The Best Anti-Aging Cream at €9: The Chemistry Brand Intense Youth Complex

This article is dedicated to Dominique, a globe-trotting reader I had the immense pleasure of meeting in person at Rome <3
She asked me what I could recommend as an anti-aging cream. She travels a lot and doesn’t necessarily have the time to take care of her skin.

Tough question. The basic routine is: cleanse – moisturize – protect. But for travelers or lazy people who have neither the space nor the time for a full beauty routine, you need a cream that can moisturize, repair – but that you can use on your face, décolleté, hands, and body.

Such a cream exists, and it only costs €9, it’s: Intense Youth Complex Hand Cream by The Chemistry Brand (a DECIEM brand). It also has another name: Pro-Repair Skincare for Hands or Hand Repair Treatment

It’s the best anti-aging cream for travelers OR lazy people.

I know, I know, you’re going to ask why I’m recommending a hand cream.

Actually, the big boss of DECIEM, the company behind The Chemistry Brand, had a non-compete clause for 3 years, preventing him from creating cosmetic products for the face. So he created products for hands and body. Success was immediate: sold out, users saw wrinkles disappear on their hands and applied the cream directly to their face for an anti-aging effect that’s still WOW. This highly moisturizing cream is non-comedogenic, so you can apply it everywhere, everywhere, like all products from The Chemistry Brand.

The promise

The cream simultaneously targets 8 signs of skin aging. This extraordinary concentration of 19.5% active ingredients improves the appearance of firmness, elasticity, density, evenness, radiance, texture, smoothness, and hydration. And all that in 10 days. And for €9 (Deciem link)

Why is it so effective?

For an anti-aging effect, you can use several methods, but the most popular are:
(1) hydration, hydrated skin immediately looks less wrinkled because it’s plumped up
(2) boosting collagen production, which we produce less and less with age
(3) facial massage to really “tighten” the skin

Let’s look at the list of ingredients.

Ingredients: Aqua (Water), Caprylic/Capric Triglyceride, Propanediol, Cetearyl Glucoside, Cetearyl Alcohol, Glycerin, Cetyl Alcohol, Plukenetia Volubilis Seed Oil, Copper Lysinate/Prolinate, Plantago Lanceolata Leaf Extract, Methylglucoside Phosphate, Proline, Alanine, Serine, Pseudoalteromonas Ferment Extract, Tremella Fuciformis Sporocarp Extract, Tocopherol, Betaine, Cellulose, Xanthan Gum, Sodium Polyacrylate, Sodium Phosphate, Sodium Hydroxide, Potassium Sorbate, Caprylyl Glycol, Ethylhexylglycerin, Phenoxyethanol, Chlorphenesin, Parfum (Fragrance), Limonene, Linalool.

Already, for a cream originally designed for hands, there’s no dimethicone, is very rare for a cream of this type.

• Then, it contains Copper Lysinate/Prolinate 1%, copper peptides. This form is cheaper than COPPER TRI-PEPTIDE 1 (GHK-CU) found in high concentration in a much more expensive product also from Deciem, the famous NIOD CAIS 2 which I can’t part with, but it has been shown that compared to collagen injections, Copper Lysinate/Prolinate delivers better results than injections: wrinkles are 15% less deep in 15 days.
• Plantago Lanceolata Leaf Extract 2%: can reduce dark spots in just 2 months
• Tremella Fuciformis Sporocarp 2% comes from a mushroom, 400 times more hydrating than hyaluronic acid.
• Pseudoalteromonas Ferment Extract 5%: fermented algae extract, to increase skin moisture by +11% in 12h, +21% in 24h, and +32% in 30 days.
• Sacha Inchi Oil 2% & Maize Propanediol 7.5% : I don’t know what that is, but according to the brand, they form a protective barrier to seal in hydration. So they must be occlusives.

So the product alone is made up of 19.5% active ingredients for a ridiculously low price: €9 for 30ml or €20 for 100ml (DECIEM link, Lookfantastic link)

My Review

My hands show no signs of aging, so the only thing I can observe and approve of is its extraordinary hydrating power. The skin on my hands tightens more easily than on my face, so to test whether a product is hydrating or not, I first test it on my hands, and if it still feels uncomfortable, I know the cream isn’t hydrating enough. With this cream, a very small amount is enough to keep my hands hydrated for hours.

Update December 2020: after several months of use on my hands but also on my body and feet, I can confirm that my hands, although flawless to begin with, have gained a few years. I can see it by comparing the photos below, it’s crazy! My crocodile-skin heels have regained all their softness and smoothness, and the same goes for my body. The hydrating and repairing power of this cream is incredible.

I haven’t tested it on my face yet because I need to finish my current products first (see my current routine), but I plan to use it this winter once I’ve used up my summer cream. Update: because of the smell, I have no desire to put it on my face. Too bad.

The -:

• slightly chemical scent (some people love it)
• packaging still imperfect, like all DECIEM products. The tube is sold half empty because they can’t create an exact 30ml tube, and they spew some bullshit like: you need a bit of air in the tube to get the product out. All products are properly weighed before sale, so you’ll really get 30ml of product, but delivered in a 50ml tube, you know. Normal.
• many people complain about the 240ml size because once you’re at 50% of the bottle, the pump stops working, so I recommend buying just the 30ml or 100ml size (DECIEM link, Lookfantastic link)
• very easy to find in Europe, North America, Oceania… but harder to find elsewhere

There you go, I hope you enjoyed this article. If you have more time and space in your bag and prefer a more complete routine during your round-the-world trip or travels, I’ve already done an article + a video on this topic, here