← The Beauty Brains
The Beauty Brains
Menstral Mask Madness, When Skincare Trends Go a Little Too Far - Episode 416
00:51:52
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- [00:00]
A
Hi, I'm Perry, and you're listening to the Beauty Brains. Hello. Welcome to the Beauty Brains, a show where real cosmetic chemists answer your beauty product questions and give you an insider's look at the cosmetic industry. This is episode 416, and it's the first one of the new year. I'm your host, Perry Romanowski, and with me today is Valerie George. Hello, Valerie.
- [00:31]
B
Hi, Perry.
- [00:33]
A
Welcome to the New Year.
- [00:34]
B
Happy New Year. New Year, New us.
- [00:38]
A
You know what we do on this New Year's the first show of every new year. We typically look back on the year before and how our predictions went, and we make predictions for the coming year. But we're also going to be answering some of your questions, and those include, when do you need heat protectors in your products? What do we think of the Color Locker products from Fanola? And should people be worried about chemicals in their laundry detergents? But first, Valerie, how's this new year treating you?
- [01:06]
B
You know, so far, it's not been great. So I have this mystery virus that I caught. I've been very sick, actually, since the middle of December.
- [01:18]
A
Yeah, actually, that's why we didn't get a. We didn't get an end of the year show. Mainly because you were ill.
- [01:23]
B
Very ill. And then I developed an infection on top of it. Not good?
- [01:27]
A
Oh, no, I'm fine.
- [01:29]
B
Thanks for asking. And I'm on the Met. Point being, I can actually talk. I mean, sometimes I still cough, but they gave me a lot of medicine and I'm doing good. I'll follow up with my regular doctor. Hopefully, that's the only sickness I get this winter.
- [01:44]
A
Yeah, you get it out of the way, and then you're golden. Right. Because isn't it kind of warm there in Texas right now?
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B
Oh, my gosh. It was like 80 degrees on Christmas Day. Now, the weird thing is it really is a mystery bug. It's not a strain that they have the ability to test for. I think they tested me for, like, 30 different viruses, and none of them came up. So who knows what? But it's definitely the season.
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A
Well, that's good. You know, I just read a. I just finished reading a book called 2389 because, you know, I wanted to get a jump on my book reading, and I've already read three books this year.
- [02:21]
B
Wow. And it's only a couple days into the new year.
- [02:24]
A
I know they're kind of short, but I felt bad last year. I fell a little short of my goal. But who am I doing this for? I did read A lot. I read over 40 books last year.
- [02:33]
B
But now do babies books count? Because if we're counting baby books, I've already also read three books, but they're baby Cs.
- [02:42]
A
Well, I think you can count whatever book you want to count as long as you feel good about yourself. Well, I read this. Your virus. Remind me. I just read finished this book called 2389, which is about a. It's sort of like Jurassic park meets aliens, but. But everyone's like zombies in space. It's actually pretty good, but the zombies were created by a virus that was created by someone on Earth.
- [03:11]
B
Oh my goodness. I like history books. You know, I'm not into the sci fi genres. I'm into history. I did fall off the reading list a little bit last year as well, but I'm gonna be back on it. I have a whole stack of stuff I have to read. And if you guys follow me on Instagram, Osmetic Chemist, that's my personal Instagram account, towards the end of the year, or maybe even mid year, I actually give away the books that I read because I believe I could take them to a donation place. But if there's a book where you're like, man, that book looks really good and I mail it to. To you, chances are you're gonna read it.
- [03:45]
A
Yeah, absolutely. That's a great idea because I just keep stacking up the books I read and I have a big shelves which are filled with books that I've read once. And really, how often do you read a book a second time?
- [03:57]
B
Not many. That's why the ones I'm gonna keep like, oh, I'd love to read that again one day. I put those aside. But if I know I'm not going to read it again, I just take a picture, I put it on Instagram, I say what I liked about the book, and then the first person to send me their mailing address gets the book.
- [04:11]
A
You know what I like to do when I'm visiting somebody's house? Maybe I'll. Their lake house or I'll stay over or something. I'll bring a book and then I'll just.
- [04:22]
B
I love that. It's a good way to get rid of stuff around your own house, you know?
- [04:26]
A
Sure. But you're educating the rest of the world. So there you go.
- [04:31]
B
Oh, goodness.
- [04:32]
A
How did the lab move go?
- [04:34]
B
We are still moving. So for those of you guys who maybe didn't listen to a prior episode, our floor kind of snapped in our lab earlier this year. I should say just a Couple months ago, actually. And so they had to do all this repair work. We were not informed of the timing. And so basically, at the last minute, we had to. Basically, all work had to stop. And so for the last month, we hadn't had access to anything in our lab. And finally.
- [05:02]
A
Oh, no.
- [05:04]
B
We just decided, you know, we're gonna move because there's construction dust everywhere. There's some other problems with the building, not safe neighborhood, all that kind of stuff. So we're almost done moving everything, but, you know, you got to unpack it, move it to a spot. We have to wipe down all the concrete dust off everything. Even though it was wrapped up, it pretty much infiltrated everything.
- [05:26]
A
And you pretty much took the kitty that had adopted your lab, right, Doug.
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B
Yeah. Doug is. At nighttime, he comes home, you know, but he has to stay away from Butch and Frank. And during the day, he comes with me, and he's having a great time. He's put on so much weight, I have to switch his feeder to, like, a dosed feeder. Cause it turns out when you come from a mindset of food scarcity, you just eat all the time, so.
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A
Yeah, well, you know, you think of these cats, they never know where their next meal's coming from, so they gotta eat all they can when they can, right?
- [06:00]
B
Yeah. And he's still doing it. So anyway, he's super happy. I bought this cat condo for. For him. One for home, one for the lab. And the one for the lab that I bought, I didn't realize it's like, six feet tall. Whoa. We were assembling it, and I was like, oh, my God. I didn't realize I bought the big one. Of course, Mr. Cosmetic Chemist is, like, furious with me, but. Oh, well.
- [06:23]
A
Oh, it's for the kitties kitty.
- [06:26]
B
But anyway.
- [06:28]
A
All right, Valerie, this being our first show of the season, we'd like to look back on last year, see how things went. And first, we usually check out last year's stats. Last year's stats, Total episodes that we did. Do we have these stats?
- [06:42]
B
I have them, and I didn't put them in our little Just notes that we use for each other because I wanted you to guess. How many episodes do you think we had total downloaded last year?
- [06:56]
A
So this isn't the number of episodes we recorded. This is how many people downloaded it.
- [07:02]
B
How many people downloaded it? Gave it. Which presumably means they gave it a listen. I don't know. Is that a bit presumptuous? But last year, how many downloads? And the number is a bit down. So I'M glad we're going to YouTube and other channels, but sure, sure.
- [07:17]
A
Well, you know, there's a lot more content out there. People are consuming, but we're still having fun doing the show and we still get lots of questions. So I'm going to guess, let's see.
- [07:30]
B
About 200,000, 300, 7,000, 307,524.
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A
Wow. There you go. You know, I was, I'm just seeing, you know, there's only 1% of podcasts that are started go more than 10 episodes. So we're well beyond that.
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B
I was just thinking of all the podcasts I've listened to in the beauty space, and, and how many have. I'm like, oh, what happened to that podcast? It's like, yeah, podcasting is hard, right? Yeah, it is.
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A
Especially. Yeah. I think, you know, we are lucky that we never really run out of questions. And that's a tribute to the people supporting us and people listening and writing.
- [08:13]
B
In now of all time. Total, total, total ever. So actually maybe this number is pretty good. We have over just on this new platform that we're using, so not the first one. Episodes aren't in this number. We have over 3.1 million downloads just since.
- [08:33]
A
Whoa.
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B
Episode 119.
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A
Wow.
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B
That's pretty good. Yeah, that's pretty neat. And of course, 66% of our listenership is in North America, responsible for over 2 million of the downloads. And Europe is our second territory at over 600,000 downloads. And then of course, we have all the other continents except for Antarctica. But guess what our number one city is?
- [09:01]
A
Number one city. I'm gonna guess Los Angeles.
- [09:06]
B
Well, that is our top city in the United States, but our top city in the world is actually Sydney in Australia.
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A
Wow.
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B
Guess what our second city is. Our second city, Los Angeles is third all time.
- [09:22]
A
Okay, I'm gonna say somewhere with England. London, maybe Melbourne. Melbourne. Oh, stuff. More Australia.
- [09:30]
B
Right. And then Los Angeles, then Chicago, which I was a little surprised to see. Toronto, New York, Atlanta, Seattle, Brooklyn and Houston. That's our top. Houston, Texas. That's our top 10 cities. So no one in Europe making our top 10. But I was surprised to see Australia taking the top two slots.
- [09:50]
A
When I was in Hong Kong, I met a few people that were fans of the show and they came up and said hello and they took selfies with me, which is fun.
- [10:00]
B
Oh, very cool.
- [10:01]
A
I always get a little. I always get a little embarrassed by that, but I appreciate it.
- [10:06]
B
That's all right. But in terms of countries, of course, the English speaking Countries as their primary language are our top countries, with the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia, in that order. Germany coming in fifth last year, my homeland.
- [10:20]
A
Hey, what do you think of this idea? We start broadcasting our podcast in different languages. So we could just do AI versions of our voice in different languages.
- [10:33]
B
You know, I think we should try it, but I wonder if it's as annoying in other languages as it is in English to have my voice in AI.
- [10:42]
A
I do not know. Maybe I'll experiment with one next year. So you might hear a Spanish version. Hola. Donde esta right now?
- [10:51]
B
That's. Where are you?
- [10:52]
A
Oh, right.
- [10:53]
B
Estoy in estacionamiento. I'm in the parking lot. My Spanish is very limited.
- [11:00]
A
Je m' appelle, Perry. Is that French? All right, enough of these shenanigans. Let's move on to our predictions of the Year. Hype for truth, we're calling it clear. Welcome back to Predictions of the Year. Okay, last year, Valerie, we. Every year we do this. We did make predictions in the area of general trends, a hot ingredient, and a celebrity launch. So.
- [11:30]
B
All right, Perry, how did I do?
- [11:32]
A
Well, okay, you said UV protection for hair becomes a major focus. According to our AI overlords who review everything that's out there. They say this one, you. You get a win on VAL is a strong call. The trend was evaluated, was validated throughout 2025. There was a noticeable increase in hair care messaging around UV damage beyond color fade, including lipid ox, lipid oxidation, cuticle degradation, and fiber weakening. So there you go.
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B
And I. Well, I'll save it for later, but thank you. Thank you, thank you.
- [12:07]
A
Your next prediction was that there would be an increase in unsafe TikTok beauty hacks and product misuse. Unfortunately, this prediction was dead on. Also, TikTok continued to amplify misuse trends, including raw ingredient application, overuse of exfoliants, inappropriate layering, and viral do it yourself procedures.
- [12:28]
B
If I see one more TikTok with people putting pressure product on bread and toasting it, I'm going to lose my mind.
- [12:36]
A
Wait, you put stuff on bread and you toast it? What?
- [12:40]
B
Yeah. And then depending on how the toast burns or whatever determines the amount of protection a product has.
- [12:47]
A
Oh, right, the heat protecting stuff. Yeah, yeah. That. That doesn't work like that, people. Then you had the prediction that consumers will demand to see real clinical testing proof. And this one was only partially correct. And while brands talked more about studies, most consumers still struggle to distinguish marketing claims from meaningful data.
- [13:10]
B
I think that's fair.
- [13:11]
A
Yeah. You were Directionally correct. But it's going slower than you would have predicted. Here.
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B
Now for you, your general trend. You predicted a significant rise in lawsuits against natural cosmetic companies, if I remember, about deceptive marketing. Specifically, you thought Aveeno might get sued.
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A
I did. And that did not happen.
- [13:33]
B
That we know of. That we know of.
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A
That we know of. Well, as far as things go, this one was probably my most accurate one.
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B
Oh, so that's not good for the other stuff.
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A
Right, right. The specific on Aveeno was not validated, but the legal pressures around natural, clean and implied safety, that actually did have some stuff. So the AI says that, you know, my core thesis was validated.
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B
So how about our hot ingredient predictions? I know that I really kind of flopped last year. I didn't give a specific ingredient. I think I said geographical origin. Consumers would want to know exactly where their stuff is coming from.
- [14:14]
A
And this trend, you know, showed up in storytelling. Sustainability, consumption. Consumers responded to origin narratives, but they're not demanding it.
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B
That's where your tone is headed. Yep.
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A
Right. So this one didn't exactly pan out. Now, mine was. I said ectoin was gonna be a hot ingredient.
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B
I think it was.
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A
And ectoin gained some traction, so. Yeah, I know. While it didn't explode into mass market dominance, it did become respected and frequently referenced as a new active. So I would say I was all right on that one.
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B
All right.
- [14:50]
A
And then we had our celebrity launches.
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B
Woohoo.
- [14:55]
A
You said Will Smith, Jennifer Lawrence or Jenny McCarthy.
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B
I don't think any of them did.
- [15:01]
A
Nope, none of them did. I said Pedro Pascal and Margot Robbie, who were going to. And neither of those launched ones.
- [15:12]
B
So we are just so off the pulse when it comes to celebr launches. What's going on?
- [15:19]
A
Well, we miss. I still think, you know, Kelsey Grammer is going to launch one eventually. Remember, that was my miss last year.
- [15:29]
B
Yeah, that was a big miss.
- [15:33]
A
We did also do AI ones. AI Predicted hyper personalization. It says that it was accurate on that. It said, oh, of course it's going.
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B
To say it's accurate. I am never wrong.
- [15:45]
A
It said Postbiotics was going to be a hot ingredient. They said that was moderately successful. And it said Zendaya was going to launch a beauty line. That was wrong. So we did. We did at least as good as the AI.
- [15:57]
B
I think we did better than AI you know what?
- [15:59]
A
We did do better than AI So there you go. Those are our predictions. But Jace brings us to our new predictions for 2026. First, do you have a general trend or something that's going to happen in the beauty industry? Something specific?
- [16:15]
B
Well, I mean, of course I think people are still going to be concerned about UV in hair, but I think we're going to see a lot of product launches featuring real animal collagen.
- [16:29]
A
Oh, real animal collagen, wow.
- [16:31]
B
Yep. My mentor, he used to opine for the days where he could use real beef collagen and hair. He said it was incredible. And as you know, a couple years ago, I predicted beef tallow as a big movement. I think people are gonna want all the parts.
- [16:46]
A
I could see it happening. Although the industry did get away from animal test animal ingredients, largely. So that'll. It'll be a little surprising if that happens, but not a complete shock.
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B
What about you, general trend? Where is the industry headed, Perry?
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A
The industry is headed to AI stuff. I'm going to say there is going to be a major AI only brand. And so the influencer is AI the brand was created through a contract manufacturer and it's run and it's just all AI.
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B
Well, the manufacturing will be real.
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A
Right, right, right.
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B
But AI designs the products, formulates the products. The manufacturer manufactures it. All the models are AI.
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A
Yes, I. Yes, you're gonna have. You're gonna have a brand like that. And not only you're. Because I think you're gonna have a lot of brands like that, but I think that's gonna be, like, a major successful brand doing that.
- [17:49]
B
I don't know. I hope that does not come true.
- [17:51]
A
It's just easier than ever to create fake Personas and social media and such, and you can just create so much content. You know, TikTok and Instagram have been huge for building beauty brands.
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B
I don't like it.
- [18:07]
A
All right, let's move on to our hot ingredient predictions, and I'll go first on this one. Okay. I think the hot ingredient that we're going to see coming up, man, everybody's talking about exosomes, and I don't think they've really hit, have they? But I don't know. Is that. Is that already too hot?
- [18:29]
B
No, I think it's like, at the beginning of hotness.
- [18:32]
A
Well, I think exosomes are going to explode in 2026, so that's what I'm going with.
- [18:37]
B
That's a good one. I was gonna say that one. And I feel like I can't say the same thing as you, so I know I said collagen in the previous answer, so I also will not say that. But what I will say are crazy designer proteins, not like soy protein, but like, sure. Fake proteins that were used by artificial intelligence. Created by. With artificial intelligence.
- [19:04]
A
Synthetic proteins. Oh, I like it. And we'll even give you credit if they're synthetic peptides.
- [19:10]
B
Well, yes. Basically anything eight amino acids or larger is what I'm saying is going to be hot, hot, hot.
- [19:18]
A
All right, I like it. Finally, let's go with our celebrity launch predictions. Who do you think is gonna launch one?
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B
This one is always so hard. I'm gonna say Demi Moore.
- [19:30]
A
Ooh, Demi Moore, not bad. I'm gonna go with Sabrina Carpenter.
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B
But she just signed that Redken deal.
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A
Did she?
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B
I think she did. Well, that's hair. That doesn't mean she can't come out with her own makeup line.
- [19:43]
A
Right, right. Or some beauty product line. So. But. And then of course, I'm going to also say Zendaya.
- [19:52]
B
Well, if that's. Well, if you get to pick two, I'm going to say I'm still going to hold with Will Smith, but maybe not a cosmetics line. Maybe like a cologne.
- [20:03]
A
All right, well, we will check in next year to see how we did. So let's move on to beauty news. All right, I saw this first article in the Atlantic and I just thought, actually, we don't really have to talk much about it. But what I did find very funny was they say the best skin care trick is being rich, so.
- [20:35]
B
Exactly.
- [20:37]
A
If you really want good skin, you know, it helps to have a lot of money, apparently.
- [20:43]
B
You know, I always tell Mr. Cosmetic Chemist that and he agrees with me because it's like, look at Kate Middleton, for example, right? Okay, Average looking girl before she wed Prince William. Cute, you know, respectable. But when you have the best clothes, the best haircutters, the best hair colorists, you can do manicures every week. Week.
- [21:07]
A
Right.
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B
You know, yeah, she has a stressful life in a lot of ways, but, you know, nothing a facial and a massage can't fix.
- [21:15]
A
Right?
- [21:17]
B
Well, Botox, plastic surgery, veneers.
- [21:20]
A
I mean, all of that.
- [21:21]
B
I'm not saying she's had any of that, but basically, the more money you have, the more you can spend on the real procedures that are going to make you look better and younger.
- [21:32]
A
Yeah, spending a ton of money on topical skincare products are not really going to move the needle very much on how your skin looks. Now, there are lots of people who have beautiful skin and they'll swear by whatever they use, but there are some people with beautiful skin who just use like Vaseline on their face, you know, and it's just because it's a good Moisturizer and it works. So the secret, if you're just average looking, if you want great skin, have a lot of money.
- [22:04]
B
Exactly. I agree.
- [22:06]
A
I was reading through CT Cosmetics and Toiletries magazine and they had their greatest hits of 2025. So these were the articles that people read the most. So their number 10 most popular was polar versus non polar oils. So there was interest in that among formulators, I guess.
- [22:26]
B
Well, I can tell you so many chemists don't know the difference between the two topics, I promise you. Especially when it comes to even just polar or nonpolar solvents, for example.
- [22:39]
A
You know, that's the thing about formulating though in the industry is often you'll get kind of pigeonholed into one formula or one group of formulas. Cause you'll get assigned to brand and then you are working on the formulas that are already established. It's pretty rare that you create an entire new one. So I could see an entire generation of formulators who never have to even think about the polarity or non polarity of oils.
- [23:07]
B
Well, I mean, I work in reactive products, so maybe, maybe it's a bit different for me.
- [23:12]
A
Right, right. Well, absolutely, absolutely. All right. Another article number nine was the the four US bills proposed the ban on 18 cosmetic ingredients to fill the mocha gap. It seems kind of funny to me that articles about bills going through Congress would have any interest because I don't think anything's getting passed.
- [23:35]
B
Is it not really on the state level? And the states that are passing bills, it's all kind of copycat bills because groups like the Environmental Working Group and stuff are pushing to get the same list of ingredients that already are already not really used anywhere restricted. But I guess it is interesting. I mean, I think, and I hope, I guess I should say that at least on our side of the industry. Yeah, advocacy becomes something important for people because the state legislators do not know anything about cosmetic products or like how the industry really works. And for sure. And the more they know from people that know, hopefully the better.
- [24:18]
A
Yeah, I agree. It's just that I don't see a lot of regulation being passed in the next four years with our government how it is right now. So it's, it's just so deadlocked and you know, people don't agree with anything and regulations are kind of a negative thing these days. So we'll see. Another, their eighth most popular was that story about sunscreen doping and the foam format.
- [24:44]
B
That's right. That's when sunscreen got busted because the FDA said, hey, mousses are not an approved format. And you have one. Although, like I said before, really, a mousse is lotion with air bubbles in it. But I digress. So that. Yeah, good. And that's a great sunscreen too. I mean, you know, good look good, feel good, smell from that perspective. So, yeah, I'm not surprised that that was on there.
- [25:11]
A
But it's not legal, at least according to the fda. The seventh most popular was treating wrinkles with dimethylaminoethanol and retinol and mineral salts.
- [25:22]
B
Interesting. Okay, surprise. That made the top 10.
- [25:26]
A
JJ's baby powder legal battles made the top 10. So. Yeah, we talked about that all last year a few times.
- [25:33]
B
Do you miss Talc Corner?
- [25:35]
A
Yeah, you know, I mean, there were so many talc lawsuits. Of course I missed Talc Corner. But, you know, it should have. It should have had its own theme song. Really.
- [25:45]
B
Oh, my gosh. There's a really good podcast. I don't know if you've listened to it. Like we talked about it before. It infuriated me, but it was one episode on the talc lawsuits.
- [25:55]
A
Oh, really?
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B
But anyway, yeah, we just. We don't have a really good lawsuit series to cover anymore.
- [26:00]
A
There hasn't been one, at least anytime recently. All right. The fifth most popular story was microalgal bioretinoid, a retinol alternative. There's so many of these retinol alternatives that get popular, right? Bakuchiol was the big one a couple years ago, and now it's this microalgal bioretinoid.
- [26:23]
B
And that study compared it to retinol and Bakuchiol, which is very interesting. And the company was algactive. They're a very good company. I actually got to tour their headquarters in Barcelona.
- [26:34]
A
Oh, really?
- [26:34]
B
Yeah, it was really, really neat. Good stuff. Out of that group.
- [26:38]
A
Then number four was derms agree on which skin care ingredients work the best. Okay. By. By dermatologists. Dermatologists know what is good for treating diseases. I'm skeptical of their anti aging advice.
- [26:58]
B
Well, I can assure you that they don't really know anything like we do from that perspective. I was once sitting next to a dermatologist researcher from ucla. She not only conducted research, but had a practice within the university and also lectured. And I had invited her to speak to the Society of Cosmetic Chemists in California because we don't know a lot about real skills. Skin problems. Right. And she said, literally, we get no training. Like we know skin disease, we do not know products. And it's just not great that anyone would say they, you know, know products like we do as formulators because the truth is like they don't. Right. But then on the Internet you have all these dermfluencers. There's one product that just launched. This dermatologist brand is claiming they discovered how to stabilize vitamin C and they're using 3O ethyl ascorbic acid, which is a vitamin C that's been around for almost 15, 20 years out of Korea. So.
- [28:01]
A
Yeah. And they discovered it.
- [28:02]
B
Yeah, they figured it out.
- [28:05]
A
There you go. Well, you know, derm's gotta make a buck too. All right, number three, Kenya is banning 400 soaps and skin brighteners. Wow.
- [28:16]
B
That's an old article.
- [28:18]
A
Yeah. Article from 2022. Wow. Strange.
- [28:21]
B
Wow.
- [28:22]
A
Another one is a breakthrough bacteria boosts l' Oreal fossil patent on crystallized live bacteria for anti aging skin care. Wow.
- [28:31]
B
Wow.
- [28:32]
A
I just don't see them launching a live bacteria product. It just seems like some legal problems with that, you know.
- [28:39]
B
Well, why I would have read this is because probiotics actually is a very hot lawsuit topic. So it's a very easy target for consumer litigation because if you have a probiotic in a formula, you have essentially adulterated the product and then the product is misbranded because it shouldn't have this living organism put into it. And so I would have been like, oh, wow. Did they do something that technically inactivates these probiotics to circumvent, you know, this like legal challenge? But I think cosmetics and toiletries thought people thought the technology was interesting. And people always want to know what l' Oreal is up to.
- [29:22]
A
Well, they said it was this crystallization is used to deliver a live probiotic. So I don't know. That's interesting. So the top story was why the ordinary launched its GF 15% solution with a CytoScience. And GF stands for Growth factors. Geez, that sounds like a, I don't know, a drug waiting to happen.
- [29:46]
B
Yeah, it seems like a high level. I would have clicked read. What?
- [29:51]
A
Yeah. Interesting. So that's what's going on in the beauty industry. For the top stories from last year.
- [30:00]
B
Well, the New York Post also had an interesting article about really strange skin care treatments. Did you see this one?
- [30:08]
A
I did. And these all come from tick tock or something.
- [30:12]
B
Oh my gosh.
- [30:13]
A
Yeah. This is the five crazy skincare treatments that you forgot about. We might have talked about all of these at some point. Right?
- [30:21]
B
You know, I think I would have remembered talking about a bird poop facial.
- [30:26]
A
I do remember Maybe it was before you were on the show. But I remember talking about bird poop because it's high in uric acid or something.
- [30:36]
B
Maybe we did naive pregnancy brain from Baby C, I don't know. But anyway, I'm not getting one. Sheep placenta is also a bit of a crazy thing. I do recall talking about this, because, of course, with tsc, which is the sheet version of bsc, you know, it's just not a really good idea to put any of that kind of.
- [31:01]
A
BSE is bovine spongio and spondylo.
- [31:05]
B
Yeah, something. That's why we call it bse.
- [31:08]
A
It's a prion disease.
- [31:10]
B
Exactly.
- [31:11]
A
It can degrade your brain and it's a not even virus based, it's protein based.
- [31:17]
B
Interestingly, point being, we typically don't use beef or sheep products on our face, except as of late, people want sheet placenta facials.
- [31:28]
A
Wow. And you know, that's why we got away from beef products because of the mad cow disease scare in the UK in the 90s.
- [31:37]
B
Exactly.
- [31:38]
A
Now, we did talk about this next one, the vampire facial. I think the Cardassians had done it.
- [31:45]
B
We have talked about the vampire facial many times. It actually, I didn't know this fact, though. The article is alleging that Barbara Sturm invented the vampire facial.
- [31:59]
A
Really? I did not know that.
- [32:01]
B
Yeah, that's what this article is saying. And she also has spearheaded the creation of a different technology where basically it's a face cream that's infused with the proteins from each user's blood.
- [32:15]
A
Essentially what they do is they draw blood from your arm and mix it together in a cream and put it on your face, I guess. I don't know, it seems dubious to me.
- [32:24]
B
Oh, my goodness, the fourth one sounds grosser than it actually is.
- [32:29]
A
Oh, yeah, the salmon sperm stuff. Yeah, salmon DNA. And.
- [32:34]
B
Yeah, well, they take the sperm, they break it down, they pull out the DNA and then they hydrolyze it. And so you'll hear a common term for this is pdrn. And so basically, that's salmon sperm or salmon DNA. It could come from other materials, too. Actually, that should have been my ingredient. Trend is different types of PDRN from different plants like that. So I'm going to change. Change my ingredient.
- [33:00]
A
We'll give you credit.
- [33:00]
B
All right. So anyway, it's been used in South Korea for many years. And going back to 2010, a study was published in International German Journal of Cosmetic Science that proved salmon DNA did all these types of things.
- [33:18]
A
So increased skin elasticity, collagen levels, hyaluronic acid. Yeah. It's a. Is it, Is it anything more than just like a humectant kind of a thing? I don't know.
- [33:29]
B
It's topical. It can't penetrate. It can't do anything. And the last one.
- [33:37]
A
I'm sorry, I guess it's related to the vampire facial kind of thing. What?
- [33:42]
B
Well, okay, so basically, guys, it's called menstrual masking. And according to this article, which I think is overplaying the popularity of this, you essentially apply your own menstrual blood to your face for a few minutes before rinsing. And I'm sorry, it has not taken social media by storm. I don't know anyone who is doing this or admitting that they're doing it, unless they're just trying to get clicks.
- [34:10]
A
I imagine they could be getting clicks for this, but they say, indeed, a study published by the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology found that wound treatment with menstrual plasma healed 100% within 24 hours. I mean, come on, this does not seem like a good idea.
- [34:29]
B
Yeah, and basically these people who are doing these menstrual masking facials are saying, saying, oh, it's like a cheaper alternative to the aforementioned vampire facial. And the experts are like, stop pretending like you're as good as the vampire facial because essentially menstrual blood can have different bacteria and fungi in it. And also you can have sexually transmitted infections that you can transmit by having, like, little micro cuts or if it gets in through your pocket pores. And so essentially putting your period blood on your face is a terrible idea.
- [35:06]
A
You know what, honestly, I think putting any blood on your face is a bad idea. Even that vampire facial, I mean, come on. But you know, stick to the, stick to the regular topic.
- [35:15]
B
Oh, my goodness.
- [35:17]
A
Well, I see we've got, we've gone through a lot of time, but we wanted to save time for some questions because that's why, you know, people come here. Hey, our first question comes to us from Melissa.
- [35:32]
B
Hi.
- [35:33]
A
Valerie and Perry. Love your podcast. Thank you for sharing your knowledge with us. My question is, at what point does one need a heat protectant or heat protectant ingredients in their products? It seems like there has been a real marketing push in the past few years, whereas you used to never come across it. Even though we have been blow drying our hair and using curling irons for years. If I am not using hot tools like flat irons or curling irons regularly and just a quick blow dry, do I really need a heat protectant? I have long, normal uncolored treated hair. And if I don't want to use a separate product, are there ingredients that might be in products that already serve as heat protectants without actually being marketed as one? Thanks for your words of wisdom, Melissa. All right, interesting question. And she's right. You know, when I first started in the industry, nobody talked about heat protectants.
- [36:24]
B
And look at hair in the 80s, Perry.
- [36:27]
A
It was kind of blown out. I mean, and perms. It was pretty crazy. I started in the 90s, by the way.
- [36:34]
B
I know. I was waiting for you to say.
- [36:35]
A
That it was the Jennifer Aniston haircutter. Or was that. That was early 2000s even. Right.
- [36:41]
B
Well, the Rachel was like 1996. 1997.
- [36:44]
A
Oh, really? Okay.
- [36:46]
B
Yeah.
- [36:47]
A
Okay, that's. I see. I kind of remembered. Well, anyway, what do you. What do you think of this? Do you need heat protectants in all your products?
- [36:56]
B
Well, I think if you're going to apply heat to your hair, even if it's just a quick blow dry, I just think better safe than sorry. Put a heat protectant on your hair. Now, if I were Melissa, doing a quick blow dry with my hands and then stopping the heat or maybe just doing a quick finish with a brush, would I put one on? Probably not.
- [37:19]
A
Yeah.
- [37:20]
B
It's like a doctor who smokes telling a patient, you know, stop smoking, but.
- [37:25]
A
Right.
- [37:26]
B
I don't know. I just think better safe than sorry. And would you notice a difference if you did or didn't? Maybe not. But if you are putting a lot of heat or sometimes using a hot tool, like, you definitely really need to use one, cumulatively, I think the damage can be an issue. Just in my opinion. Now, there is a little bit of good news. Sometimes products like conditioners that rinse off have some inherent, very light heat protection to them. And I'm talking like a quick blow dry with your hands on your hair type. It's just the nature that materials are left behind called conditioning agents, and they do buffer a little bit of some of that heat. But again, if it were a lot of heat or you were round brushing your hair, I. I probably would recommend a supplemental product.
- [38:17]
A
Yeah, I think a lot of products have dimethicone in it, and dimethicone even, to some extent, is going to give you some protection.
- [38:25]
B
Or amodimethicone.
- [38:26]
A
Amodimethicone for sure. So if it has that, you're getting at least some. I personally don't think you're going to notice much difference. If you're just blow drying, you're not using like a curling iron or A flat iron, whether you skip the. The protector. I mean, you already got a conditioner on it, so that's going to protect your cuticles to some extent. So I'm not as gung ho on having to use a heat protectant as maybe Valerie is. But Valerie's also not incorrect that there's no downside to using it, so. Except it's kind of inconvenient for an extra product like that.
- [39:03]
B
Yeah. But, you know, you could be in the shower, put a little quick gloss on, just, you know, a couple seconds, something, anything. It's not like a huge extra step.
- [39:11]
A
So, I mean, it would be for me. But don't take beauty, beauty grooming advice from me.
- [39:21]
B
Oh, my goodness.
- [39:22]
A
All right, we got our next question.
- [39:25]
B
Hi. I'm a big fan of the podcast. I always learn so much. Hope Baby C is doing well. And also, of course, course the cats. My little one is six months and also definitely has discovered her shrieking voice. Baby C will not stop shrieking. It's out of control. Anyway, I wonder what your opinion is about the Color Locker products from Fanola. I also wonder if their conditioner is actually better in preserving color than, for instance, the Tresemme for damaged hair that I have. Thanks so much, Barbara. Listening from Madrid.
- [40:00]
A
Ah, I love Madrid. Have you been to Madrid?
- [40:02]
B
I haven't been there, no.
- [40:04]
A
Oh, it's a fabulous city. Although you gotta take a nap before you go to dinner because nobody goes to dinner till like, 10pm Oh, I.
- [40:12]
B
Couldn'T survive in Spain like that. I mean, I'm in bed at 9pm, right?
- [40:17]
A
Yeah, you'll miss dinner. All right, let's talk about these products. Are you familiar with the Color Locker products from Fanola?
- [40:26]
B
Well, I'm familiar with the brand Fanola. It's very popular in Europe. I actually think it comes out of Italy. And they have a lot of color depositing, like treatments for hair, and that's how I know them. But I did have to go look up some of the Color Locker products because I wasn't familiar with that specific line that they offer.
- [40:46]
A
I'm looking at their products, like their shampoos or, you know, sodium laureth sulfate, and they're pretty cocomedal, probable Betaine. They're pretty. Pretty standard. Right.
- [40:57]
B
I think their ingredients look like common ingredients that we all have access to and that everyone's using. And so the only way to know would be to know if it were better than Tresemme or a superior type product would be to try it and use it. You know, they don't really advertise clinical testing per se. You know, they mention, oh, it hydrates and nourishes, smooths and seals hair. Soft and shiny seals micro pigments inside the hair, which is a claim that drives me crazy. But the only real way to, to know if it's better would be to use it. But like Perry said, just looking at the ingredients, I don't think there's anything miraculous in here that they have that other normal brands, you know, are using.
- [41:45]
A
I'm. I'm looking. They don't seem to. I mean, it's. It seems more like they say we're going to be the color four colored hair products, and we're just. All our marketing is for that. But as far as their technology goes, their technology, I don't see anything in the technology that's particularly special to hold your color in better than something else. I'm sure they have all the standard stuff, the cationic polymers, the silicones and such that can protect it, but I think you're not going to notice any extra results from as far as your color goes. I do. Although look at the pricing of this, and the pricing seems reasonable enough that you could just try it, see if it's good.
- [42:30]
B
I think it looks pretty good for the sizes.
- [42:33]
A
Right, Right. I just also think it would be hard for you to tell whether it's making a big difference or not. We're just not very good at telling.
- [42:42]
B
You know, you could tell if it's making the color weird, worse, like if you're right. Yeah. So interestingly enough, if you remove color from hair, but you remove color evenly in all portions of the color spectrum, a consumer's not likely to notice that their hair is kind of getting lighter. But if you're removing a specific piece of color, like more blue is coming out or more red is coming out, very simplistically put, the color of your hair is going to start to shift and that a consumer will notice. So if your hair, if you dyed it brown and it fades kind of yellowish, like a consumer would notice, but if it just got lighter brown, they wouldn't.
- [43:23]
A
Overall, I think it's. It's worth trying. Like I said, I don't see any technology in there that would make it work better than Tresemme, for example, but, you know, you might like how it smells better and the price is right. Looks like we got time for one more question, and this one's a little bit off the beaten path of beauty products, but I thought it certainly something we could talk about. Question Comes from Kara. She says, hi, guys. I always enjoy the podcast and really appreciate your point of view and expertise. This question may be out of the scope of the show as it relates to laundry detergent, but I thought you might have an opinion. I've been seeing a number of posts on Instagram claiming the dangers of laundry determinant detergents, and she posted a couple from a dermatologist.
- [44:08]
B
Ugh. I've seen these exact same ones and I'm like, I just, I'm too sick to like go attack them right now. Sure. Not that I would attack them, but.
- [44:18]
A
You know, she says, I understand it's not beauty related, so I'll be sure to follow up on the beauty question. But I was wondering, what do you think of this? Should we be worried about our laundry detergents? All my best, Kara. And then she listed it. Essentially it's an Instagram post that says, behind the colorful packaging and free and clear messaging, the ugly truth. The laundry detergent I was about to promote was full of cancer causing ingredients.
- [44:46]
B
Oh, no.
- [44:48]
A
And then of course, at the bottom of her post, it says, read my list of the top five best laundry detergents to avoid cancer causing chemicals. So this is the problem with all of this Instagram and social media stuff in general. If somebody is trying to sell something and they're using fear marketing, they lose all their credibility in my estimation.
- [45:10]
B
Yeah, so I've seen these targeted ads as well, Perry, and fortunately for them, I was too sick to go reason with the dermatologist. I don't want to say attack, I want to say reason with them. Because the truth is, you know, laundry is not a cosmetic product, but they're made with the same detergents, are made with the same chemicals that you would make a shampoo with or something like that. Now, there may be different grades of materials. So in cosmetics, we use cosmetic grade. Pharmaceutical products, depending on the raw material, might have a USP grade. And sometimes depending on the company, you might get a more technical grade of a surfactant. But those hi and I companies are what we call them household and industrial companies. Industrial companies, yeah, Follow the same regulations that cosmetics have. So for example, they're alleging that, oh, you know, the brand is clean, but it uses SLS and it contains 14 dioxane. First of all, the influencer wouldn't know that unless they sent it out for 1:4 dioxane testing, which is not inexpensive to do, and also tested it at different time points.
- [46:24]
A
Well, I'm sure just some, I'm sure some NGO told them, oh, it has 14 dioxane in it.
- [46:30]
B
And by the way, just like cosmetics are regulated for 14 dioxane, so are laundry detergents. And they actually have a bigger burden of proof because they actually do all the way go down the drain. Like their purpose is to fill water and be rinsed down the drain.
- [46:47]
A
So, you know, I do want to point out, though, SLS, sodium lauryl sulfate, it has NO1 4 DIY.
- [46:53]
B
It's not ethoxylate. That's a really great point, Slate. Yes, would. Yeah, great point.
- [46:58]
A
SL es. Yeah. But SLS is not. And sls. There's nothing wrong with sls. Sls, I mean, it's. If you put a high concentration on your skin, it's going to be irritating. But low concentrations, it's a great cleanser, it's a great detergent. And I got news for you. If it's in your laundry detergent, it's getting washed down the drain. There's not any residual SLS on your clothes.
- [47:25]
B
Well, let's say it's SLES and they made a typo. Okay. And 14 dioxane is present. All companies are required to comply with New York law, which is 1 ppm. And other states are starting to adopt these limits as well. So they're primarily moving away from sles and just switching to SLS or non ethoxylated systems in order to comply. So I think this is exactly what we think it is. And what you said, Perry, it's fear marketing.
- [47:55]
A
Yeah, fear mongering. To get you to buy something that they're selling. I will say they call out formaldehyde. So, you know, products. Nobody adds formaldehyde to products anymore. They may be formaldehyde donors. So there's these trace amounts that are regulated and they run down the drain. And it's water soluble, so it's not going to even. It's in your laundry detergent. It's going to be rinsed away and you're not exposed to it. Optical brighteners, they're dyes, they're not carcinogens. So it seems just like a lot of concern here for no problems.
- [48:31]
B
Well, let's just go back to the formaldehyde donors. So the preservatives that are typically used that have the potential to decompose into formaldehyde are used at very tiny levels. And by the way, they've been used since at least the 70s or 80s.
- [48:47]
A
Right.
- [48:47]
B
I haven't even.
- [48:48]
A
Formaldehyde donors.
- [48:49]
B
60S.
- [48:50]
A
Yeah, 60s and 50.
- [48:52]
B
Okay. Probably if they were to decompose to their maximum amount of formaldehyde released. At their maximum use level. A banana has more formaldehyde than the amount of formaldehyde released at the full potential. Does that make sense?
- [49:08]
A
Right? Oh yeah, yeah.
- [49:10]
B
So essentially I hope this lady is not throwing a banana in the trash or eating a banana.
- [49:17]
A
It's so often happens like that. But fear marketing is very strong, very effective. And if you look a little deeper, you see like these things are regulated and there are safe levels of uses of certain ingredients. Even if a gigantic high level is going to cause problems, low levels that get rinsed away and you never get exposed to are not causing problems. So this looks just total fear marketing.
- [49:46]
B
Well, Kara, don't be scared about your laundry detergent. I'm sure it's fine.
- [49:52]
A
Well, I'm not scared about that music that I'm hearing either.
- [49:56]
B
It's time to go. Thanks for listening everyone. If you get a chance, head over to Apple Podcasts or Spotify and leave us review that's going to help other people find the show and ensure we have a full docket of beauty questions to answer.
- [50:08]
A
Speaking of questions, if you have a questions like why is that cat tail in my video feed?
- [50:15]
B
Say hi Dougie. Say hi.
- [50:18]
A
Yeah, this whole, this whole show, Valerie's cat has been on her sticking his tail. I love it. Just like I love cats. Speaking of cats and questions, if you have a question, just record it on your smartphone and email to the beautybrains gmail.com or you can fill out the form that's in the show notes or you can just call us at 1-872-216-1856 and leave a voicemail message. That's so we got that. Additionally, the Beauty Brains are on Patreon if you like what we do. And the fact that we don't have any commercials, well, that's because we have patrons who support support us. If you want to support us, go over to patreon.com thebeautybrains and subscribe at any level. And if you do, you get your question answered on a higher priority. And we also in the coming year are going to have some patron only events.
- [51:12]
B
I'm so excited. Also, don't forget to follow us on our various social media accounts. On Instagram, we're at The Beauty Brains 2018 on X, we're at the Beauty Brains. On Blue sky, we're at the Beauty Brains. We have a Facebook page, a TikTok and a YouTube.
- [51:26]
A
Wow, we are all out there, aren't we? And we'll be more out there next year. This year.
- [51:30]
B
I mean, we always start the year strong, and that's what I love about us.
- [51:34]
A
Yeah. You know.
- [51:37]
B
Well, thanks again for listening, everyone. And remember, be brainy about your beauty.
- [51:42]
A
Thanks, everyone. Kittens.