The Healthy Skeptic: Moisturizing pills? Here’s the rub

It’s too bad that moisturizing the skin isn’t as easy as watering a plant. If you could fix dry skin just by pouring on water, we’d all spend more time in the shower and less time searching for a skin moisturizer that really works.

To stay moist, the skin needs more than water. It contains special fats — ceramides are one example — that help lock in the water and keep the body surface supple and soft. Skin cells make these fats on their own, but they don’t always make enough to prevent dryness. Some moisturizing creams contain ceramides and other fats to help replenish natural supplies, but that means getting your hands goopy. How more convenient it would be if you could get your moisturizing fats in a pill.

Dermalipid, a supplement launched earlier this year by Genuine Health, contains, among other things, 50 mg. of ceramides and other lipids from wheat plants along with 450 mg. borage seed oil (a source of gamma-linolenic acid, an omega-6 fatty acid) and 15 mg. of olive oil per capsule. A package of 120 capsules costs about $40. Users are instructed to take four capsules each day.

Ocea Skin Moisturizing, a supplement from the Australian company Thalgo, contains oils such as borage oil, sunflower oil and fish oil along with vitamin E. Various websites selling the product don’t say how much of any ingredient is in each capsule, and the company didn’t respond to requests for more information. Users are instructed to take two capsules a day with meals for three months. A package of 60 capsules costs about $30.

Claims: The website for Dermalipid says that the product can “moisturize, repair and protect from the inside out.” The label says that the pills will “improve hydration for softer, smoother, healthier skin.”

“We’ve had positive feedback from customers so far,” says Sarah Comper, a customer service representative with Genuine Health. “People are noticing healthier skin.”

The Amazon page selling Ocea Skin Moisturizing says that the supplement will “moisturize and revitalize your skin so it becomes supple, velvety soft, and radiant.”

The bottom line: The ingredients in Dermalipid and Ocea Skin could probably help moisturize dry skin — but only if you broke open the capsules and applied the contents directly, says Dr. Joseph Fowler, clinical professor of dermatology at the University of Louisville and a past president of the American Contact Dermatitis Society. “Even then, you could only cover a square inch or so, and the skin is a big organ,” he says. “I know of no evidence that taking a pill would work in any reasonable fashion.”

One problem with the pill approach, according to Fowler, is that most of the oils will break down in the digestive system before they have a chance to reach the bloodstream. And even if they make it to the blood, he says, there’s no telling where they’ll end up. Sure, some of those fat molecules could reach the surface, but he doubts it could ever be enough to change how the skin looks or feels.

Dr. Carolyn Jacob, a Chicago-area dermatologist and a fellow of the American Academy of Dermatology, also believes that few if any fats in moisturizing pills would reach the skin. However, she says, the idea of eating your way to healthier skin isn’t at all far-fetched. “Omega-3 fatty acids can help decrease inflammation, which is helpful for people with inflammatory skin diseases such as eczema,” she says. And, she adds, antioxidants such as vitamin C and vitamin E can help build collagen in the skin and prevent damage caused by free radicals. “But I don’t know how any of that will lead to more moisture in the skin,” she says.

For a real moisture boost, Jacob recommends skin creams containing ceramides. (Examples include CeraVe moisturizing cream from Coria Laboratories and Soothing Barrier Repair Moisturizer from Sensitive Care Products.) With a cream, she explains, you can choose which patches of the skin you really want to moisturize. And you can be reasonably confident that the ceramides and other fats will end up where you want them to go — something that can’t be said for pills.

Curious about a consumer health product? Send an e-mail to health@latimes.com.

Read more at latimes.com/skeptic.