I have a drawer. You probably have one too. Four serums bought on a single before and after. A £79 jar that did nothing. A collagen powder that made my coffee taste of the sea. None of it thrown away, because that would mean admitting I wasted the money.
I am forty-six, I have written about beauty for eleven years, and I could not tell you that one product has changed my face. That is worse when it is your job.
Then in May someone sent me a photograph from an evening I had enjoyed. Laughing, not posing, and I looked exhausted. Not lines, not pigmentation. Something structural had gone soft, and no cream had touched it.
So when Azio asked me to take their supplement for ninety days and photograph my face, my instinct was no. What got me was realising I had never finished a bottle. Every verdict I have ever reached was reached at week two, in bad bathroom light, by a woman who had already decided.
I said yes to finish something once, and let a camera decide.
How I made sure this wasn’t nonsense
We agreed the rules before I started, and they go at the top because they are the only reason this is worth reading.
Photographs on day 0, 7, 14, 28, 45, 60 and 90. Same room, same window, 9am, lamps off, phone on a tripod on a taped floor mark. No makeup, no SPF, hair back the same way. Three angles, neutral then smiling. No filter, crop or retouching, including the set published here.
And nothing else changed for ninety days. No new skincare, no actives, no facials, no diet overhaul. A supplement plus a new retinoid plus a course of facials tells you nothing about the supplement.
Week 1
Nothing.
Day 0
Two capsules with breakfast. They are large, and on day 3 I took them with coffee alone and regretted it. That is week one. No tingle, no glow, none of the words.
I studied the day 7 set for longer than was sensible. My left side looked better. I had slept on the right.
You cannot see seven days. Checking early always returns a false answer, and a false negative sends the bottle to the drawer.
Weeks 2 to 4, and why nothing was happening
Before
After 4 weeks
In week three I read up on why nothing was happening. Skin renews about once a month. That is only the surface. What has gone soft in my face is underneath it, and structure takes years to lose, so it was never coming back in a fortnight.
Azio’s case is dose, not novelty. The panel is public.
| Trans-resveratrol | 150mg |
| Sodium hyaluronate | 120mg |
| Liposomal ubiquinone, 70 per cent CoQ10 or higher | 100mg |
| Niacinamide | 100mg |
| Spermidine wheat germ extract | 100mg |
| Vitamin C | 80mg |
| Pine bark extract, 95 per cent OPC | 75mg |
| Vitamin E | 12mg |
| Zinc | 10mg |
| Astaxanthin | 6mg |
| Biotin | 50µg |
Vitamin C, E, zinc and biotin are all at 100 per cent of your daily intake. Vitamin C contributes to normal collagen formation. C, E and zinc help protect cells from oxidative stress. Zinc and biotin support normal skin, biotin normal hair.
Spermidine, astaxanthin, CoQ10 and hyaluronic acid are why I said yes. I will not tell you what they do: none of it is an approved claim here, and I do not know. Only that the doses match the research, which is rare.
None of it was visible on day 21. It just stopped me expecting it to be.
Week 4. I nearly stopped.
At four weeks I had photographs showing nothing, an empty box, and a decision.
Everything in me wanted to file it in the drawer and write that supplements do not work. Easier piece. Would have done better.
What stopped me was not faith. Quitting at exactly one month would have repeated the mistake I had made six times before, on camera, having agreed not to.
If you are at week four with an empty box and nothing to show: that is not the product failing. That is week four. It looks exactly like failure, and it is the most expensive habit in beauty.
Week 6. The first thing I noticed was not my face.
Before
After day 45
Day 45
It was my nails.
Longer, faster. I was cutting them twice in the time I used to cut them once, and the tips stopped peeling, which they had done for years.
The most boring possible result, which is precisely why I believed it. I was watching my face like a hawk. Nobody photographs their nails on a tripod at 9am. I noticed because I was cutting them, not because I was looking.
Zinc and biotin are the least glamorous part of this formula, and the part that showed up first. Fast-turnover tissue reports before slow-turnover tissue. That seems like the right order.
Around the same week, my foundation stopped sliding into the creases beside my mouth by four in the afternoon.
Day 90
Here is the comparison, day 0 next to day 90, same room, same window, same light, same time, no makeup either time, nothing edited.
Day 0
Day 90
Day 0 and day 90
What I see: something, and not much.
My skin looks more luminous, a word I have mocked in other people’s copy and now have no better one for. My pores are visibly smaller across my cheeks and nose, and that is the change I am most confident about, because pores do not move with a good night’s sleep. The finest lines look slightly lifted. Slightly. In a photograph.
Then the thing I did not expect, which has ended up being the point.
My hair is thicker.
Less of it in the shower drain, more of it on my head. My hairdresser said so without knowing I was taking anything. It sits differently when I wear it down, which I have not been able to say for years.
I spent ninety days watching my face. The clearest result was on top of my head.
Now the part I insisted on including.
What did not change
The real lines are still real. The set around my eyes, the two between my brows, the ones either side of my mouth. They are where they were in March.
There is no dramatic change in these photographs. If you were scrolling for one, stop here.
Nothing is lifted or tightened. Nobody has asked whether I have had anything done.
Five things I would tell you if you are starting today
- Take them with food. Not with coffee. I learned this in the least pleasant way available.
- Do not photograph yourself every week. Once a month, and do not look at the sets in between. Weekly comparison finds sleep creases, hydration, light and the side you slept on, and it will talk you out of continuing before anything has had a chance to happen.
- Change nothing else at the same time. Start this and a retinoid and a facial course in the same fortnight and you will end up with no idea what did what, which is how everyone ends up back at the beginning.
- Expect the first month to be silent. Not slow. Silent. Put week four in your diary as a date rather than a decision.
- Watch your nails and your hair before your face. If anything is happening, that is where I would expect to see it first, and it is the part you are not looking at.
What it costs
I have paid £79 for a jar I used for eleven days, so I am not the right person to ask about value in this category. But the arithmetic here is unusually plain.
Bought a month at a time, Skin Complex is £24 a box, so ninety days is £72. Azio already discount the 90 day plan by 20 per cent, down to £57.60, and their reasoning is the same as this entire article: the product does nothing you can see in thirty days, so selling you thirty days is selling you a decision you cannot yet make.
I asked them to go further for anyone reading this, on the grounds that the people most likely to quit at week four are the people who paid the least attention to how long it takes. They agreed to 20 per cent off on top of that.
Code JEN20 takes your first 90 days to £46.08. That is 36 per cent off the £72 you would pay buying it monthly, and it works out at 51p a day. After the first 90 days it renews at the standard £57.60 every twelve weeks, and you can cancel or pause any time before then.
The arithmetic
Questions I was asked while I was doing this
When will I actually see something?
Not in the first month. I saw nails at week six and my face somewhere around week nine, and I would treat that as a rough guide rather than a schedule, because I am one person with one face. If you want a rule: judge it at day 90, not before.
What if nothing happens for me?
Then send it back. There is a 90 day money-back guarantee, which is the only reason I would tell anyone to try a supplement at all. Nothing in this category is guaranteed to work on any individual, mine included.
Do I have to stop my retinoid or change my skincare?
No. I kept mine identical, but that was for the experiment, not because you have to. If you want to know whether this is doing anything, though, do not start three new things at once. You will learn nothing and blame the wrong one.
Does it replace my skincare?
No, and I would be suspicious of anything sold to you as if it did. This sits underneath a routine, it does not delete one.
Two capsules, morning or night?
Morning, with food. I took mine with breakfast. Doing it at the same time as something you already do every day is the only reason I did not forget.
What if I miss a day?
Take them the next day and stop thinking about it. Over ninety days a missed morning is noise.
Is it vegan? Any allergens?
Vegan, and the capsule is vegetable rather than gelatine. It contains wheat, because the spermidine comes from wheat germ extract, so if you avoid wheat this is not for you.
Can I take it with my multivitamin or my collagen powder?
Check the totals rather than assuming. Several things in here are at 100 per cent of your daily reference intake, so stacking it on top of a multivitamin means doubling up. If you are taking prescription medication, or you are pregnant or breastfeeding, ask your GP or pharmacist first rather than asking me.
Why is it £24 when the last thing I bought was £90?
That is the question I would want answered too, and the short version is that you were not paying £90 for ingredients. I cannot audit anyone’s margins, but I can read a dose panel, and this one has real numbers on it at £24.
Do I need to photograph myself like you did?
No, but I would. Not weekly. Take one set on day 0 in decent light and forget about it, because in three months your memory of your own face will be useless and the photograph will not be.
What happens to the price after the first 90 days?
It renews at £57.60 every twelve weeks, which is the standard 20 per cent plan price. The extra 20 per cent applies to your first 90 days only.
