HEALTH REPORT
The Healing Power of Sea Buckthorn
Imogen Van Haagen and Courtney Thornton share their story of how a tiny golden berry inspired Mud Organics natural skincare range.
Following the pandemic, we spent six months doing nothing but research – reading, testing and questioning everything we thought we knew about natural skincare. We tried – and rejected – one ingredient after another, in our search for something with real, provable power. Then we found it: a tiny golden berry that most Australians will never have heard of, which has quietly sustained Tibetan mountain communities for centuries. The spirit of sea buckthorn
hard to survive develops extraordinary defences. Sea buckthorn contains one of the highest concentrations of antioxidants of any fruit on the planet – more than 70 times that of blueberries – along with a striking concentration of vitamin C. It is also the only known plant source of all four omega fatty acids: 3, 6, 7 and 9. Most plant oils provide one or two of these, but sea buckthorn provides them all. Omega 7 is the quiet hero here. It has only been discovered relatively recently and it is the fatty acid most prized for its role in working from within to support mucous membranes, the body’s own moisture barrier. Double the benefit Here is the part of our sea buckthorn story that we love most: it works both ways. Applied topically, as
The berries are harvested once a year, by hand, by local Tibetan families who climb into the thorny shrubs in the depths of winter, sometimes in temperatures as low as -15°C
We flew to the Tibetan Himalayas, 3,000 metres above sea level, to see for ourselves where our signature ingredient came from. As we stood on a terraced hillside, looking down at a glacial river cutting through the valley below, we began to understand why we
our best-selling Mud Organics Sea Buckthorn Serum, it hydrates and repairs skin; taken internally, it nourishes mucosal tissue, supports gut health, improves the body’s natural collagen production, and hydrates skin from the inside out. We have paired sea buckthorn with fulvic acid in our Detox Supplement Powder. The two ingredients work in tandem, with fulvic acid supporting cellular renewal. On our trip to source the berries, we walked the
had fallen for this odd little berry. We had expected a tidy orchard; instead, we found steep, wind-scoured terraces carved into the mountainside – remote, difficult and completely unforgettable. Sea buckthorn does not grow where it is comfortable. It grows where almost nothing else will, on exposed, rocky slopes, at high altitude and in soil so mineral-rich but conditions so extreme that only the hardiest plants survive. The berries are harvested once a year, by hand, by local Tibetan families who climb into the thorny shrubs in the depths of winter, sometimes in temperatures as low as -15°C. There is no machinery gentle enough for this job; it is slow, careful, human work. This harshness is exactly the point: a plant which has to fight that
mountain terraces, met the families who pick the berries and watched the raw material being tested and quality-checked before it even left for our Australian laboratory, where every
26
ISSUE 78 • 2026
Made with FlippingBook Learn more on our blog