About Us
The story of Lumanitas is born from a lifelong, complicated relationship I’ve had with my skin.
When I was just a few months old, it was already clear I was going to have trouble (note the box of Aveeno in the background of this pic – nothing a good oatmeal soak doesn’t help!) Some of it is DNA: my mother had severe rosacea and my sister struggled with eczema so bad it made her skin peel off in flaky layers like fish scales. When I was young, I scratched my itchy, cracking skin until I would bleed.
As a teenager, and well into adulthood, I’ve consistently had acne. I did everything the conventional wisdom and skincare companies would have me do – washed twice or even three times a day, used toner and astringent to kill bacteria and “dry out” my supposedly overly-oily skin, and slather on salicylic acid and benzoyl peroxide. I even went to tanning salons (pause while my older self screams at the younger me) in a desperate attempt to dry my skin out and get it to produce less of the oil that I thought was making me break out.
The goal of Lumanitas is to preach the gospel of Less is More, and that healthy, radiant skin doesn’t start with products.
Of course, this was all just making things worse and setting me up for premature aging years later.
My epiphany came by accident and necessity.
I had major surgery that left me unable to shower or even stand over a sink to wash my face for two weeks. The only skincare I could do was to use a wet washcloth to wipe my face and splash a little warm water on it when I was able to bend. I was certain that I would break out like a hormonal teenager and have blackheads that would last a month.
What happened instead upended everything I thought I knew about skincare.
My skin glowed. Not a blemish to be found. Not one clogged pore. By week two my forehead was less shiny and the dry patches on the bottom of my face were gone. After those two weeks, my skin looked better than it ever had before in my adult life.
This was a revelation.
I was convinced now that doing less was the way to go, but I didn’t know why. I threw myself into understanding how this could be. I read countless books on dermatology to learn about skin structure, how it functions, and what it needs to thrive. I read hundreds of peer-reviewed studies and scholarly articles on recent discoveries in skin health. What I homed in on relatively quickly were two key conclusions:
- We are doing so much more – in terms of cleansing and the use of products – to our skin than it needs or has evolved to handle.
- While there’s still quite a bit we don’t know, the skin’s microbiome is crucial to its health, and we are constantly disrupting it.
Skincare is a massively profitable industry.
Companies that sell personal care products, an immense commercial enterprise worth nearly $86 billion in 2022 and projected to grow to $100 billion by 2026, understandably have no interest in selling us fewer products. Their profitability counts on us to keep buying new products to address our varying skin concerns and achieve the clear, glowing, ageless skin we all long for.
But what the evidence shows is that we should actually be subtracting the number of products and simplifying our routines based around just a few gentle staples with scientifically proven ingredients.
The goal of Lumanitas is to preach the gospel of Less is More, and that healthy, radiant skin doesn’t start with products.
Worry less about how “clean” your skin is and focus much more on how clean your diet and lifestyle are. Unprocessed, whole, mostly plant-based foods. Quality sleep. Exercise. Sun protection. And finally, nurturing the incredible colony of microbes that call your skin home.
