In this first‑person YouTube monologue, Andy Hnilo recounts a life‑changing pedestrian accident on March 20 2011, describing severe facial fractures, broken ribs, a collapsed lung, and a week in the ICU. During recovery, a nurse’s encouragement spurred him to experiment with natural healing ingredients. He combined clays (Russell, bentonite, rhassoul, French iolite), kelp powder, vitamin C, freshwater pearl powder, American ginseng, manuka honey, colostrum, beeswax, cacao butter, and sea‑buckthorn oil into a series of DIY skin treatments—a mineral‑rich mask, a morning tonic, and a night‑cream paste. Over three to four weeks the abrasions healed, swelling reduced, and scar appearance improved, impressing observers in the ICU. This personal healing protocol became the foundation for the Alitura skincare line, illustrating how necessity drove product development.
Chapters
That all kind of came to a halt March 20th, 2011, crossing the street, got hit by a westbound Land Rover, hit in the eastbound lane, run over by a Tundra, clothes cut off me in the middle of the street, unrecognizable. The left side of my face, the maxillofacial bone was just in pieces. So they put a titanium plate up top, 7 broken ribs, a collapsed lung where they had to put a chest tube in to drain it. Spent about a week in the ICU. I walked out of the hospital. One of my nurses was an ex-Marine. He's like, hey, any day you can walk out of the hospital, it's a pretty good day. Good luck on your recovery. And that really set the down for it. I was ordering beeswax. I had my favorite essential oils that worked with my skin— olive, sea buckthorn, chamomile, cacao butter. And so I'd make these paste post-clay masks. By that time, I had learned about Russell clay, kelp powder, vitamin C. And so I made this little makeshift mask. A friend of mine dropped off a jar of manuka honey and colostrum just to take, and I just went, if that is so good internally, let's just experiment with it on the face. And so I added that to the Russell the bentonite, vitamin C, kelp powder. And then I started experimenting with this tonic, jaw wired shut, just trying to figure out how I could build my system back through adaptogenic herbs, really good superfoods. So I made this morning tonic and I started experimenting with some of the ingredients that I put into that tonic. A lot of things didn't work, but the things that did into the mask were the freshwater pearl powder, colostrum, American ginseng, organic kelp powder, vitamin C, a blend of kale and clay, bentonite, rhassoul, and French iolite clay. So 4 clays. But it was just like this mineralizing superfood meal for the skin that would create microcirculation so the surface and then subtly exfoliate over time. And then I followed it with this paste, which is now our night cream, of manuka honey, colostrum, beeswax, cacao butter, sea buckthorn oil. We obviously added some active ingredients down the road, but at that time I was just melting it down, and that was my whole healing process. And within 3 to 4 weeks, the abrasions were gone. Obviously the swelling and scarring wasn't, but the swelling had gone down, the scarring was starting to look a little bit better, and people who saw me in the ICU were just completely blown away
