Hi and welcome to the Honours channel, I'm Claire Johnston, a journalist with an interest in all things anti-aging and aging well. And so I was watching one of my YouTube favorites, Dr. Anil Rajani recently, and he had done a video titled Apply This to Smooth Rinkles, Better than Botox. The product he was talking about is this Reevox line relaxer from revision skincare, which is currently priced on their website at £159 in the UK for just 20 milliliters. That price in itself is enough to give you frown lines. And it's listed on Dr. Rajani's own site for $145, though it was on offer at $117 at the time of filming. He describes it as Botox without the Botox and it's designed to slow down muscle movement and ease frown lines and wrinkles. And I could not help myself. So I ordered out of pure curiosity and the desire to test this thing out. I've been using it twice daily on my frown lines for six weeks now. So is this Reevox line relaxer really better than Botox? Or even somewhere close to it? So the idea with the Reevox line relaxer serum is that you use it twice daily, targeting lines on your forehead, around your eyes and your mouth if you have them there, applying it to clean skin and before moisturizing. And right up there at the top of the act of ingredients list is a CTL hexapeptide 8, which many of you may have heard of by its trade name, Archeriline. And it's a neurotransmitter inhibiting peptide that's also water binding. So it's a humectant and that in itself can help with lines because it's attracting moisture to the surface of your skin. But as I understand it from reading scientists take on this ingredient, this peptide mimics a particular protein in what's called the snare complex, which plays an important role in the release of neurotransmitters. And if that complex is slightly destabilized, it affects its ability to release neurotransmitters efficiently and that in turn affects the muscle's ability to contract. So that's the theory behind how it works. And there have been quite a few studies showing Archeriline helps keep our skin hydrated and has some wrinkle reducing benefits. But it's also been found that it doesn't penetrate the deeper layers of the skin. And so unlike Botox, it's not reaching the muscles to directly freeze or relax them. It also means that the thinner your skin, the higher the chance Archeriline can work better for you. Now to put it in context, Archeriline is sold for under 10 pounds in the UK and under $10 in the US by the ordinary. So it's not on its own an expensive ingredient. However, that's not the only peptide in this product. There are several others along with something called GABA and inhibitory neurotransmitter that you may have heard of and it's supposed to provide the immediate relaxing effect. The maker's revision skin care say in the in their 12 week randomized double blind placebo controlled clinical study featuring 55 females aged between 35 and 60 that it was found to improve expression lines at 15 minutes after use and over time improved lines, wrinkles and skin health including hydration. Inulin, a prebiotic ingredient is also included designed to rebalance the skin microbiome and it also includes hyaluronic acid which would help with skin plumping again by drawing moisture to the surface of our skin from our lower layers. But the jury is out on how healthy that actually is for our skin. And I guess the ultimate goal would be for us to use products that help our skin create more of its own hyaluronic acid. Dr. Rajani said in his video that this can be used as a topical alternative to Botox or as a way of extending the results of Botox which is also a benefit of plain old cheap Argeraline. And before I talk about my own experience I often like to look at customer reviews and I wanted to compare the ordinary's Argeraline 10% solution with the feedback on the revox serum because they're at completely different ends of the price spectrum. So I looked on Amazon where the ordinary product has 677 ratings and an average of 4.3 out of 5 stars and it has a lot of devotees as well as a not insignificant number who say it did nothing for them. And you're always going to get that with any skin care product because our skin types differ. Also on Amazon where it's currently out of stock, the revox line relaxer has 93 ratings and an average of 3.9 out of 5 stars. Now at 10 times the price customers are going to take a tougher line and are more likely to leave critical feedback if they're not fully satisfied. But it is just interesting to see the comparison. How much more are you actually getting from the more expensive product which does have considerably more ingredients? From my perspective using it twice daily for around six weeks so that was straight after I filled my adipo review I started using this on my 11s, my vertical frown lines and a couple of deeper horizontal lines. And it comes with a steel tip attached to a little pump so you can just smooth it over the line to want to target. To use over a longer period of time I would have had to buy another tube and I have decided not to do that based mainly on cost versus return. Now I usually get Botox very lightly done once a year and to avoid eyelid sagging because the relaxed muscle can push the brow down I just get tiny amounts put between the brow and a little higher up as well so I still have movement but just less of it. The last time I had it done was at the start of January 2022 and I wanted to give this a go before I had it done again to see that might actually be an effective alternative. I've got to say when it comes to my results I don't notice a major difference personally so let's take a look firstly at the difference 15 minutes after use. Here's the before and after footage alongside each other and there's not as far as I can see a particularly noticeable relaxation. For the longer term results this is me at the beginning of December and this is me now. There's potentially a slight easing because these are deeper lines and that is going to be tougher for any topical to make an impact on. Realistically if I'm looking to smooth out these deeper lines I think I'm going to have to use Botox. Now I've not experienced major irritation with the serum but I found it does make my forehead a little bit itchy at times though that decreased with regular use. Overall though do I believe that this product and are jurelene and isolation that they can relax lines and smooth the appearance of the skin? Well yes I do to a point I'm very interested in peptides and growth factors in skin care and I very much think they are the way forward and I'm going to be bringing you thoughts on a number of products this year. At the moment I'm using Calisem's multi-action cream every morning and my 80 year old mum is using one skin's face supplements so I'll update on our results and look at some of the most popular alternatives at different price points. A reminder that growth factors are proteins produced by the body's cells including those found in the skin and are used in skin care for their ability to message to skin cells to repair themselves and as a result improve the skin's health and decrease the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles. Peptides are more or kills made of two or more amino acids that also act as messengers within the skin and to show you the potential of peptides here are a couple of before and after pictures from the Reevox product listing on Dr. Rajani's site and they are pretty impressive. I'm someone with thicker skin and so I don't have many fine lines but I have deeper ones and I think the topical relaxants will have a much more noticeable effect on fine lines. Some people have fine lines on their forehead around their eyes and their mouth and if you're not a Botox fan or you want to extend the life of your Botox then it could be helpful for you. I'll link to both the Reevox serum and the ordinary serum in the text box below this video you just click on where it says more to see that information and if like me your influence by other customer reviews I'll also link to some inexpensive products that include our Giroline and our popular with customers including one from the skincare brand Iclat and their face cream with our Giroline has 4,000 reviews and an average of 4.3 out of 5 stars and it's under 10 pounds. So that's it from me today look out for another dermal debate with Dr Chen and Ivan Galenon this time looking at whether too much red light can be a bad thing. For now thanks for watching and I'll see you next time.