At the end of last year, I noticed many of my beauty industry colleagues were wearing brightly coloured patches – a bit like children’s novelty sticking plasters – on their wrists. Soon they started popping up on my Instagram feed via wellness and lifestyle accounts. These transdermal supplement patches, claiming to improve mental wellbeing, skin, nails, energy levels and more, are expected by industry figures to replace vitamin tablets and gummies in the next five years.
Whether or not they do much is hard to call. As patches (and indeed oral supplements) aren’t generally classed as medication, they’re a low priority for clinical testing, while many studies that do exist were undertaken by supplement companies. The anecdotal evidence in favour seems significant, and while this may well be a placebo effect – a friend told me that just seeing the patch there makes her feel calmer; another describes his physiological response to the What Supp Co’s Dip Out Chill Patch as “surprisingly dramatic” – if the effects are beneficial to a user’s sense of wellness, there is arguably nothing wrong with that. I wish I felt the same – or indeed any – effect from the many patches I’ve tried so far.
