How to Build an Intentional Life, Improve Your Skin, & Take Better Care of Yourself with Founder of LESSE, Neada Deters

I really like another part of, you know, one of the reasons why I personally love the brand and the concept is because it's the formulas are built around active botanicals.

And the reason why I share with you in our coffee chat the other day, but it's because two years ago I decided to go more towards cleaner ingredients.

I started to actually become aware of the different elements that can be impacting my health, including the ingredients in my diet.

makeup, my skincare, what I'm eating.

And I know you know this as well.

For those who are not as familiar or as curious yet about formulas and why they play a role in our health and our well-being, can you share a little bit of insight on that and also why you decided to go this route of choosing active botanicals and how they are actually quite effective?

When I was developing less, one thing that I had noted as an editor was that so many people saw natural skincare as ineffective.

In order to really get the benefits that they were looking for, people were turning to synthetic formulas, even when they were quite harsh, even when they had questionable ingredients.

And I think first and foremost, efficacy has to be there.

If you're going to invest money and take the time every day to use a product, it needs to work.

It needs to have the ability to really support your skin.

There are two types of actives.

So active, first and foremost, denotes that an ingredient is clinically proven to actually have an active effect on your skin.

So that ranges.

It can be, for instance, just simply hydration.

And then within that broader category of active ingredients, you have...

Active isolates, so synthetic ingredients that are created in a lab, and then you have active botanicals.

So these are ingredients that are plant-derived, you know, extracts and oils that are also clinically proven to have an effect on your skin.

Now, when it comes to synthetic isolates, your skin responds very, very differently.

If you have more sensitive skin, you should know that your skin is often reacting to synthetic ingredients because your skin does not recognize these ingredients.

I think a great example is vitamin C, both natural and synthetic, because vitamin I spent many years trying to find a vitamin C product that worked for my skin, but my skin is so sensitive.

I would constantly experience irritation and redness.

And so what many people don't realize is that vitamin C is most commonly a synthetic vitamin C. It's an isolate.

your skin works first and foremost like a barrier.

It's a shield to prevent all of the particles that we're interacting with as we walk through the world from actually being absorbed.