Beauty Pick: A hemp cream? You bet, and it (really, really) works

This skin cream is so potent, it should be illegal.

The amount of money we often spend on our creams and cosmetics may rival the GDP of a small country, but the question is: do they work? Brands and price tags don’t always equate with quality and effectiveness so when you find something that’s perfect, you make note of it, you worship it and you pray to the beauty gods that they don’t take it away (Principessa’s dry shampoo as a notable, tragic example).Vancouver’s Ferlow Botanicals, a home-grown, all-natural company, falls into that category with their MSM + Hemp cream. It landed on my radar when it was first prescribed for my daughter’s unrelenting eczema; when it immediately and magically cured it (after she’d suffered from it for years), I offered myself up as guinea pig and tried it on my face. Again, redness and small patches of dryness dissipated almost immediately. I then mailed some back to family members (where living with Calgary’s dry air is like having an ongoing facelift) and they, too, were strangely cured of all their skin afflictions and emerged blemish-free in the next Chinook wind.The secret? Hempseed oil, rich in Omega 3 and 6 essential fatty acids, makes an excellent natural emollient that’s chalk full of anti-inflammatory properties, while MSM feeds skin cells and helps repair tissue. This stuff rebuilds damaged or red skin while simultaneously nourishing it (and if you have eczema, it’s the only thing, in my experience, that works on an ongoing basis—and that includes cortisone). Plus, it’s so natural you could eat it, although we don’t recommend taking your hemp this way.MSM + Hemp Cream ($20/60 ml) available at Kitsilano Naturopathic Clinic, #307, 2902 West Broadway; Kitsnaturalhealth.com. Meanwhile, the rest of Ferlow Botanicals’s range of good-for-you products will be available online as of next week.