Why butryate is attracting attention in skincare. Ghee contains butyrate, a short-chain fatty acid that can influence how cells access their DNA. In skin cells, this is relevant to processes like barrier maintenance and cellular renewal. But applying ghee directly isn't the same as delivering butyrate effectively. Here's what the science says.
Ghee isn't exactly new to the world of health and nutrition. From traditional practices to modern routines, it has found its way into conversations far beyond the kitchen. Even Kourtney Kardashian has publicly shared her habit of taking ghee in the morning.
But at a molecular level, ghee is far more complex than its familiar golden appearance suggests. Among its many components is butyrate, a molecule that has attracted scientific attention for its ability to influence what happens inside our cells.
What Is Butyrate?
Butyrate is a short-chain fatty acid naturally produced by bacteria in our gut. You may not know butyrate, but your body does.
It can also be found in familiar foods such as butter and dairy, including ghee. In dairy fat, it is mostly found bound within fat molecules rather than on its own. So yes, you may have already been consuming butyrate without ever knowing it.
But butyrate is more than just something we consume. It is a biologically active molecule that can interact with our cells. This includes processes that reach all the way to our DNA, the blueprint that carries the instructions for how our cells function.
How Does Butyrate Affect Your DNA?
Butyrate can reduce the activity of enzymes that keep parts of our DNA tightly packed, making those regions easier for the cell to use.
Our DNA contains an enormous amount of information. So much that the cell must control which of it is accessible at any given time.
One of the ways cells regulate this access involves enzymes known as histone deacetylases, or HDACs. Butyrate has been studied for its ability to reduce the activity of these enzymes, making certain regions of DNA more available for the cell to use.
What Does Butyrate Do for Your Skin?
In laboratory and animal studies, butyrate has been shown to support the skin's barrier by helping skin cells mature and produce the proteins and lipids that hold the barrier together.
Our outer skin layer is made mostly of cells called keratinocytes. As they mature, they produce structural proteins such as filaggrin and loricrin, along with ceramides, the lipids that keep skin sealed and hydrated.
A 2022 study in Mucosal Immunology found that butyrate strengthened the skin barrier in mice by changing how keratinocytes use energy, which helped them mature and produce more of these barrier components. The same team saw similar signs of maturation when they treated human skin cells with butyrate in the lab. A 2023 review in Frontiers in Microbiology also summarises lab research in which butyrate increased filaggrin in human skin cells by reducing HDAC activity.
So butyrate appears to work on skin in more than one way: by influencing which genes are switched on, and by fuelling the cell's own energy processes. Most of this research is still in cells and animals, and researchers note that its effects in people need further study.
So when you hear that “what you eat shows on your skin,” there is more truth to the saying than you might think. Butyrate is one example of how something we encounter through food can interact with biological processes within our cells.
Can You Apply Ghee Directly to Your Skin?
You can, but it won't deliver butyrate's effects the way research describes. Finding butyrate in ghee does not mean that applying ghee directly to the skin will produce the same biological effects.
In ghee, butyrate is mostly bound within larger fat molecules. To have a meaningful effect, it needs to reach the right place, in the right form. Research reviews also note that how butyrate affects skin depends on how it is delivered and in what amount. Simply containing butyrate is not the same as delivering it effectively.
That is why how a source is prepared and formulated matters. At Shvéta Labs, we developed Ghrta™ with this distinction in mind.
What Is Ghrta™?
Ghrta™ is Shvéta Labs' proprietary technology built around bio-activated, triple-purified ghee molecules for use in skin and hair formulations.
Ghee is the source. Ghrta™ is the technology.
It is not simply ghee added to a formula. Ghrta™ is the result of taking what makes the source biologically interesting and developing it into a refined skincare technology.