Prevention posted “Is The Bee Venom Beauty Trend Killing Bees?” featuring Dr. Purvisha Patel.
Supple skin and increased lips through… bee venom? Dr. Patel weighs in on this trend and how it affects our body and skin.
Bee venom’s been getting major buzz (sorry, couldn’t help it!) in the beauty world for its purported abilities to make your lips look like Angelina Jolie’s and give your skin that smooth suppleness you haven’t seen since your twenties. But where the heck is the stuff actually coming from—and does it spell bad news for our hive-dwelling friends?
In the case of enhancing your epidermis, lip boosters and anti-aging creams use bee venom to trick skin into thinking it’s actually been stung, says Purvisha Patel, MD, a Memphis dermatologist and owner of Advanced Dermatology & Skin Cancer Associates. “This causes the body to direct blood toward the area, stimulating the production of collagen, which strengthens tissue, and elastin, which helps the skin to remain taut and bounce back into shape,” she says.