BioElements Review

Overview

BioElements was created in the early 1990’s with the collaboration of several scientists, estheticians, and cosmetic chemists.

BioElements’ approach to skin care is one of individual needs. BioElements makes a combination of items that are made to fit the individual requirements of your skin. The company also claims to use no animal by-products, artificial colors, or synthetic fragrances.

Product Details

The product line consists of many different items. There is a skin care line, a body and spa line, a line made for men, and a custom blend oil and color line.

In the skin care line alone there are 12 different categories; each with their own set of products. For some users, this could get confusing. Some of the products that are available in the skin care line are:

Flash Foam Cleanser: This claims that pumpkin, papaya, pineapple, and green tea extract are among their active ingredients.

Power Peptide: This is a tonic that uses Palmitol-TriPeptide which claims to smooth out wrinkles and lines.

The body line has only 3 items:

Cactus Body Cloth: a buffing cloth made with natural cactus fibers.

Comfortably Clean Daily Showering Gel: soap-free with Aloe Vera gel.

Extremely Emollient Body Crème: aromatherapy oils and no artificial colorants.

The line for men includes:

Pre-shave cream: this claims the clary sage oil in its ingredients is for calming the skin.

Shave cream: claims that licorice root is a natural anti-inflammatory.

Post-shave serum-claims that the cucumber in its ingredients is cooling.

Volcanic Mud Soap-ground oatmeal for exfoliating and volcanic mud for detoxifying.

The custom blend line includes a long list of different aromatherapy oils. You can have each of these oils blended into your skin care products to target the areas you need. The website gives a description of whichever skin condition you may have, such as flakiness or dryness; then it pairs you with the oil that they recommend. The oil for the above conditions is Bulgarian Rose Otto. This is one of 13 different oils and botanicals that are available for blending by a professional spa.

The Good

• BioElements uses no animal by-products, no tests on animals, no synthetic fragrances or artificial colors.
• The website is easy to navigate.
• If the website does not offer the answer you are looking for, you can contact someone they call “the expert” with your question via email.

The Bad

• The website does not list all ingredients, only several of the active ingredients.
• You must be a salon professional that is signed up with BioElements in order to get the products on-line. They do sell in salons, but only those that are signed up to distribute their products.
• If you aren’t a skin care professional signed up to distribute their product, you must take a drive to a sponsoring salon. This can be a major hassle if you are not near a large metropolitan area. Even at that, we did a search in Denver, CO and still only found a handful of salons that carried the products.
• No clinical studies listed on the website to show the effectiveness of the products claims.

The Bottom Line

The products themselves claim no hype and no gimmicks, just skin care that works. However, the website had no testimonials and no clinical studies to reference these claims. There is a lot of education available, but you cannot attend an educational course if you are not an affiliated salon that distributes the product or if you are not a skin care professional.

The products claim to be free of animal by-products and synthetic fragrances, which can be a bonus for the activist consumer or for anyone with sensitive skin. The custom blending option gives choices and ideas for the person who needs very specific formulations for their lifestyle. Again, the products can only be blended by a professional and you must find one in your area if you are not one yourself. In the end, we were left to wonder if the novel approach of individually blended formulas may not just offer consumers the illusion of control—if the company has done extensive testing on how these different essential oils interact with each other, the information is not available on their official website.