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Ingredient Beauty Benefits

Skin concerns

Body contour

Localised fat and the shape of the body.

Strictly speaking this is not a skin concern. It exists because some procedures in this site's layer had nowhere to go — until recently the deoxycholic acid injection page had no linked concern at all.

One thing has to be clear first. Nothing here is a way to lose weight. All of it addresses localised fat — the place that stays when the rest has gone. If weight goes back up, so do the results.

The procedures under this concern have the widest spread of evidence on this site.

  • Deoxycholic acid injection has two placebo-controlled phase 3 trials — the thickest evidence in this layer.
  • The most widely used, cryolipolysis, is the opposite: we found no trial comparing it against doing nothing at all.

Nowhere shows better that being well known and being well evidenced are not the same thing.

Moderate evidenceOther

Caffeine

Caffeine

In a 12-week double-blind, placebo-controlled trial on thigh cellulite, a 2% caffeine cream brought scores from 3.96 to 2.50. But the placebo also fell, from 3.88 to 2.83. And for the place this ingredient is most used — the eye area — we found no human trial with dark circles as an endpoint.

Clinical procedures related to this concern

Procedures are not listed alongside topical ingredients. They are not something you use at home.