Calecim’s ‘stem cell’ serum for hair and skin rejuvenation: Our 2-year experience

Back in November 2022 I shared some initial results that my husband David had experienced after using Calecim Professional’s stem-cell-derived hair system for 8 weeks to help treat thinning around his crown.

At the time we were pretty blown away that within just two months of beginning to use the serum we could see a visible improvement

Now it’s been nearly two years since they started using the hair renewal system, which involves microneedling a small amount of serum into the scalp that’s made with growth factors and exosomes extracted from stem cells found in the umbilical cord of red deer.

Umbilical cords are usually discarded after birth but they harvest billions of stem cells so when I first interviewed a Calecim representative two years ago only one cord had been used to produce their entire product range to date!

But while my husband was happy with his results, the best was yet to come. I gave my now 80-year-old dad a few of the 5ml bottles of the serum just before Christmas 2022 to try on his rather advanced balding patch.

Just a few weeks later he appeared on my front door step saying he could feel baby hair springing up like the Scottish cartoon character “Oor Wullie” at the back of his head – Oor Wullie being famed for his spiky hair.

So impressed was I by their hair results that I began using Calecim’s Multi Action Cream on my skin, and a friend had also been putting it to the test.

I’ve also since tried a couple of ‘exosomes facials‘ (review linked) in a local clinic where I had the Calecim Professional Serum microneedled into my skin.

So as we approach the two-year-mark I thought I’d share what the long-term results look and feel like for us.

How Calecim products are made

So, firstly, there are no actual stem cells in the conditioned media used in Calecim’s products – but rather it contains growth factors that are extracted from them.

And the idea is that these proteins message your own cells stimulating them to behave as they did when they were more productive, thus reducing inflammation which is one of the big drivers of cell aging.

Calecim say this can lead to not only renewed hair growth but also an improvement in the productivity of the melanocytes which produce hair pigment. They have observed grey hairs growing in darker with this serum and we saw a degree of that with both my dad and husband.

How to use Calecim’s Advanced Hair System

With the Advanced Hair System you get six 5ml bottles of pink serum which is the conditioned media, and you’re directed to use it twice weekly at first over an initial six week period.

You also get a little dermal stamp which has tiny prongs that you use to stamp your scalp in advance and then you apply half of a 5ml bottle with each treatment.

We were advised to do that after washing and drying my husband’s hair. You don’t want to wash the serum off and you want to give it plenty of time to work and hopefully be absorbed into the hair follicles.

After the initial six week, twice-weekly treatment with half a 5ml vial (there are 6 vials included with each box), you step down to dermastamping with the serum once a week again.

That means each box should theoretically last you 12 weeks instead of 6.

Managing the cost

Totting it up, using the the serum once weekly longer term will still cost around £100 or slightly more in dollars a month. Calecim’s Advanced Hair System is currently sold at £295 or around $360 . I’ve got a 15% off discount code for Calecim products shared below which brings the cost down a bit, but it’s still a big outlay.

To keep the cost down my dad just uses a quarter of a bottle, once a week so that a box lasts him more like six months. My husband only does the treatment once a month now (less than recommended), using half a bottle at a time.

Hair results

In my husband’s case where once he had really thick hair, a few years back he started to thin around his triple crown. We noticed new hair growth after the initial 6-week treatment, and that continued over roughly 3 months to give him fuller coverage as shown in my YouTube review which you’ll also find at the bottom of the page. When he first started using the treatment he was 58 and is now about to turn 60.

It’s a point in life when many men will see hair thinning, if they have not already, so I would say he has managed to maintain his initial results two years on, but they have not improved over time.

It’s my dad who really has seen the biggest difference with his once highly visible bald patch (see before and after below) now sporting a light covering that he is very proud of.

His results were very dramatic and continued to improve over the first 6 months and have now stabilized.

Calecim Skin Products

As for our experience with the skin products, Calecim’s Multi Action cream continues to be one of the hero products in my skincare routine.

Primarily, I love what it does for the condition of my skin. To manage costs I don’t use it every night, but I notice if I break from it entirely for a few weeks, the small patches of rosacea that have started to emerge on my cheeks during menopause come right back.

Calecim calms my skin, it keeps it healthy and hydrated and when your skin is in that condition it will naturally look younger. Dryness is the enemy of older skin which is why I use retinoids cautiously.

But my friend Charmain had more visible results from using Calecim skin products.

At 41 and as a new mum she was not getting a lot of sleep, and she felt her skin was stressed and dehydrated. Being very fair skinned she had quite a lot of pigmentation. In these pictures you can see her on day 1 of using Calecim’s Multi Action cream followed by the Restorative Hydration Cream twice daily. The second picture is taken 10 weeks later and she had really noticed a difference in the pigmentation in particular and also with hydration.

My overall feeling is that, like the hair serum, the Calecim skin products help improve skin cell productivity and reduce inflammation – as was evidenced through the correction of my mild rosacea, improved hydration and Charmain’s pigmentation reduction.

Calecim also have a pink conditioned media serum for the face, similar to the hair serum, but that is probably best used in conjunction with either clinical or at-home microneedling.

Watch out for the smell

Having used Calecim for a couple of years now I forgot to mention the smell until a reader reminded me! Being a biological product it has a biological smell unfortunately. It’s something you do get used to but I hadn’t smelt anything like it before. The closest I can get to pinning down the scent is it’s a little doggy.

It’s the serums that smell the strongest and it matters a lot less with the hair product because you’re using it on top of your head so my dad and husband never complain about the smell. The professional face serum though will take some getting used to . The Multi Action Cream has only a light scent, but I add a couple of drops of my True Botanicals oil to mask it instead of applying it on top.

I love using natural oils on my skin these days so it all ties together nicely in my overall skincare routine.

Return on investment

These are expensive skincare products and you have to weigh up the cost versus the return that you’re getting. You can get a 20g pot of Calecim multi action cream which is not a lot of product and that costs £75/$85, or the 50g pot costs £175/ $200 but I make it last a few months by alternating with another moisturizer.

Safety of using exosomes, growth factors and peptides in skin and hair care

Critics of using growth factors and exosomes in skincare point to the unknowns of longer-term use.

And I think we do have to be very selective in choosing growth factor products, looking at the history and ethics of the firms involved because they are not all the same.

Calecim is an offshoot of a medical research company whose topical stem cell treatment has already been widely tested on patients with diabetic ulcers and is going through rigorous safety and efficacy testing for approval by medicines agencies in the US, UK and Europe without any reported safety issues to date.

Calecim themselves say they see no cause for concern having worked now with thousands of patients and customers, over the potential for their products to cause unwanted changes in the skin but would not advise using growth factors of any kind on skin with active lesions and you’d want to take medical advice if you have a history of skin lesions too because they haven’t been tested under these circumstances.

And it’s clear that stem cell and growth factor technology is here to stay and will be used more and more widely for medical and skincare purposes and I’ve made a decision to be selective and careful but to get on board with it.

That said, aside from the cost, I choose to not to use the Calecim products daily long term so that I am building in rest periods for my skin and, two years in, it’s never been in better condition.