In January, I set aside time to meet with Dr. Barbara Sturm, the genius behind the culty eponymous anti-aging\u00a0line. Since moving to Switzerland, I’ve been on a mission to get to know my new beauty neighbors. It was actually my third trip to visit a woman pioneering the beauty space in the area. My first trip was to interview Susanne Kaufmann at her detox clinic in Austria. The second was to meet with Sophie Guillon, of Valmont. And last week I hopped on a 45-minute flight headed from Zurich to Munich.<\/p>\n
It was my first time in Munich. Germany’s vibrant\u00a0city was extremely\u00a0charming. All of the buildings were\u00a0painted in different colors, which created the the most quaint look. Before my meeting, I only had time for a quick beetroot latte (think matcha latte but with beets instead) and a matcha bowl at Bite Delite<\/a>. After my power lunch, a few selfies and a super fast shopping spree at\u00a0Theresa<\/a>, I hopped in a cab headed for Dr. Barbara Sturm<\/a>.<\/p>\n Her main clinic is in Duesseldorf, Germany and in Munich she runs a small office right inside her home. I showed up promptly at 4 o\u2019clock for my appointment, (not a minute too early or too late, in typical Swiss\u00a0fashion), and her longtime Practice Manager Uli kindly let me in. I was also greeted by Pepper, her 2-year-old daughter. I was led inside her apartment into a tiny and very sterol medical office. I had barely sat down before out popped Dr. Sturm. Dressed in skinny jeans, chic black ballet flats in a thin white tee, she looked more like a friend than a doctor. Her hair is one of those short manageable looks that one could only dream of pulling\u00a0off, and bright blond. I knew this was going to be good.<\/p>\n Dr. Sturm’s\u00a0Story<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not a beauty junkie. I grew up in the forest, climbing trees. I had never seen eyeliner until I was 24 probably. I didn\u2019t have highlights. I was wearing jeans and t-shirt and guys\u2019 shoes probably. I was 24 and a designer friend at my ex-husband\u2019s company said, \u2018We need to go shopping.\u2019 I got a manicure and pedicure and my first blond highlights. I bought short leather skirts and heels. And all of the sudden, I mean I was 24 and all of the men were paying attention to me.\u201d<\/p>\n Sturm began in pediatric medicine and then transitioned into sports medicine and orthopedics. In 2000, she helped develop a procedure called Orthokine with a team of researchers. Also known as the Kobe Procedure, named for the former Lakers basketball player Kobe Bryant (who needed it for his problematic\u00a0knees), the surgery involves using the patient\u2019s own blood cells to produce proteins that help reduce inflammation and stimulate the healing process.<\/p>\n She didn\u2019t get into the world of beauty until years later when a friend invited her to Bavaria to learn about aesthetic injections and wrinkles. With her scientific background, she didn\u2019t like the concept of constantly injecting someones face again and again. This led her to her own idea. \u201cIt didn\u2019t make much sense. I wanted to do something on the cellular level so I transferred the knowledge of my study in orthopedics to the skin and that\u2019s how I started. This worked really<\/em> well. I did loads of reports and case studies.\u201d<\/p>\n Around the same time, she was experiencing major issues within her own skin. She was seeing a facialist every 3 weeks for a cleaning. \u201cMy facialist who was working out of the little drugstore was giving me La Prairie\u00a0and all these super expensive products to use and nothing was working.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAnd so I said to Uli, who was already working for me, we need to come up with our own<\/em> cream. And I said that I want to do a gene cream or something. My Grandmother was a Pharmacist and she had told me what used to be in the creams. I took that knowledge to my own pharmacist and we created a base cream and added cells from my blood. And ever since then I never even need to go and see a facialist. All my skin issues stopped. It\u2019s really the only thing I use morning and night and on my eyes. I am also very lazy, I just want to have something that works. Most people have all these allergies and skin conditions, redness, this is all from over using products that are overly aggressive. A lot of people are super sensitive so they just need something simple that works. Their skin can’t handle the multi-step skincare routine.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m very proud of what I developed. The cream worked for me, so I started giving this to all my patients. I was already\u00a0working with all these\u00a0Hollywood people, but they were already used to a whole regime of stuff. They\u2019d ask what cleansers would work for this and that, but I couldn\u2019t really recommend anything. Whatever I tried, I never really liked it. So I decided to make a couple of products in addition to the MC1 cream.\u201d<\/p>\n Dr. Sturm’s Favorite\u00a0Products <\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cI always wanted to have a hyaluronic serum in my products, because I was injecting this in the wrinkles already with my patients. And at the time, nobody had it. The company I worked with (and still do) have the highest technological standards, so we use the highest concentration of hyaluronic acid possible. It has the short chain and the long chain molecules. The short chain molecules really go deep and the long chain molecules they stay on the skin and they give instant hydration and glow.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSo I just started with a few products\u2026 The cream<\/a>, the hyaluronic acid serum<\/a>, a cleanser<\/a> and a scrub<\/a>.This was my little routine that I recommended to all my patients.\u201d Now we have added more products. We\u00a0have this anti-aging primer<\/a> with no silicones and these really cool sun drops, have you tried the sun drops<\/a>? You have to.<\/p>\n