Add this to your skin-care vocabulary: Tremella fuciformis, also called snow mushroom. It feels like one thing you’d bump into in a mystical forest, and sure, it’s a fungus, however it appears to be like extra like a white gelatinous flower than a mushroom. It is generally utilized in conventional candy Chinese language meals (like snow fungus soup) and has additionally been a staple ingredient in Asian drugs and pores and skin look after hundreds of years.
Now, it is popping up as an lively ingredient in skin-care merchandise in Western magnificence, and it is even been labeled as the subsequent hyaluronic acid for its hydrating properties.
What precisely is snow mushroom?
This ingredient’s skin-care origins go way back to the imperial Tang dynasty for making a youthful, supple look, in keeping with beauty chemist Ginger King. Fashionable science can clarify why: King says silver ear mushrooms, one more identify for Tremella fuciformis, have the power to spice up pores and skin hydration when ingested.
“As a result of gelatinous construction and excessive quantity of polysaccharide, it has been utilized in skincare to offer hydration, as properly,” she tells Attract.
What are the advantages of snow mushroom?
Board-certified dermatologist Dendy Engelman, MD, the director of dermatologic surgical procedure at Metropolitan Hospital in New York Metropolis, says the fungus acts equally to that of hydration powerhouse hyaluronic acid by pulling moisture to the pores and skin. Hyaluronic acid can maintain as much as 1,000 instances its weight in water, so discovering an all-natural match for its hydrating energy is fairly main.
And snow mushroom has an additional edge. “The particles are smaller than hyaluronic acid, so it penetrates the pores and skin extra simply,” says Dr. Engelman. She cautions, nonetheless, that she desires to see extra focused research on the ingredient’s skin-care properties earlier than she hails it as a magic mushroom for moisture.
With that being mentioned, board-certified dermatologist Hadley King, MD, who relies in New York Metropolis, notes that this mushroom — like most mushrooms, typically — is wealthy in fatty acids, which additionally assist with moisture retention whereas stabilizing your pores and skin barrier. “Mushrooms are additionally wealthy in nutritional vitamins A, [also known as retinol], C, and D and have antioxidant and anti inflammatory properties,” she says.
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