What is the best cellulite cream?

A cellulite cream that works: does such a thing exist?

This is a very common question. Consumers, jaded by marketing hype, lies and exaggeration do not ask any more “What is the best anti-cellulite cream”, they ask “Is there ANY cellulite cream that works”?

To answer this question properly, let’s see why cellulite is so difficult to reduce and how to choose a cellulite cream that actually does work - always in combination with a healthy lifestyle.

Cellulite: the impossible aesthetic condition

Of all aesthetic conditions, cellulite is the trickiest, the most “impossible” to treat with any treatment or cream.

Most other aesthetic conditions do not require the client to change their lifestyle much: if you don’t smoke and live generally healthy, you would expect very good results from a quality beauty treatment or cream, without much other effort on your part.

With cellulite, you MUST exercise and diet, reduce drinking and smoking/vaping and stop the contraceptive pill, IN ADDITION to having several treatments once a week and/or applying your creams twice a day, for SEVERAL weeks.

Most people don’t. They don’t diet, they don’t exercise, they drink, they smoke/vape, they miss their cellulite treatment appointments and they forget to use their cellulite creams. That’s how it is in real life.

And then, when they don’t see results, they complain that the treatment or cream doesn’t work, like, say, a facial treatment or a facial cream works.

The best face cream vs the best cellulite cream

Furthermore, there is a big discrepancy about the perception of facial anti-ageing creams vs cellulite creams.

Most people expect to see some mild anti-ageing results from the best face cream (used religiously every single day) in a month or so. And then they quite correctly expect to use a face cream for life, not for three months and then to stay young forever.

But when it comes to the best cellulite cream, they expect results from their cream in a week or two (typically applying it occasionally, when they remember). And then they expect their cellulite to disappear forever and to never have to do anything about it ever again.

Where is the logic here?

Why, physiologically, is cellulite so tricky?

In the paragraphs above I analysed why cellulite is tricky from a consumer psychology point of view. But cellulite is also tricky from a physiology point of view.

Cellulite is defined as “oedematous fibrosclerotic pannicullopathy”, i.e. “inflammation of the fat tissue with water retention and tissue hardening”. This, by all means, is not a complete definition, but it is still the most accurate and descriptive one.

Cellulite comprises:

• Excess fat accumulation on the dermal-hypodermal junction and on the hypodermis

• Plus water retention on the hypodermis

• Plus fibrosis on both those skin layers

• Plus inflammation, oxidative damage and glycation

• Plus toxin accumulation on the fat tissue

• Plus dermal skin looseness, just right next to connective tissue hardening/fibrosis, i.e. to opposite and contradicting things affecting neighbouring tissues

It is just an impossible condition.

The “miracle” cellulite creams that don’t work but sell like hot cakes

So cellulite is very tricky, both from a physiological perspective and client compliance / discipline perspective.

It requires a lot from both client and treatment therapist/cosmetic manufacturer, if it is to be significantly reduced.

And then you have the marketing lies and exaggerations of some cellulite treatment clinics / cellulite equipment manufacturers / cellulite cream manufacturers to make it even worse:

• “Reduce your cellulite by 47% in 15 minutes with this miracle anti-cellulite serum!”

• “Get rid of cellulite with one (typically rip-off expensive) treatment!”

• “Lose 15 inches off your body with our body wrap!”

• And so on and so forth…

How can any honest company or therapist compete with that?

What is the best anti-cellulite cream? It’s simple: a comprehensive, concentrated and relatively affordable one.

After reading the above it is easy to see that single, one-sided approaches, either in terms of cellulite treatments or cellulite creams, are not going to work.

In terms of cellulite creams, which is the topic of this article:

• Even if you put 10% caffeine (the most well-known lipolytic active ingredient) in a “cellulite cream”, it will not affect all aspects of cellulite. It will only affect some.

• The same applies to 10% vitamin C (the most well-known collagen booster and antioxidant).

• Or 10% retinol (that would be dangerous and illegal anyway, due to toxicity; the EU actually only allows a maximum of 0.5% retinol on face products and even less on body products)

• Or 10% of literally anything

The best cellulite cream? It needs to have multiple, proven actives in high concentrations.

For a cellulite cream that works you need to use multiple actives, proven for their action against cellulite with repeated studies, in high concentrations in the formulation and within an enhanced absorption formula.

This means that a good cellulite cream, by definition, cannot be cheap.

The best cellulite cream? It needs to be affordable to be used on large body areas.

However, at the same time you need to make a cream with all these expensive actives relatively affordable for use on almost half the body.

Most people are not content to use a cellulite cream just on a small area on the thighs.

Still, even use on the thighs and buttocks only requires the use of about 12x times more cream quantity than a face cream.

Otherwise, nobody will buy the equivalent of those ridiculous luxury face creams, the £250 for a 50ml pot ones, because the equivalent cost for the body would be £250 for a 50ml pot x 12 = £3,000 for a 600ml pot.

And nobody except from petrodollar / oligarch wives would be able to buy those and use them for months on end, without remortgaging the house.

The end result? Most manufacturers include almost no anti-cellulite actives in their “cellulite creams”

And this is also an impossible task: expensive and concentrated ingredients must be included and high product quantity must be used.

And this is the reason why most cosmetic giants go for one or two cheap actives in low concentrations.

Most cosmetic companies actually only include something like 0.1% of one active ingredient in their so-called “cellulite creams”.

One of the most successful “cellulite creams” in the world contains 0% actives… Yap, 0% actives and lots of marketing and cosmetic counter placement.

This is what sells cosmetics: product placement on the shelf or online store and lots and lots and lots of manipulative marketing - not quality.

A cellulite cream that works: balancing cost vs effectiveness

The way I see it as someone who worked with cellulite for more than two decades, is that to make a real cellulite cream you either have to be a charity and forgo any profits, or you have to sell your cream very expensively to have some profit.

Plus you need to educate the public for the next fifty years - an arduous and impossible task, indeed.

It is very difficult to balance both “a cellulite cream that works” and “a cellulite cream that makes some profit at least”.

Especially given that most users even forget to use the creams, they expect results with three applications or expect to reduce cellulite without diet and exercise.

C’est la vie…

If you sell through distributors and brick and mortar stores, practically you cannot sell a “real” cellulite cream for anything less than an absolute minimum of ~£120 for a 200ml pot for a 3-week supply of cream, just for the thighs (average use of ~10ml/day).

And you cannot sell for less than ~£60 for a 200ml pot if you sell direct, through the internet.

Plus consumers need to use a cellulite cream for about three weeks minimum to see some long-term results, and ideally for about three months for best results.

Of course, no cream or treatment will eliminate cellulite completely or forever.

In realistic terms, however, a good cellulite cream or a good cellulite treatment can make a visible difference and offer customer satisfaction to en educated buyer, as long as exaggerated promises are not made.

Unfortunately, cellulite creams are expected to make the impossible, possible

So bearing in mind that by manufacturing a cellulite cream you must tread carefully between…

• increased consumer expectations

• increased cost for larger quantities of creams for large body areas

• consumer apathy and skepticism (consumers previously disappointed by exaggerated claims)

…here is my guide to what makes a good cellulite cream.

(In this article I will repeatedly use caffeine as an example for different points I make, as it is very well researched (hence its universal use in cellulite creams. But the points I make apply to all anti-cellulite active ingredients.)

How to choose the best cellulite cream, tip #1: I would only use a cream with widely researched active ingredients

Every year several cosmetic ingredient manufacturers propose a slew of new “amazing” ingredients for cellulite. Some act on lipolysis, some on circulation, some on skin looseness etc.

However, the vast majority of those actives don’t have ANY clinical studies behind them at all. Their use is based on some questionable - and easily manipulated - private lab data.

Those ingredients may indeed be amazing or not, but unless you contact proper, peer-reviewed clinical studies as a manufacturer, you won’t know what works and want doesn’t.

So all active ingredients in a cellulite formulation must have peer reviewed studies, proving they are worthy of being used in a cellulite cream.

Caffeine for example, is widely researched for its PDE3 and PDE4 inhibition, which increases lipolysis (fat release).

How to choose the best cellulite cream, tip #2: I would only use a cream with purified actives, in high concentration

There is a difference between:

• a hydroglycolic guarana extract with 1% caffeine concentration, used at 0.5% in the cream (i.e. low concentration)

• and a liposomal caffeine extract with a 60% caffeine concentration (i.e. high purity), used at 3% in the cream (i.e. high concentration)

A cream that contains the low purity (1%) caffeine-containing extract would need to be used 60x times more than one that contains the second caffeine extract, for the same result, even when used at 3% concentration.

If the extract is used at a low 0.5% concentration in the first example, as opposed to 3% in the second example, then we have a 6x30 = 180x difference in actual caffeine content.

Big difference.

And that is without counting the improved absorption of the liposome form - more on this below.

How to choose the best cellulite cream, tip #3: I would try to use a cream with actives in an enhanced absorption form

Using the caffeine example above, actual 100% pure caffeine is not nearly as good as a 60% liposomal caffeine.

100% pure caffeine tends to go back to a white powder state after the water that diluted it and kept it soluble in the cream is absorbed in the skin (water is absorbed much faster than caffeine).

So you end up with an ugly white mark on the surface of the skin and little caffeine inside the skin, which is pointless.

Although most natural anti-cellulite actives are small molecules with a molecular weight of less than the 500 Dalton needed to penetrate skin, some actives are just tricky and need to be used in some enhanced delivery form.

Caffeine is one of them but not the only example of a difficult to absorb active.

Liposomes, cross-linked hyaluronic acid, different types of maltodextrin, palmitoylated molecules, silanols, glycols and other delivery forms are used to modulate skin absorption of different actives.

It is the job of the formulator of each specific product to choose which, if any, molecules need to be in one of those enhanced absorption forms for the overall formulation to succeed in terms of absorption, sensoriality, and overall stability.

How to choose the best cellulite cream, tip #4: The best anti-cellulite actives

The best cellulite actives, according to their action on different aspects of cellulite, proven by thousands of peer reviewed studies over several decades, are (in no particular order):

• caffeine

• concentrated horse chestnut extract - escin and esculin

• concentrated butcher’s broom extract - ruscogenin

• rutin

• hesperidin

• quercetin

• concentrated green coffee extract - chlorogenic acid

• concentrated gingko biloba extract

• forskolin

• genistein

• concentrated centella asiatica extract - asiatic acid, asiaticoside, madecassic acid, madecassoside

• ascorbic acid

• resveratrol

• pterostilbene

• retinol

• concentrated pine bark extract - proanthocyanidins

• concentrated cocoa extract - catechins and epicatechins

• curcumin

• concentrated green tea extract - EGCG

• hydroxyproline

• other skin firming peptides

…and a few other, lesser known, and much less researched, actives

Cellulite active ingredients: No secret under the sun

These actives are by no means “secret”.

Some have been used for cellulite prevention / reduction for decades, in one form or another.

The big secret is how to charge ~£120/400ml for a cream packed with expensive ingredients, in order to both offer a quality product while making a little bit of profit at the same time.

If you try to use economy of scale to reduce costs, you must then sell tens or hundreds of thousands of bottles, which means most of the savings from economy of scale will go towards the marketing that will drive sales of the tens or hundreds of thousands of bottles.

Plus you have to lie a lot in those marketing communications, otherwise those sales will never happen - an uncomfortable truth.

Why reduce the wild profits?

A big corporation could do it - like those who sell facial creams for £240 for a 50ml pot to those with more money than sense - as they already are in the luxury market and in possession of the right marketing and distribution infrastructure.

But why should they sell 200ml of product for £120 or less when they can sell 50ml of product for £240 or more to the public who typically use the creams for a couple of weeks and expect miracles without any lifestyle changes? That’s 8x more cost. Why abandon their easy made wild profits?

And of course not even the luxury giants would contemplate charging the £3,000/600ml mentioned above for an 8-week supply of cellulite cream, in order to maintain the same high margins.

None of those options makes commercial sense and I don’t blame them for not doing so.

When you can print money on the back of the shallow and the gullible who are prepared to shell out £250 for a 50ml pot of cream which costs £5 to manufacture (another uncomfortable truth), why bother with the tricky stuff?

Trying to change the world…

So all in all, making and selling an amazing cellulite cream is not so much about an excellent formulation. It is about:

• Producing an expensive product at a low price, i.e. operating with low profit margins

• Selling direct to the consumer to eliminate distribution costs

• While at the same time trying to undo the last 50 years of deceptive marketing and consumer misconceptions about instant, complete and permanent results with 2-3 applications and with no other effort on their part in terms of exercise and healthy nutrition

Good luck with that…