"Clinically proven" is one of the least informative phrases in cosmetics. It can describe a study on a finished cream, over two months, on real volunteers. It can also describe a supplier's data sheet on a single ingredient, at a concentration the formula does not use.

Both can be rigorous. They answer two different questions, and treating them as interchangeable is where the industry loses the reader. So here is how we separate them.

Level one, the active ingredient

Every active ingredient we retain has to be documented by studies of its own. Those studies are produced by the laboratories that develop the raw material, and they are not casual: mechanism of action, measured effect, working concentration, often several years of research on a single molecule.

Selecting only active ingredients backed by documented research of that kind, and using them at the concentrations the research actually used, is a demanding constraint. It rules out most of what the market offers. A formula built this way is a formula whose efficacy is established at the level of its active ingredients, which is the level at which the measurement was made, and it is the level at which we then speak about it.

Level two, the finished formula

The second level asks something else: not what the molecule does, but what this particular product did, on a panel of people, over a set period.

Those evaluations are conducted under dermatological supervision by an independent laboratory, over 28 or 56 days, on panels of around twenty volunteers. A protocol only means something if you can read it. To give a sense of the format, one of our 56-day evaluations, on 21 volunteers, recorded a 135% improvement in radiance. A 28-day evaluation, also on 21 volunteers, recorded a 131% improvement in hydration alongside 100% cosmetic acceptability. Formula by formula, the figures and their protocols are set out on our Proven results page.

Three things are worth noticing in that sentence. The duration is stated. The number of volunteers is stated. The measurement is attributed to an independent laboratory rather than to us.

Two levels, one standard

Every Lusipure formula meets the same requirements: active ingredients documented by studies of their own, stability and compatibility testing, dermatological safety assessment, and a formulation reviewed with specialised European laboratories. Some formulas carry, in addition, a finished-product evaluation.

We always say which is which. Not as a warning, but because the two levels answer different questions and a reader is entitled to know which question has been asked about the product in their hand. A formula documented at the level of its active ingredients is not a formula we believe in less. It is one about which we make statements about the active ingredients rather than about the finished formula, and we would rather be precise than flattering.

The words we avoid

There is a second discipline behind the numbers, which is what we allow ourselves to write.

We do not describe a cosmetic as acting in the depths of the skin. Regulators are explicit on this point, and beyond the regulation the claim is not measurable in a cosmetic evaluation, so it has no business in our copy. We do not promise a timeframe a study did not test. We do not turn a percentage into a superlative.

What is left is narrower and less spectacular than the industry standard. It is also verifiable, which is the only property of a claim that still matters twelve months after you publish it.