Had brunch with three friends last weekend, all mid-40s, all pretty into skincare, and something struck me. Two of them casually mentioned they'd cut their topical serum spending in half and moved that money to oral supplements. Not collagen (we all rolled our eyes at that). More like specific antioxidants and a couple of things I'd never heard of.
I asked around a bit and this seems to be a shift I missed. The rough logic goes: after a certain age and a certain level of routine sophistication, topicals plateau. Active molecules can only push through so many layers of skin, and if the systemic side of aging isn't being addressed, no serum is going to touch it.
One name that kept coming up was ergothioneine. Mushroom-derived amino acid, humans can't produce it. There's now a decent 8-week randomized placebo-controlled trial (66 women aged 35 to 59, 30mg oral daily) showing statistically significant improvements in skin elasticity, glossiness, and spot count. Small sample, first study of its kind for skin endpoints specifically, but not nothing.
The part I'm actually chewing on is the budget math. A standalone EGT supplement runs roughly $25 to $40 a month depending on brand. That's about one mid-range serum. So the question isn't really "does ergothioneine work" in isolation, it's whether moving one serum's worth of monthly spend to an ingestible antioxidant leaves the total routine better or worse off.
I don't have an answer. One of the friends who made the switch says her skin looks better but she also started sleeping more once her kid moved out, so confounder city. The other is a nurse practitioner and just shrugged and said the ceiling on topical-only routines is real for her patients past 40.
More curious about the pattern than any single ingredient. Feels like this reallocation conversation is starting to happen for the 40-plus crowd, but I haven't seen it get discussed much on skincare subs specifically.
Submitted 2026-09-10T07:13:21Z by JudithFSummers https://ift.tt/K1RcDhE
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