Sorion

Sorion is a German skincare brand built on Ayurveda, the traditional medicine of India. It is owned by Ruehe Healthcare GmbH, a company based in Potsdam [5], and makes care products for chronically irritated, itchy and scaly skin. The company presents the range as care to be used alongside medical treatment for psoriasis, atopic dermatitis and itchy eczema, not as a medicine in its own right. The first product, then called simply Sorion Creme, reached the market in winter 2013 [9].

From that single cream the brand has grown into a small family of products for the body, face and scalp, sold mainly through pharmacies and the owner's own online shop. It is still active: a newer anti-blemish line, SORION CLEAR, has been added under the same name, and the company continues to publish on its website.

Sorion's story is closely tied to that of its owner. Ruehe Healthcare GmbH was founded on 20 August 2013, a few months before the first cream went on sale. According to a 2016 trade-magazine article, which was written from text supplied by the company, the idea goes back to 2012, when Peter Rühe heard about Ayurvedic medicine at an event at the Indian embassy and later tried an Ayurvedic cream himself.

The cream's roots lie in India rather than Germany. Psoriasis-Netz, a German patient portal, wrote in December 2013 that the cream had long been used in India for stressed skin and alongside treatment of skin diseases, and that the European version was enriched with neem [13]. The same page named a firm called Berlindo International, with Peter Rühe as managing director, as the product's European distributor at the time [13]. The brand itself has since been marketed under Ruehe Healthcare GmbH, and how the two companies relate is not publicly documented.

Company boilerplate reproduced in the 2016 article adds that the team came to know Ayurveda while travelling in India and was especially impressed by the creams, ointments and supplements of the Indian firm ATRIMED. That statement concerns the team's inspiration; the manufacturer of Sorion itself is not publicly named. For these reasons Sorion is best described as a German brand with an Indian-derived formula.

The company's own accounts of how long the formula took to develop do not agree. Its "About us" page speaks of roughly 15 years of research before the first launch [2]. Its tenth-anniversary blog post from August 2023 gives about 20 years [9], a figure echoed on the homepage, while a press release issued the same month says about ten years [12]. All three versions describe a team of Ayurvedic doctors, microbiologists and plant chemists working together, but none gives dates.

After the launch in winter 2013, distribution widened quickly. The company says Sorion has been stocked in pharmacies throughout Germany since 2014 and has been sold in other European markets since 2015 [12]. Psoriasis-Netz noted early on that the cream could also be bought from the distributor's website and from online retailers such as Amazon, and that it came in several sizes, from a 10 ml trial tube to a 150 ml pack for larger areas of skin.

In the 2016 trade article the company described the cream as the only Ayurvedic product sold in a German pharmacy [11]. The claim appears in company-supplied text and has not been checked independently.

Over the following years the single cream became a range. By the company's tenth anniversary in August 2023, the Sorion line comprised six products. The company marked the occasion with a discount for customers and a free sample campaign for pharmacies.

The most recent addition is SORION CLEAR, a separate line for blemish-prone skin. The company's website describes it as new but does not give a launch year. Ruehe Healthcare now presents Sorion Repair care and SORION CLEAR anti-blemish care as its two brands.

Sorion is owned and marketed by Ruehe Healthcare GmbH of Potsdam, Germany. The company describes itself as the developer of the brand: its "About us" page says it combines traditional Ayurvedic teaching, modern molecular research and German quality standards, and that "this is how the Sorion brand came about". No acquisition or change of ownership is documented. The only other company linked to the brand in public sources is Berlindo International, named as its European distributor in 2013.

The company's tagline calls Sorion holistic "repair" care following the principles of Ayurveda. Its stated mission is to bring the plant knowledge of Ayurveda to Europe in the form of cosmetic products and to help people with chronic skin complaints. On its homepage the brand sums up its approach with three words: naturalness, tradition and care.

The brand's explanation of how its products work draws on two ideas. The first comes from Ayurveda itself, which, as Ruehe Healthcare puts it, looks for the causes of a problem rather than only easing its symptoms, and aims to bring the body back into balance. The second is the skin microbiome, the community of microbes that lives on the skin's surface. According to the company, the Sorion plant complex is matched to a healthy microbiome, so that irritated skin can settle and rebuild its own defences. The company also says its formula is based on the Vedas, the ancient Sanskrit texts in which much Ayurvedic knowledge was handed down.

Sorion places weight on science in its messaging. The company calls its scientific standards the most important pillar of the business, and says every batch is tested for quality and impurities. It also states that only original Ayurvedic plants grown in India are used.

The core Sorion range centres on the Sorion Repair Creme, intended for acute care of irritated, itchy skin and eczema. It is joined by the Sorion Repair Creme Sensitive for long-term care of chronically irritated skin, which the company says is also suitable for the external intimate area. The range is completed by a mild care soap for body and face and two scalp products for irritated, flaky scalps: the Sorion Repair Head Fluid and the Sorion Repair Shampoo. A dietary supplement, Sorion Forte Plus, is sold alongside the skincare but is not a cosmetic.

The Repair Creme is built around four plants from Ayurvedic tradition: neem, turmeric, madder root (Rubia cordifolia) and sweet indrajao (Wrightia tinctoria), also known as pala indigo. The company's ingredient pages describe each in some detail. Turmeric, it notes, is called "haridra" in Sanskrit, a name it translates roughly as "skin elixir", and it attributes anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties to the curcumin the root contains. Sweet indrajao is described as a plant little known in Europe that is used in India for inflammation, itching, scaling and redness. Coconut oil and shea butter also feature in the company's descriptions.

Psoriasis-Netz described the same cream independently in 2013. It listed petroleum jelly, coconut oil and waxes among the ingredients, and reported that the cream was free of preservatives but contained perfume. The portal's members also tested the cream and shared their experiences in its forum.

SORION CLEAR takes a different set of plants: coriander seed, sarsaparilla and Indian laburnum. The line has two products, the SORION CLEAR Face Wash, a cleansing gel for daily use, and the SORION CLEAR Spot On, a concentrated cream applied directly to individual spots. The company says the effect of the new products was confirmed in a clinical user study, but the study is not named or published on its website [4].

On safety, the brand highlights a skin-tolerance rating of "very good" from the dermatological testing institute Dermatest [1]. This seal refers to how well the skin tolerates a product, not to how well it works. The company adds that its products suit all skin types and children from three years of age.

Sorion's most visible recognition concerns the growth of its owner rather than its products. In the FOCUS BUSINESS ranking of 500 German "Growth Champions 2020", Ruehe Healthcare GmbH placed 16th overall and first in the health and pharma category [1]. The company's 2023 press release also reports a placing of 71st among the 1,000 companies in the Financial Times list of Europe's fastest-growing companies for 2020 [12]. Both rankings were based on percentage organic growth between 2015 and 2018.

The brand's homepage further states that its team received an innovation award for Sorion's basic research into Ayurvedic medicine. The name and year of the award are not given.

Sorion is an active brand. Ruehe Healthcare runs an online shop in German and English versions, and the SORION CLEAR line is promoted on the website as new. The most recent post on the company's blog, a piece on home remedies for blemished skin written by Peter Rühe, is dated 9 December 2025 [8].