Beauty supplements that actually work

If you’re anything like us and on a forever pursuit to achieve firm, clear, and glowing skin, then you’ve probably experienced the moment wherein you’ve paused to lovingly gaze at your medicine cabinet-sized collection of skincare products, only to notice up in the corner your measly multi-vitamin and *maybe* a bottle of biotin you purchased a few months back that has yet to be opened. Or, perhaps you’ve been up on the vitamin game for years, but never really considered which ones specifically target skin that’s suffering, or found a vitamin regimen that actually improves your skin’s appearance over regular use. 

At this point, most all of us know that skin conditions like acne, rosacea, skin that’s slow to heal, and even just dull and tired looking skin are issues that begin from within our bodies and are further triggered by poor diets, lack of hydration, lack of sleep, and environmental stressors, yet we still slather on layer upon layer of products in the hopes that *just maybe* they will seep in deep enough to take care of the skin issues that are usually remedied from better lifestyle choices. And yep, one of these better lifestyle choices is regularly taking vitamins and--  if you’re really on a mission to get great skin and hair-- taking supplements designed specifically to improve the health of both. 

While beauty supplements and the whole “nutricosmetics” industry can feel a little overwhelming and at times even questionable in terms of efficacy, there are indeed some supplements out there that genuinely work to improve skin and hair health, and we’ve rounded up our favorites below. 

The Nue Co. Skin Food + Prebiotic Powder

We are obsessed with just about everything Jules Miller’s line The Nue Co. has released, but our favorite supplement they’ve created to achieve glowing skin is their Skin Food + Prebiotic Powder, which delivers 122% of the recommended daily vitamin C intake in one serving. It’s also packed with zinc, beta-caratone, baobab, and cama cama berry powder which work to brighten and smooth dull skin and encourage collagen production. We scoop a tablespoon of powder into our smoothies or yogurt each morning and let the probiotic powers take over. 

RMS Beauty Within Prebiotic + Probiotic Supplement

RMS has long understood that makeup should exist to enhance natural beauty and that a canvas of healthy, glowing skin usually starts from the inside, so it’s no surprise that their Prebiotic and Probiotic supplement works to balance the microbiome and makes room for good and bad bacteria to flourish together, resulting in clearer skin, less bloating, and overall better digestion. Boasting 8 different probiotic strains and 25 Billion CFU (CFU stands for Colony-Forming Units and are an estimate of the number of bacterial cells in a sample) per serving of good-for-you bacteria, this is a supplement we rely on everyday.

GOOP The Mother Load Daily Supplement

GOOP’s “The Mother Load”, a daily vitamin regimen designed for women who are pregnant and for those who have just delivered a baby and are still recovering physically (if this is you, have a listen to their podcast which dives more deeply into postnatal depletion), is meant to be taken from preconception and through those first few months after your little one has arrived into the world. This comprehensive approach to prenatals includes a daily multivitamin, Omega-3’s (which your baby will absorb while he or she grows in the womb), a choline supplement which supports liver, brain, and nerve development, and a calcium and magnesium duo which supports strong bones and is particularly helpful during the breastfeeding period. It’s basically everything you need to ensure you and your baby are healthy and strong during a season of growth and changes for both of you. 

Seed Female Daily Synbiotic

As mentioned previously, we all know that the key way to healthy skin, hair and nails is through a high-functioning and balanced gut. When we nail a symbiotic balance between good and bad bacteria that live in our guts and make up our microbiomes, we digest food better, and our organs can rid our bodies of toxins more easily resulting in healthier skin. The Daily Synbiotic Supplement from Seed has 24 various strains of good bacteria, resulting in 53.6 Billion AFU in (AFU stands for Active Fluorescent Units and are also a precise measure for viable probiotic cells in a sample). One of the coolest and most thoughtful bonuses of these powerful supplements is that the outer shell of the capsule is a prebiotic in itself, purified from Indian pomegranate and are biotransformed by gut microbes into metabolites for optimal health. 

Ritual Essential Women’s Vitamin

Ritual’s Essential Daily Multivitamin for women is a vitamin that’s been purposely pared back to only the essentials the female body needs and will use to function properly. Most multivitamins are packed with 20+ other nutrients your body can actually glean from eating certain foods and maintaining a clean and well-rounded diet, and don’t need to be ingested via a supplement each day. Ritual’s daily essential vitamin brings up the very necessary point that sometimes the things we leave out of our bodies are equally as important as what we put in them. You’ll find only nine essential nutrients in this vitamin including Vitamin E, B12, D3, Folate, Omega-3, Iron, and Magnesium among others. We love that the vitamins themselves arrive in a beadlet-in-oil format so that nutrients are delivered to our bodies more efficiently! 

Thorne Indole 3-Carbinol

If you’ve ever suffered from hormonal acne around your period (that’s probably most of us save for the lucky few who remain spot-free even when they’re in the throes of major PMS), then you’ve probably felt like completely solving hormonal acne can be a bit of a lost cause given your period-- and subsequent breakout-- are waiting in the wings to greet you every month. We took cues from Jamie Cyk and decided to try Indole 3-Carbinol to tackle hormonal breakouts. Indole 3-Carbinol is made of a compound found in cruciferous vegetables-- think cauliflower, cabbage, and broccoli-- and helps to support the liver’s detoxification of estrogen, which in turn can help regulate any overproduction of hormones, which are typically the culprit for acne during your hormonal cycle.