Obagi Eyelash Enhancing Serum Review

There is a way to tell what is in a lash serum without reading the label, and it is the shape of its reviews. Conditioning serums, the biotin-and-peptide kind, cluster around four and a half stars with mild praise and mild disappointment. Prostaglandin serums split: a majority delighted by lashes they did not think they could have, and a minority describing red, itchy, dry eyes and a shadow along the lash line, averaging out somewhere around four. Obagi's Nu-Cil Eyelash Enhancing Serum has two hundred and eighty-four reviews on the brand's site and a 3.9-star average, and its second ingredient is dehydrolatanoprost, a dehydrated derivative of latanoprost, the glaucoma drug whose lash-growing side effect started this whole category. Obagi's marketing calls it a proprietary lipid compound, one of four ingredients in something named NouriPlex, alongside biotin, panthenol and sodium hyaluronate. Three of those condition. One grows lashes, and it is a prostaglandin analogue.

That is not an accusation of dishonesty so much as of coyness, and the distinction matters because the serum is genuinely effective. Prostaglandin analogues applied to the lash base prolong the anagen phase of the follicle and increase the number of lashes in growth at any time, and the evidence for that is as good as cosmetic dermatology gets: the 2012 phase-three trial of the prescription bimatoprost 0.03 percent lash treatment, published in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, randomised 278 adults to drug or vehicle for five months and found that 78 percent of the treated group versus 18 percent of the vehicle group had at least a one-grade improvement in global lash assessment at sixteen weeks, with significantly greater length, thickness and darkness on digital image analysis, and only conjunctival redness occurring more often than with vehicle. Dehydrolatanoprost is not bimatoprost and Obagi's own sixteen-week double-blinded study, which claims it outperforms a leading competitor by eight weeks, is held on file without a published subject count; but the class mechanism is the same, the timeline in the reviews is the same, and the side-effect profile is the same, which is the point.

The formula is twelve ingredients and mostly vehicle. Water, the prostaglandin, biotin, panthenol and hyaluronate, a preservative, an emollient ester, a glycol, a polymer for body, alcohol, a pH adjuster and a trace of phenethyl caffeate, a caffeic acid ester with anti-inflammatory activity that is likely there to soften the lid irritation the active causes. No fragrance, no oil, no prostaglandin disclosed as such. The biotin has no evidence for topical lash growth; the panthenol and hyaluronate condition the lash and hydrate the lid, which is why lashes feel softer and shed less in the first weeks before the follicle effect arrives.

In use it is simple and, for most, rewarding. One thin stroke along the base of the upper lashes on a clean lid at night, ninety seconds to dry, and nothing to see; a faint itch or pinkness at the lid margin in the first week for some, which the class produces and which usually settles with a lighter hand. Lashes soften by week three, lengthen and thicken from around week eight, and keep building to sixteen weeks and beyond, and the reviewers who describe growth describe a lot of it, the prescription's worth for many. The same reviews carry the class's other signature: darkening of the skin along the lash line, dry or watering eyes, a stye or two, and, in the literature though rarely in reviews, the possibility of permanent iris darkening in light-coloured eyes that prostaglandin eye drops are known for. Application to the lower lashes, where the liquid migrates onto the cheek, is where the darkening and stray growth mostly happen, and the label rightly restricts use to the upper lid.

The things a buyer should know before spending are the things the box does not say. The growth is rented, not bought, and returns to baseline over a couple of lash cycles after stopping, which is why the brand recommends continued use. Pregnancy, glaucoma treatment and known prostaglandin sensitivity are reasons to avoid it, as they would be for the prescription. And reactive lids, blepharitis or eczema around the eye make the alcohol-and-prostaglandin liquid a poor idea regardless of how well it grows lashes.

One hundred and twenty-five dollars for three millilitres, lasting about three months, is the going rate for a prostaglandin lash serum and close to the cash price of the prescription; the money buys an effective active, a dermatology brand's name, a precise brush and a brand-run study, and it does not buy a disclosed concentration, a published trial or a plain statement of what the active is. Conditioning serums cost a third as much and do a third as much, which is the honest comparison.

For someone with sparse or short lashes who wants the prescription's results without the prescription, understands that the active is a prostaglandin with a prostaglandin's side effects, has no glaucoma or pregnancy concerns and will keep using it, Nu-Cil is a serum that delivers. For anyone who bought it for the vitamins, or who would not have bought a prostaglandin knowingly, the label should have said more, and this review has tried to.