An Actually New Ingredient for Healthier Hair
Introducing Revela's Hair Revival Serum!
Today’s newsletter is sponsored by Revela! All thoughts and opinions are my own and I may earn a small affiliate commission if you shop through my links.
Hello!
Everyone, meet Revela! You may have seen my ad on Instagram a few weeks back about their Hair Revival Serum, which promotes fuller, stronger, healthier hair using a proprietary ingredient called ProCelinyl™ (pro-sell-in-ill). Today, I’m excited to delve deeper into the science, development, products and my experience.
I’ll start off being completely candid – when the brand reached out and offered to send me the product, I said yes (who says no to free stuff?!) but I truly didn’t think I was going to notice any difference. For starters, hair growth is notoriously challenging to address and I’ve grown skeptical of any product promising to do something completely differently. Even more, I wasn’t even sure if I was the right candidate. However, I was intrigued enough by the research, the story of how they discovered the ingredient and the evidence provided that I decided to give it a try and document my progress. Again, and I can’t emphasize this enough, I wasn’t expecting anything.
The Hair Revival Serum is designed to help combat hair loss, fallout, promote new growth and support healthy, stronger hair overall. I have a lot of thick hair and I’ve color treated it for more than half my life. So although I have a lot of hair, I am extremely prone to breakage and it constantly falls out. If you don’t believe me, look literally anywhere in my apartment, or if you’re brave, my shower drain. I also have had a sort of sparse, balding patch on my right side for as long as I can remember. It’s genetic and I’m really good at covering it up, but I have to be really crafty with my ponytails. So while hair loss isn’t a main concern of mine right now, the team at Revela explained that it wasn’t just a hair loss solution, but rather could support general thickness and fullness of hair overtime. As an esthetician, I know the importance of prevention (sunscreen!) so I figured even if I didn’t see drastic results, it couldn’t hurt to give my hair some TLC. Hair loss can be caused by genetics, stress, hormones, vitamin deficiencies, which no one is immune to, so anything I could do now to prevent later problems is a benefit in my book. Plus, one of my goals for 2022 is to get better at taking care of my hair, so it seemed like an obvious thing to try.
ABOUT REVELA
At its core, Revela is an ingredient discovery platform, led by a team of scientists and researchers who set out on a mission to find new, innovative ingredients using artificial intelligence (AI) based tools. AI-based tools are used all the time in science and medicine to filter through data, search databases, find patterns, make models and lead to discoveries that otherwise couldn’t be analyzed by hand. By using these tools, their team has access to billions (literally, billions) more molecules to research, test and develop formulas with.
As you may have heard me mention in the past, oftentimes consumer products are limited by the ingredients available at manufacturers, which means that the same ingredients are used and reused. This by no means is a bad thing (formulation matters over ingredients!), but it does mean that there can be a lack of new ingredients and products on the market, especially to combat issues as difficult as hair loss. Although forever skeptical of everything that promises “new and different,” the fact that the team was working with ingredients that hadn’t ever been used before definitely got my attention. I also liked the idea that the team was working backwards in a way – instead of starting with the buzzy ingredient, they started with the problem and sought to find an ingredient to solve it.
INGREDIENT DISCOVERY
Every single hair on your body goes through a cycle of growth, rest and shedding and starts this cycle at the base of your hair follicle, where you can find something called the dermal papilla. The dermal papilla is responsible for communicating with your hair cells to divide, differentiate and grow. Though some amount of hair shedding is a natural part of the process (an estimated 50-100 hairs per day is considered normal), it can become a problem when hair sheds more than it begins the growth phase. This is usually a sign that the follicle itself, thus the dermal papilla, is affected, unable to restart this growth process and becoming smaller or dormant. For this reason, the team at Revela focused their research on finding an ingredient that would stimulate dormant dermal papillae and increase the proliferation of new hair cells. In turn, this would also strengthen hair at the root leading to healthier, stronger hair overall.
To start their ingredient discovery, the team first looked at 12,000 known ingredients on real human hair follicles and measured how they impacted hair growth. They fed this data into their AI model to create an image of what the ideal molecule would look like, which then was able to filter through a database of 7 million ingredients, looking at both efficacy and safety, eventually finding ProCelinyl™. Being scientists, they of course then conducted in vitro and ex vivo experiments and clinical trials to confirm their findings.
The above is an extremely rudimentary explanation about how hair works and the research conducted by the team. You can read all about the nitty-gritty science in their research paper.
THE HAIR REVIVAL SERUM
Revela’s first product using ProCelinyl™ is the Hair Revival Serum, which penetrates into your hair follicle and directly targets the dermal papilla to support hair follicle health. It works on all hair types, is water-based and lightweight and you can apply on damp or dry hair. Like with everything in skincare, consistency is key to see visible results. When applied once daily, you can start to see results in just 6-8 weeks, which I can confidently attest to. But what exactly does that mean and how can you tell?
When I got my first bottle, it came with a great pamphlet which really helped manage my expectations and clearly communicated signs to look for overtime (ex. less hair in my hairbrush). After 8 weeks my hair looked and felt noticeably stronger, fuller and healthier and to my amazement, the sparse patch started growing new baby hairs. I’m now onto my second bottle and will continue using it daily, after which I will move to a more maintenance phase of every other day. I apply a full dropper after my shower, regardless of if I washed my hair, and massage it in. Though I prefer applying on damp hair, it does absorb on dry hair within about 10 minutes and doesn’t leave me looking greasy. The brand also recently sent me their newest release, the Growth Concentrate, which is a 7x more concentrated, oil-based formula designed as more of a spot-treatment to use 2-3x per week. I haven’t started using it yet, but I’ll be refocusing my bald-spot efforts with this new formula for even greater results.
Below you can find my own before and after pictures, as well as some the brand sent me to demonstrate the effectiveness of those struggling with tension alopecia.
If you’re interested in trying it for yourself, click the button below and use JOLIE10 for a discount. There’s a 60-day money back guarantee in case you don’t see results – which, hey, we know not everything is for everyone! – but if you do try it, please let me know your thoughts and I’ve opened up comments below in case you have any questions.
Cheers to happy, healthy, hair!
Xx,
Jolie
(you may see it answered in a future issue!)