In late September, AlixPartners and the Cosmetic Executive Women (CEW) network released The Extract: Beauty × Health × Wellness 2026, a joint study of industry executives and consumers. Its most notable finding wasn't a new ingredient or a new spending figure. It was a gap. Asked separately who they actually trust for guidance on beauty and wellness, consumers ranked healthcare practitioners second, behind only friends and family, well ahead of influencers. Executives, meanwhile, rated practitioner trust far lower than consumers actually place it, while continuing to pour marketing dollars into influencers. The report calls this a trust gap. We would call it a mismatch between who brands pay to talk and who people actually listen to.
We never had this gap
Palma de Salus isn't fronted by an influencer, and it was never going to be. Dr. Aradhna Juneja is a practicing Doctor of Chiropractic who formulates every product herself. Ask who's behind a Palma product, and the honest answer is a clinician, not a spokesperson reading a script. That isn't a position we adopted once a report came along to confirm it works. It's simply who formulates here.
Proof, not a paid voice
The same report found consumers growing more skeptical of product claims generally, not just of who's selling them, but of what's being promised. That's the same skepticism Dr. Juneja brought to her own kitchen counter before she ever formulated anything, watching products launch on packaging and a familiar face with little evidence either did much. It's why Palma has a dedicated Ingredients page instead of a glossy claims list, and why the Hand Sanitizing Serum, FDA Registered, states plainly what's in it, avocado oil, jojoba oil, hyaluronic acid, castor oil, Centella Asiatica, and vitamins B3, B5, and E, rather than what it promises.
No distance between the lab and the label
A trust gap is hardest to close at scale, when the person deciding what goes into a formula sits several layers removed from the person explaining it to a customer. That distance doesn't really exist here. Every wash, serum, and candle is still made by hand, in small batches, in Dubai, the same place Dr. Juneja formulates. There is no handoff between the lab and the label.
None of this makes Palma immune to the skepticism this report describes. We're a small brand asking people to trust an ingredient list from a company they likely haven't heard of yet. The report's finding doesn't let any of us off the hook for proving our claims. But it does say something real about where trust still comes from in this category: not from who's loudest, but from who's actually responsible for what's in the bottle.
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