biotin.
This gummy is a total taskmaster.
Vitamin C is one of the primary stimulators of collagen production in your body, which is a reason why you might have noticed Vitamin C popping up in all of your favorite serums and moisturizers these days.
(If you’re curious about collagen and how it all works, you’ll definitely want to take a deep dive into the collagen cosmos with us. We’ve got all the intel in our Collagen Gummies 101! )
As if that all wasn’t good enough, this retinol gummy is vegetarian and made from all natural ingredients. We feel blessed that these strawberry jewels from skin heaven have come into our world. 😇
Embody was very kind to send us a sample of these gummies, and we didn’t take any other collagen supplements for six weeks while we tried these out.
Do Retinol Gummies Work?
After six weeks, we noticed that our skin tone was more even: these do give your skin a smoothness and a glow. This retinol gummy definitely works to diminish those splotches.
And here’s the test that we apply when taking a new collagen supplement: when we’re not taking anything, we notice nail breakage happens regularly. So our gold standard for collagen gummies is resilient fingernails.2
We didn’t experience any nail breakage while taking Embody’s retinol gummies!
There was definitely a firmness to our nails, although it didn’t quite give us that hard-as-rocks, go-go-grow nails that we get from straight-up collagen supplements.
But to be honest, we prefer these more animal-friendly retinol gummies as an alternative to the bovine-based collagen supplements on the market. These may not give you as over-the-top results, but sometimes that clean conscience is prettier anyway. 💚🐮
Vegetarian versus Vegan
We do think it’s important to note that these aren’t vegan, however. We were curious about what would make them vegetarian, but not vegan, so we reached out to Embody to get to the bottom of things, and got a little education on how retinol is extracted.
They told us:
“We define vegetarian as “excluding meat, poultry, and fish” whereas vegan would exclude any ingredient derived from an animal source. Retinyl acetate is typically extracted from animal products (usually liver) and so is not vegan.
We do consider the Retinol Gummy vegetarian because there are no viable animal products in the gummy, but there is refined extract from animal sources.”
We break this down a little further in our Vegan Collagen blog, and we highly recommend checking out the full scope of vegan collagen-boosters and how they do (or don’t!) work.
But basically, if this fits your animal ethics, this is a perfect beauty gummy.
And if you don’t follow Embody on IG, you’re missing out! Their boss babe founder Jenn Chung delivers the premium skincare content, gifting us with fun and informative IG lives.
We like to consider Embody more than just a gummy, we consider Embody Nation (not to be confused with Bachelor Nation) a lifestyle brand for the discerning beauty maven. 💎
Also, huge congrats to Embody for getting picked up by Urban Outfitters!
You can also find these on Amazon occasionally, when they’re in stock.
citations
- https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/VitaminA-HealthProfessional/
- Hexsel D, Zague V, Schunck M, Siega C, Camozzato FO, Oesser S. Oral supplementation with specific bioactive collagen peptides improves nail growth and reduces symptoms of brittle nails. J Cosmet Dermatol. 2017;16(4):520-526. doi:10.1111/jocd.12393
