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How we "Extract" our Venoms

How we "Extract" our Venoms

We get it, venom sounds pretty intimidating. 

Intoxicated Cosmetics is revolutionizing anti-aging skincare, with biomimetic venom. We get a lot of questions about how we "extract" the venom found in our serums. Please keep reading for an explanation!

First of all - NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE MAKING OF OUR SERUMS! 

We, at Intoxicated Cosmetics, love animals, and we do not want to harm any of the ectothermic creatures that we base our serums on. We also know that these marvelous creatures beneficial components to their venoms--especially to our skin. Not trying to create more problems with our anti-aging solution, we discovered a scientific, safe, and stable way to incorporate these venom's in our skincare.

Our snake and snail venom actives are “biomimetic”. Biomimetic is a big word for lab created, so don't let it scare you.

To achieve this, we had our lab take the chemical compounds found in naturally occurring venoms and recreate them in a lab - without any of the harmful components or harmful methods used to procure real venom - all while never even touching the animals that these venoms were inspired by.

By recreating venoms in a lab, it also enabled us to take out some of the negative effects that naturally occurring venom contains, which can be unstable and incompatible with skincare. This is how we perfect our poison, by creating formulas that are the perfect cocktail of nature and science.

On top of each of these very powerful actives, we then added other ingredients specific to each serum, ranging from plant-based stem cells, vitamins C & E, Hyadisine (which is a more hydrating and deeper penetrating form of Hyaluronic Acid), green and white tea extracts, and other “biomimetic” peptides.

Our bee serum is the only serum that uses naturally occurring venom. And, "what about the bees!?" Most people know that when a bee stings and loses its stinger, it dies. In the creation of our bee serum, we came up with a way to extract their venom without harming the bees. 

This revolutionary way of extracting our bee venom is done with extremely low electrical currents. We attach beehives with a glass plate attachment that sends an electrical current through the glass to stimulate the bees. The pulsation is so low that only 1 in 10,000 (.0001%) bees actually react to the plate. When these bees do react to protect their hive, they come out to sting the plate and release their venom on the impenetrable glass - all while keeping their stinger and returning back home.

We then let it dry, scrape it up, and send it to our lab to be purified before it is added to our bee serum.

Another example of our inspired by nature but perfected by science mindset is that we use a synthetic variation of bees Royal Jelly called Royal Epigen in our Bee Serum. The natural molecular makeup of Royal Jelly is too large to penetrate our skin’s wall barrier, so by doing this, we were able to include this incredibly nourishing and regenerative ingredient in our serum. 

Synthetic isn’t always bad, and doesn't have to necessarily mean fake - it can also mean modified.

We hope this article has been helpful to answer your questions about how we "extract" venom. If you have any additional questions on the ingredients found in our serums, please email us at rachel@intoxicatedcosmetics.com.