Top 5 Natural Cellulite Remedies – Debunked

There are a lot of supposed natural cellulite remedies out there to reduce cellulite. So far, not one has stood up to real testing and analysis. Let’s take a look at the claims for each of these methods, and investigate whether any of them has seen scientific results.

Natural Cellulite Remedy #1 – Dry Brushing – aka; Skin Brushing

Dry brushing was Bridget Jones’ favored method of reducing cellulite, and that alone probably should have rendered it suspect (Ms. Jones was not a woman known for her good decision-making). Dry brushing simply involves using a medium-soft bristled brush to stroke the skin firmly, which purportedly does everything from exfoliate your whole body to “reduce toxins” to eliminate cellulite.

Of these claims, only the exfoliation one is true. And even that has some pretty big caveats.

Let’s start with the cellulite reduction. The only thing that brushing your skin daily will do is pull at your skin. It will increase circulation temporarily, which can make the tissues swell slightly, but it will do absolutely nothing to stimulate the mushy, atrophied muscle layers under the skin.

Dry brushing, by its nature, is a surface treatment, and does not penetrate to the source of the problem.

What’s more, dry brushing can actually damage the elasticity of your skin. You’re putting far more pressure on your skin, daily, than it’s accustomed to experiencing. Over time, you might reduce the elasticity and have even more difficulty with your skin, not less.

Natural Cellulite Remedy #2: Herbal Supplements

There isn’t an herbal supplement in the world that can change your structural anatomy. Your muscles will not become firmer, smoother and stronger through your popping a pill every morning, and the connective bands of tissue connecting your muscle to your skin won’t get any longer. The tension will still be there – and so will your dimples, shadows and ripples.

There is some (moderately) good news about herbal supplements – some of them have been scientifically proven to improve the health of your skin, and healthy skin is more elastic and malleable. That’s good news for your skin, but it won’t eliminate your cellulite any more than reducing your body fat will. It’s only a small piece of the puzzle, and you won’t notice any results from herbal supplements alone.

Herbal supplements claim to improve circulation, as do many of these mythical “treatments.” Once again, improving your circulation is a good thing to do for your overall health, but it does precisely nothing for the appearance of cellulite. No matter how swiftly your blood is flowing in your veins, it won’t touch any of the components that create cellulite: your muscles, your connective tissue, or your body-fat percentage.

The best herbal supplements can do is make your skin a little healthier and more flexible. That’s good for your skin – but it won’t help your cellulite.

Natural Cellulite Remedy #3: Body Wraps

Of the treatments we’re debunking today, body wraps are perhaps the most ridiculous. They purportedly work by drawing “toxins” out of your body. Some will say that they work by “squeezing” water-logged fatty tissue, operating on the premise that your fat is somehow inflated with fluids.

This is complete nonsense.

 
You cannot squeeze water out of a fat cell by wrapping your body parts…

You could probably do it if you got a single fat cell in a scientific lab, but that’s about it. Even if you could “squeeze” water out of a fat cell, it would simply go back into your bloodstream, and homeostasis would promptly send that water right back where it wants to be.

The amount of water in your fat cells is the correct amount of water for it; you can’t change that, but even if you could, your body would promptly correct the balance.

Body wraps appear to work because the circumference of your limbs is reduced after a treatment. I understand why some people are fooled by this, but it’s really very simple: if you wrap up your foot in an ace bandage to protect it after a sprain, you’ll notice that the wrapped ankle appears smaller than the unwrapped one when you take the bandage off.
That’s just compression.

Your body is taking the path of least resistance. This is the reason body wraps are said to “work” – because after you take off the wrap, compression has reduced the circumference of your thigh.

Try measuring again an hour later – your leg will be right back to normal. A waste of time, if anything else.

Natural Cellulite Remedy #4: Caffeine/Coffee Scrubs

Caffeine has been proven to penetrate skin, and there are studies that show supplements containing caffeine have had a small effect on the improvement of skin circulation. The problem is that none of these studies has been controlled properly – the caffeine was always combined with other methods like massage or ultrasonic waves, so there’s no way to know if the caffeine alone was helpful.

Even among the studies that showed positive results, the ‘results’ were next to nothing – a tiny reduction in the circumference of the thigh, but no reduction in the appearance of cellulite.

 
This isn’t surprising.

Most of the recommendations around caffeine scrubs involve using coffee grounds to transfer the caffeine through your skin. Usually the coffee grounds are combined with some kind of oil to create a “scrub.”

The oil effectively creates a barrier between the coffee grounds and your skin, preventing any caffeine from getting through.
Finally, it takes a lot of time for caffeine to be absorbed into your skin.

It takes nearly two hours to get enough caffeine from a coffee scrub into your skin to see even the minimal, unproven results in the best-performing of the tests done on caffeine and cellulite.

So if you massage dry coffee grounds into your skin every day, leave them on your skin for two hours, and repeat for a month . . . then you might, possibly, see a slimming effect of your intended areas. Maybe. After all, the results of the most promising study were never duplicated again.

What you won’t see, however, is a reduction in “cellulite” (the dimples, shadows and ripples).

Natural Cellulite Remedy #5: Fat-Reduction

Generally speaking, articles that propose fat-reduction as a natural cellulite remedy will conclude that the only way to reduce cellulite is to lose fat. But, today I debunk that myth, too.

Most “experts” fail to realize that there are MANY women who are not overweight (have no excess body-fat), who still battle the appearance of cellulite on the trouble-zones. So, how is it that “fat reduction” can help get rid of cellulite on a woman who has no excess fat to lose??

Answer: It can’t.

And likewise, fat reduction in a woman who does have excess body-fat, still does not provide the fix for the dimples, shadows and ripples known as “cellulite”. Because what causes those is an issue at the muscle layer level.

It’s true that cellulite is a “below-the-surface” problem. And nothing you put topically on your skin can reduce the appearance of cellulite. Cellulite is caused when there is atrophy in the muscles beneath the problem-areas.

You can see that the bands of connective tissue are too short to cover that distance, which means they pull on the underside of the skin and cause dimples on the surface. Reducing your fat cells is theoretically one way to shorten the distance, but as we’ve shown in this article, fat loss is not the answer.

Even worse it that fat reduction has been reported to make cellulite worse in certain women. This is one of the main reasons women must avoid liposuction as a possible surgical solution for cellulite. Once that damage is done, it is permanent; taking a bad situation and making it even worse.

The only natural solution to cellulite is improving the muscle firmness (reverse muscular atrophy) below the surface, bringing the “top” layer of your muscle closer to the “bottom” layer of your skin, as in the diagram below.

This detailed and illustrated video presentation, by Women’s Body Enhancement Specialist, Joey Atlas, explains how to reverse muscle-layer atrophy to get rid of the appearance of cellulite in the trouble-zones and problem-areas.

It’s just as all-natural as any of the rest of these so-called “solutions.” But the BIG difference is that this one actually works.

If you gained some insights and wisdom from this article, please do share it, using the buttons below, with other women who can benefit from it. And stay tuned for the next few articles where we show why other cellulite remedies can’t work (surgery, injections, lasers, heat massage ultrasound, etc…)