Nourishing, resilience-boosting moisturizer that helps replenish skin's barrier / 1.7 oz 

Symbiome The One Restorative Cream is one of the most pleasantly surprising moisturizers we’ve ever used. If you’ve struggled for years trying to assuage your reactive skin, or if skincare in general feels like an endless game of whack-a-mole in a not-so-fun-house that you’d really like to exit, it could be that what your complexion’s really craving is a more diverse, resilience-boosting microbiome. The One is a brilliant way to restore it.

Dara was initially perplexed by this moisturizer’s unusually short ingredient list, assuming that there was a typo somewhere. But, as Symbiome’s founder and formulator gleefully informed her, there was no typo; it’s unusually short because it’s made with a very unusual oil.

To fully appreciate how unusual it is, you’ll have to read Dara’s interviews with Symbiome’s founder, Larry Weiss, about his work with the microbiome in general and his work with this oil. The quick version: Larry sourced Sanoma Leaf Oil after three expeditions to study the members of a disease-free, semi-nomadic tribe in the Amazon that boasted unusually good health, unusually good skin, and as he discovered, a dramatically more diverse microbiome than most of us have.

According to Larry’s research, we’re missing about 80% of the “good bacteria” found on the skin of the Yanomami—bacteria that do very important work. Primarily, they a) provide significant antioxidant protection, and b) help regulate a broad range of systems in the body that are essential to its health and resilience.

The precision-fermented Sanoma Leaf oil, which comes from the leaves of a shrub that grows in abundance in the tribe’s milieu, is rich in specific postbiotics. They contain the fruits of the labor done by these very busy good bacteria: lipids, phytosterols, and antioxidants that are essential to skin health but that skin often has trouble creating on its own. As Larry noted during his discussions with Dara, these postbiotics provide more predictable and consistent results than probiotics ever could. And their effects are so broad-reaching that, yes, he was able to create a cream with just this oil, water, an additional postbiotic (a proprietary lactobacillus ferment) to further support barrier function, and dehydroacetic acid, a gentle, controversy-free preservative that ensures you get the full benefits of this cream to the very last airless pump — packaging that’s so new, it’s not even pictured here, by the way.

Fascinating story, no? But we know what you really want to know is what it does. (We did, too.) So here’s what we’ve found: this soothing, hydrating cream, in addition to featuring the perfect rich-but-not-greasy texture that we’re always looking for, feels absolutely stellar on all skin types, including the most sensitive, rosacea- and dermatitis-prone complexions that can never seem to reach equilibrium or catch a break. And the vast majority of its users notice more radiant, resilient skin; less sensitivity; eased lines and wrinkles, and smoother texture. (Bacteria do a lot of jobs.)

If your skin is at all sensitive or fussy, and you’ve been wondering why on earth it’s so hard to find a moisturizer that just works, OMG, it might indeed be The One that you’ve been looking for.

PS It's free of added fragrance, but we love the very soft hint of a milky, herbaceous scent that this formula has, thanks to Sanoma leaf oil.