I Tried Consuming Oral Hyaluronic Acid (for my skin) & it Drastically (Negatively) Affected my Brain!
Thereafter, I learned some very alarming suicide and cancer-related information pertaining to HA...
We all share things that work for us in our daily lives, in hopes to help others too. Whether that be in a public way, or shared amongst friends…sisters, brothers, parents.
But what about the things that we try, yet end up VERY MUCH not working for us? Or even worse, the ones that negatively impact us—after trying?
Well, that’s what I’m here to share in this article.
For quite a while, probably the past year or so, I had been seeing an increase in conversations about hyaluronic acid. More specifically, skin “gurus” sharing that perhaps applying topical hyaluronic acid is counterproductive, because for those with dry skin, since HA attracts/holds water molecules—it can pull moisture from deeper layers of the skin and actually lead to further chronic dryness in the long run.
The proposed solution? Moisturizing from the inside-out, with oral hyaluronic acid.
I had this on my “to look into” list for quite a while, and when I finally did—most everything that I could find, were positive benefits and claims, like this:
That was seemingly the general consensus, coupled with the skin “guru” and skincare MLM pages sharing testimonies, like the following:
Recently, I was on a quest to come up with a plan to prepare my skin for upcoming tropical spring travel, and the Texas summer sun.
Amongst things that I’ve already utilized in successfully caring for my summer skin for years now, I also decided to “finally” try incorporating oral hyaluronic acid as well.
This was the formula that I ended up ordering:
The first day that I tried it, I took just one dropper full (which is 3mg). It was a Saturday afternoon when I drank it. My family and I went to a nice dinner that evening and everything in life felt great overall!
By the next morning, Sunday morning, I could not get out of bed.
As soon as I opened my eyes, it was as if everything that was on my to do list, or just about anything that had even a tiny sliver of weight on my shoulders— all felt 100 times heavier. It had been a very long time since I felt mentally unwell to the point of not wanting to get out of bed. It was a very encompassing DOOMED feeling.
I immediately grabbed my phone and opened my cycle tracker app thinking that perhaps my period was due soon and for some reason, this month was going to entail a version of PMS/PMDD??
I thought to myself, “My gosh, what happened to my hormones overnight?!”
But, nope—my period wasn’t due for another 10 days.
Once I mustered up enough mental energy to get out of bed, I had a conversation about how I was feeling, and ended up concluding that I was probably subconsciously stressing about getting my taxes done…
So, I went on with the Sunday afternoon, including grabbing my new oral hyaluronic acid bottle and dropping a serving (3mg) into my water.
Now unlike the afternoon before, when I first consumed it and didn’t notice same-day feeling any different… this time, within FIFTEEN MINUTES of consuming that dropper full of hyaluronic acid, I FELT LIKE I WAS MENTALLY PARALYZED.
It was as if I couldn’t think straight (massive brain fog), I suddenly had ZERO physical energy, and all I felt emotionally was DEEP SADNESS. Like, the kind that makes your brain have thoughts of “what really is the point of life again?”…
This was immediately alarming. Then, I realized that I had JUST started a new supplement—the only thing that I had recently changed in my lifestyle.
I grabbed my phone and thought, “There’s got to be a dark side to this oral hyaluronic acid that I missed when I had looked into it before buying…”
So, I searched, “Can hyaluronic acid affect mood?” & here is what popped up:
Immediately, I started balling my eyes out. There was a weird juxtaposition of relief: “I figured out what’s wrong with me!” and panic: “OMGsh, what did I do to myself?!”
For the rest of the evening, I tried to keep myself distracted but calm. My body most definitely was feeling as if it was in immediate/immense danger. I even noticed that I was super sensitive to repetitive or loud noises—I essentially had to isolate myself.
The worst was still yet to come though…
Normally when something is going wrong, you have sleep as a refuge. With this, not even. After I finally fell asleep, for the entire night, I was having nightmares.
As someone who doesn’t normally have vivid dreams too often - this was on a whole other planet of dreaming. It was as if the part of my brain that stores subsconcious worries, was putting on films by way of nightmare-ish dreams of real things in life that worry me. Like being crashed into with my family in the car, etc.
When I woke up from one of those nightmares, I had the thought, “I don’t know how this is a supplement for sale, surely this is a liquid they have given to really bad prisoners in history’s past —to torture them!”
...is that feasible? Or is that just the elevated HA in my brain, causing an intrusive thought?
Regardless, it was beyond horrible to wake up from such a situation and feel as if you can’t even get away from it during “rest”. It was a very paralyzing and depressive feeling. That morning, I felt as if my body and my mind were not properly “connecting”.
And the more that I kept digging, the more alarmed I became. In one Pub Med finding, though not about consuming HA orally, there was information regarding negative effects to the brain in people who get hyaluronic acid injected:
But even more concerning, were the references to elevated hyaluronic acid in the cerebrospinal fluid of suicide attempters… as well as the studies showing a link to hyaluronic acid and increased cancerous tumor growth!!
After reading this next one, I thought about how it’s common to hear of chemotherapy patients with drastically dry skin as a side effect…
(my thought being, “so is part of what chemotherapy and anti-cancer agents do… include decreasing moisture in and around skin/joints [HA] because therefore it allows such cancer-fighting drugs to work better and not have HA feeding the tumors ability to grow, spread, etc…???”)
I went on to have some conversations with people whom I had thought could have some input too, here are a few snippets of said discussions:
Two things that helped me on Monday:
I drank electrolytes with B vitamins and that seemed to cut down a bit of the brain fog. Though, definitely not all of it, seeing as I didn’t even feel comfortable driving that day!
Also, magnesium can modulate neuroinflammation— therefore, I took a few magnesium capsules.
Then, after some of the conversations I had, I wondered if perhaps my personal medical history came in to play with such a strong reaction to oral hyaluronic acid.
When I was a teenager, I had an adverse reaction to the HPV/Gardasil shot that landed me with full body hives and soon thereafter, EBV (Epstein–Barr virus) that resulted in mononucleosis. (+ the EBV type that stays in your body longterm and has caused me mainly chronic bouts of pain over the years, and fatigue when flared.) I also, in that same pitiful teenager year, was in the hospital for viral meningitis— which is inflammation of the membranes that cover the brain and spinal cord.
Because of that particular hypothesis, I also took a systemic enzyme (that can potentially attack and disrupt the proteins in virus cell walls), followed by a bamboo charcoal binder in case something like that was occurring and my body needs to rid it.
I’m really so confused about many things still. Will I ever know exactly what consuming the oral hyaluronic acid altered in my body? Was it an effect on serotonin? (I did have PPD after my son’s birth—so am I more “pre-disposed”) Did it deplete certain minerals? Is there inflammation in my brain now?
And even more so, if a bunch of these skincare pages are promoting their testimony with oral hyaluronic acid being miraculous benefits to their skin/well-being from the inside-out… HOW DID IT DRASTICALLY AFFECT ME IN SUCH AN OPPOSITE MANNER, AND IN SUCH SHORT AMOUNT OF TIME/AMOUNT?!? (only 3mg twice, in the span of 24 hours!)
Alarmingly, some of the “drink your skincare” supplements that I’ve seen promoted, are a mix of ingredients to include oral hyaluronic acid, in amounts above 100mg!! I really hope that there are not more people out there, women most likely… suffering with worsening anxiety and mental health, without having an inkling to that it could be stemming from one of the ingredients in that semi-viral “drinkable skincare” routine. The thought of that makes me even more sad! :(
Furthermore, seeing as research is showing that hyaluronic acid has contradictory dual functions in the inflammatory process— is it that some bodies will respond by having HA moderate inflammation, whereas in others, it will promote it?!
All in all, I’m about 50% better today than I was the first morning waking up feeling like the world is utterly doomed. I’m hoping to be back at my (peaceful) baseline by the end of the week (praying), but I am also not done searching for more answers.
To be continued…
x. Heather
P.S. Please excuse any typos/grammatical errors in this article. Given the current state of my brain fog, it took me three times the amount of energy to edit my thoughts into words here.
P.S.S. YOU CAN NOW FIND THE PART TWO FOLLOW-UP ARTICLE - HERE.
‼️Since I had shared that I was trying oral HA, I also felt very stressed to get this story out as soon as possible.
WHAT THE CRAP. That is absolutely terrifying. I appreciate you for sharing negative experiences, but also what you discovered in your research!!! I am so glad you are starting to feel better and pray it rapidly improves.