I Used a Moisturizer Made From My Own Blood — This Is What Happened

There are certain things I expect to happen when I got to a beauty press preview. I’ll usually learn about the new product launch, what makes it special, and hopefully get to take it home with me to try for myself (my bathroom counter is heavily laden with the effects of the latter).

And then there are things that I never expect to happen during a press preview. Getting my blood drawn in the middle of a hotel room by a sprightly, Gucci-clad German aesthetics doctor is one; being told that the vial of my own blood will then be turned into a moisturizer for my own use is another. And yet both of those things happened one unassuming day in L.A. at the Mondrian Hotel, and my skin (and psyche) will never be the same.

The magical blood cream in question is the brainchild of Dr. Barbara Sturm, a renowned German physician who specializes in the field of facial aesthetics and skincare and credited as the pioneer of the vampire facial (yes, the one that Kim Kardashian West forever branded into everyone’s memory via jarring Instagram shot). Sturm flies to L.A. to tend to clients like Rosie Huntington-Whiteley and other A-listers she is reluctant to name because, hello, privacy. So — why have I been using a moisturizer made from my own blood for the past month, and has it turned me into an actual vampire in the process? Keep scrolling to find out.

First, a little background on Dr. Sturm. She started her career as an orthopedic surgeon, which is where she discovered the healing abilities of blood. During our appointment, she tells me how it was during her time here that she worked with a doctor who started taking patients’ blood, processing it, and creating “factors” that they would reinject into the joints to calm inflammation.

I imagine this is the point in her life where the light bulb went off — why not apply this same mentality to the skin? According to Dr. Sturm, skin cells and cartilage cells work in the very same way. Enter: the vampire facial, where proteins from a patient’s own blood are mixed with hyaluronic acid and injected into wrinkles to plump them up. For those who aren’t able to visit Dr. Sturm’s practice in Germany to get the treatment, she came up with the next best thing: a moisturizer infused with anti-inflammatory proteins derived from patients’ blood.

At this point in the conversation, I must have visibly perked up — “Blood! In a moisturizer!” my beauty editor side screamed internally in glee and sick fascination — because Dr. Sturm then proceeded to offer to create this very cream for me.

The last time I had blood drawn, I was a teenager and cried out of fear in front of my 10-year-old brother, and the last time I actually witnessed blood in large amounts was when my college roommate stubbed her toe as we drunkenly walked home after a USC football game. In both those instances, my visceral reaction was extreme lightheadedness and the vague urge to throw up, but I ignored my thumping heart and nodded my head to Dr. Sturm in what I hoped was an eager manner. There are times in your life when you need to suck up your fears and put on your big-girl pants, and the opportunity to procure a moisturizer made from your own blood is one of those times. Sturm apparently found my jerky nodding an adequate response, and went into the other room to get her syringe (!) as I tried to picture myself with fetus skin to tell myself it would all be worth it.

The actual drawing of the blood was exactly what you would expect drawing a vial of blood would feel like. But it’s what Dr. Sturm does with the blood afterward that is truly fascinating and makes you want to shake your head in wonder and softly sigh, “The future, man.”

First of all, the syringe is actually filled with irregularly shaped, etched glass beads. The blood, when incubated, misreads the beads as a “wound” and starts to produce interleukin-1-antagonist and growth factors. Are you still following? In one day, the blood ends up forming 40 times the number of healing factors in untreated blood. (Here’s more information about how exactlygrowth factors can help your skin.)

“After drawing the blood, its put through a centrifuge to separate the red blood cells and the plasma,” Dr. Sturm tells me briskly as I stare at the giant syringe filled with my own dark-red, life-giving fluid. “Then, the plasma will be put into a cream or injected into the skin.”

And the results you can see from using this magic cream? “You don’t break out anymore, you almost never need a facial because the anti-inflammation effect is so severe,” Dr. Sturm rattles off. “Your skin just feels great. I have lots of celebrity clients who are over the moon about it — they say this cream is divine. You have to feel it; you have to try it. Use it for a couple of weeks and then try something else, and you will see the difference.”

Want to read the results of Faith’s experiment? Go to Byrdie.com to see the rest. Would you ever try moisturizer made from your own blood? Tell us why or why not in the comments below.