Will Dr. Brandt’s Water Booster Beautify My Skin?

Marni writes: Hi Left and Right Beauty Brains. I love your website! And now I read all the contents before I buy my products. So on to my question, I was looking at Dr. Brandt’s Anti-Oxidant Water Booster. Is it true that my skin will get better from it or is it just cheaper to get vitamins? Thanks for all the great work! The Left Brain looks into it:

I’ve never been a big believer in using supplements. There are a variety of issues that start my skeptical senses stirring.

3 Problems With Supplements

First, their safety is dubious. In the US, dietary supplements are regulated under the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA). This means the FDA is not responsible for their safety, the manufacturer of the products are. Only when a product is proven unsafe can the FDA remove it from the market. You can imagine how difficult it is to prove something like this, especially if nobody dies. Imagine if drug companies could sell products without proving that their products were safe.

Second, supplement effectiveness is questionable. And guess who’s responsible for determining whether the product is effective? Not the FDA. Again, it’s the people who make the products. They don’t even have to provide any evidence to the FDA to show that they are effective. So, how do you know if they work? You’ve just got to trust what the people making the products say. That’s not comforting to me.

Third, you never know what’s in them. Again, the FDA has no power to regulate the “identity, purity, quality, strength or composition of dietary supplements.” All the power is with the people who make the products. They can sell you vitamins with almost NO vitamins in them and you have no way of knowing. And the FDA admits they aren’t checking up on these manufacturers because of limited resources. It’s really scary.

So, what about Dr. Brandt’s Anti-Oxidant Water Booster?

Let’s assume that the product contains what it says it does and that it’s safe. The ingredients it claims to be active include include green tea extract, grape seed extract, and Lo Han.

Green tea polyphenols have been shown to have some beneficial effect on skin. However, this is when delivered to the skin surface from an ointment. When delivered from a drink it is much less effective. And you could get just as much benefit by drinking green tea. This would be much less expensive.

Grape Seed extract has also been shown to have some beneficial effects on skin but again it is more effective when delivered topically.

And Lo Han Kuo, this is a sweetener patented by Procter & Gamble back in 1995. It’s also a traditional Chinese food. There’s scant evidence that it does anything for your skin however.

The Beauty Brains bottom line

There is some science behind the ingredients claimed to be in the Dr. Brandt’s Anti-Oxidant Water Booster so feel free to click here to try it for yourself. But be aware that there is no definitive test to show using the product works. Personally, I would just drink green tea to get the same effect. If that’s too difficult then you might find some benefit from Dr. Brandt’s Water Booster. If you try it, tell us about it on the Beauty Brains forum.