Perry Romanowski (0:00)

Hi, I'm Perry and you're listening to the Beauty Brains. Hello and 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 402i. Hello, I'm your host, Perry Romanowski and with me today is Nobody. It's just a solo episode here today. Valerie of course is off well taking care of her baby. She actually had a baby boy and perhaps we'll get more details about that when she returns early next month. No doubt, you know, she's taking some time for the baby. Apparently babies take some work. But the work goes on here at Beauty Brain central. And on today's show we're going to cover lots of questions including are the is clinical hydrocool products special? What do we think of the anti aging effectiveness of the Pavis sunscreen? What ingredients might be responsible for the great results in a conditioner? What can be done about under eye dark circles? And finally, how do you practice sun safety? Diligently. I hope you do it more diligently than me. I'm not very good at it, but I could talk about it. Alright. You know, this is normally where we do chitchat and of course, you know, I interact with Valerie, but Valerie's not here. In fact, the only one here is my cat Teddy. And hopefully I had to shut the door because he kept jumping on my lap. It's not the best thing to try to podcast and pay attention while, you know, you have a cat. But you know, he's doing good. All the outdoor kitties are all doing well. It's nice summer here in Chicago, so they just mostly lounge around underneath bushes and things. But you know, summer does make me go outside a bit more. You know, I go out to do my running and my leg is still kind of gimpy but seems to be getting better. So maybe I don't need that physical therapy after all. We'll see. I guess. You know, I'm, I'm terrible at making doctor appointments. I don't have anything against the doctor. I'd be perfectly happy to go. It's the appointment part, you know, you have to call people or figure it out online. It's all very complex, our health. You know, I need, I need a personal assistant to do this for me, otherwise it doesn't get done. But you know, the truth is it does remind me of realities about any condition, whether it's cosmetic or health related. You know, there are three things that can happen with any kind of treatment that you do. First, things could get better. So you do a treatment, it gets better. Another thing that could happen is it could get worse. You do a treatment and it keeps getting worse. And then the third thing that can happen is nothing. It stays exactly the same. You do the treatment and it stays the same. So get better, get worse, stay the same. Those are the three things that can happen with any health condition or, you know, any beauty condition, wrinkles, or the way you look or dandruff or whatever, anything. But you know what? Whether you do a treatment or not, those same three things can happen. So if you do nothing, it can get better and get worse. And. Or it could stay the same. And for now, I guess my doing nothing for my leg is it's getting better. So do I need to do anything? I don't know. I probably should. All right. Normally we would talk about the news, and I thought I'd do something a little different since solo show, why not? I'll just do a quick. Let me just talk about a topic that, you know, it's been on my mind a bit and I haven't really talked about it recently. So let's talk about the natural and organic products. I get these in my inbox all the time. Products, talking about how organic or natural they are. And, you know, honestly, as a chemist, it kind of bugs me because I'm a little bit tired of watching smart consumers get sucked in by these fancy marketing stories. The packaging, the green leaves on the label, and this promise that a natural product is better. And by implication, anything that's synthetic is not better. You know, and here's a spoiler alert. Natural is not better. Cosmetics are not natural. You can't go out and grow yourself a skin lotion. You just can't. There's no skin lotion plant. No, it's. It's not natural. You have to gather up the materials, take them into a laboratory, and mix them together in the right proportions to create a lotion that you're going to use. And no natural plant is going to do that for you. There isn't that. The closest you can get to a real natural product would be something like coconut oil, where, you know, the coconut makes it. You squeeze it out of the oil, out of the plant, and you got that oil. That's it. Just that one ingredient. I mean, coconut milk, something like that. So things that plants produce, but plants don't produce lipstick, and they don't produce moisturizers, and they don't produce cleansers. There's nothing Natural about cosmetics, you see, they try to use that natural terms in the same way that food they try to do natural for food. And for food, there is natural. You can go out and grab a banana off a tree and eat it because it was naturally grown. It's food. It's plants. That's what they grow, food. You can't go to a bush and pick off a lipstick because plants do not grow cosmetics. So cosmetics are not natural. Okay? Now you might say, well, it's not natural, but it's made unnatural stuff. And okay, it starts that way, but you have to process everything to make it into a cosmetic. And in those processing stops, start steps. You make it less and less natural and more and more synthetic. And so really, there's no products on the market, with the exception of, I think Jason has a coconut oil that you could just buy for your hair. But besides that, there are no natural cosmetics there, and certainly there are no natural color cosmetics. Again, while the colorants can be natural, they're not out there naturally in the form that you could use them in a cosmetic. Now, let's talk also about safety. Now, people often assume that if a product is organic, then it must be safer. But here's the truth. You know, nature doesn't care about your skin or your hair. Nature doesn't care what you look like. Quite frankly, the natural human look would be, I don't know, something like pictures of Neanderthals or something like that. You know, that's caveman kind of stuff. Like, we aren't really. It's not natural to try to look good with cosmetics. Just not natural, you know. And, you know, nature is often trying to kill us. There's poison, there's arsenic, radiation. I mean, these things are all natural, and they're all dangerous. Even petrolatum that you get from petroleum and from oil. Oil's natural. We don't. We don't synthesize oil. We just drill that right out of the ground. And so that's natural. And then things like essential oils, they can cause phototoxicity, allergic reactions, skin irritation. You know, these are natural things, and they're not more safe. And if you talk about performance, the synthetic ingredients were invented because they were improvements on what we were using for natural things. One that I think of is shellac. We used to use shellac for hair styling. It was like hairspray. And shellac is, you know, it's a natural resin that comes from the secretion of an insect, you know, and the insects are in India or something like that. Anyway, it's natural. And the problem with it is it holds your hair, but you can't get it off. It's hard to get off. So thus we invented the synthetic polymer polyvinyl pyrrolidone, which holds wonderfully, but then you can wash it off. So that's nice. So when you're talking about performance, synthetic products are designed to work better than anything that's natural. And they do, they really do. Now if you want a moisturizer that actually moisturizes or you know, a retinoid that doesn't break down before it reaches your skin, chances are you're going to need some extra boost from science to make sure that those things are stabilized and that they work. That doesn't make it bad, that just makes it more effective. And here's the kicker. You know, the thing that nobody wants to talk about. These organic products and natural products are often worse for the environment. Yeah, worse. I mean, organic farming, it uses more land, more water, it has lower yields. And if you're harvesting like rare plants and some of your luxury serums, you know, you're not saving the planet, you're actually contributing to the loss of biodiversity. Compared that to some lab made actives, these things are scalable, they're consistent, and they're far less demanding of natural resources. We're just much more efficient at creating these synthetic things. We know all the steps in making them. You know, sustainability isn't just about natural. It's, you know, sometimes you got to use your brain. But the thing that I think most frustrates me about this is the way that these things are marketed. Like the, the whole natural equals virtuous or this narrative. It's, it's just pure branding. You know, these companies are selling you an identity, they're not selling you any extra benefits. You're not just buying that lotion, you're buying this illusion that you're a better person doing better things for the environment by picking this, this. It's fear marketing. It's guilt marketing. They make you fear chemicals, they make you fear science, they make you fear, you know, man made things and they get you to spend more money on products that don't work as good. So, you know, I'm not saying that all natural ingredients are bad. Now there's, there's plenty of great ingredients that are natural. And you know, if you want to tend more towards natural cosmetics, you could find products that work perfect, perfectly fine. It's just that these, they're not natural, they're maybe a little less synthesized than other things. But let's not kidding ourselves. Cosmetics are not natural. So if you really want skincare that works, I would just skip the stories and just look for ingredients that actually work. Get evidence, and don't worry about where they came from, because that doesn't matter when it comes to performance. All right, well, that's my rant for today. So let's move on to some of the questions that were sent in. First question was sent in by Deb. She says, are you familiar with is clinical products, specifically the hydracool, their hyaluronic acid product, and their pro heal serum. I am new to is and always wary because I have rosacea. Any thoughts regarding this rather pricey line of products which would be most appreciated? And then I looked up the products here. So let's talk about this hydrocool serum. So what's in it? The main thing that they say is in it is hyaluronic acid. You know, they have sodium hyaluronate in it, and it's the second ingredient in there. And then they have pantothenic acid or, like, panthenol, pentalene glycol, another humectant, and then some mushrooms and centella extracts. It's got this lightweight texture. So, you know, it's probably. Aesthetically, it's nice. But let's talk about these actives. I mean, the product costs over a hundred bucks. Like, whoa. I mean, that's. That's up there, but okay, but, you know, that's me. Let's talk about. I mean, hyaluronic acid is everywhere. There's literally hundreds of cheaper options that exist to just hydrate the skin like that. And don't get me started on, you know, glycerin is perfectly fine compared to hyaluronic acid because it actually, in practice, works better. Then there's menthol in there, which is just this gimmicky cooling thing. It feels kind of cool. You put menthol on your skin, it kind of feels. That gives that, wow, it's working kind of feel. But it can actually irritate sensitive skin. And so if you have rosacea, it's probably not a good idea to. To use that. Then they have this extract overload. I mean, okay, centella and mushrooms and all these botanical extracts, they all sound nice, but honestly, that's all the claims agree. These things are not actually doing it. If. If there was a compounder who was making these products and they forgot to put the mushroom extract in there, you would notice exactly no difference in performance, because these things Aren't really doing anything measurable except giving you a story to, to learn about and you know, mushrooms. It, well, sounds natural. And then as far as the marketing goes here, I mean, there's really no evidence that this combination of ingredients does anything what beyond what a hyaluronic acid serum would do or some other kind of calming gel. So I would say this is, you know, this may be a pleasant, cool feeling serum when you use it, but I don't see anything revolutionary here. And it's definitely overpriced. So you know, if it feels good to you and, but it's not gonna be for me, it's not gonna perform better. Now let's look at their pro heal serum. And they say, you know, it's got l. Ascorbic. Oh, vitamin C, vitamin E. Okay. Olive leaf extract, zinc sulfate, retinol, kojic acid. It's not a lot of ingredients. In fact, there's probably too many ingredients that are just crammed in there together. Ascorbic acid is notoriously unstable and irritating. So by the time you get it, probably you're not getting any of the oxidation value or the antioxidant value of ascorbic acid. And then when you have alcohol in there, you have retinol, kojic acid, zinc sulfate. I mean this could be a red flag formula for sensitive skin, especially rosacea prone skin. Those ingredients could cause some problems for that. And they had this antioxidant cocktail. You know, while vitamin C and E theoretically can work synergistically together, and that's from the skinceuticals had this patent on it for C and E and ferulic acid, you know, the, is clinical. They haven't really released any detailed stability data. So you know, do, when they put those ingredients together, do they stay active or degrade? You know, you can't really know. Now if you look at this product, many of the ingredients, the ascorbic acid, the retinol, they can aggravate sensitive skin. So even if the olive leaf or the zinc may be put in there to calm the inflammation, in theory, theory, you could still have a problem with this. So it's, it's not, you know, it's not, not that promising. If you have a concern about rosacea already, again, this is a $165 serum. You'd expect some sort of published trials or outcomes. You know, it's just they offer you a marketing copy. So not, not any supporting science. Although I have to say I would be skeptical of the supporting science too. So, you know, I'm just Generally skeptical of research published by a company that's trying to get you to buy something. But that's how the cosmetic industry is now, is clinical. They position themselves as clinical grade skin care. But you know, they don't have peer reviewed studies, they don't have independent comparisons. In fact, they give you very little formulation detail at all. So the bottom line is, as we always say here, the price of something does not tell you anything about its performance and is clinical uses. They have nice packaging, they have polished marketing. Of course it's a prestige positioning and you know, that's often what it is. But mostly you're just paying for the branding. There's no breakthrough formulations that I see here based on the ingredient lists and such. Now, if you do have a rosacea, you know, you're probably better off looking for something that's a more simple product. Fragrance free products, you know, something that's designed for barrier repair, not like this cosmeceutical things. I know La Roche Posay has some products, Vanicream, you know, even the ordinary has some products that you might try that you can get all of these same benefits for a lot less money. All right, thanks for that question. Next up is Angela. Dear Beauty Brains, I just discovered your podcast and love it. Oh, well, thank you, Angela. Thank you for sharing your knowledge. I would like to ask your opinion about the anti aging and sun protection effectiveness of Pavise sunscreen. Thank you, Angela. All right. Pavie sunscreen. You know, when you asked about it, I had not heard of this before and yet now I see it's outsmart skin aging with damage. Diamond core. Ooh, diamond core technology. Skin that behaves younger, powered by patented biotechnology. Okay, they're going for the science play here. So at its core, Pevis, as I can see it, they use 15% zinc oxide and zinc oxide is an approved mineral sunscreen filter in the US that's effective and safe. So it works. But this is hardly groundbreaking compared to the countless other mineral sunscreens that are out there. There's tons of them. But that's the thing about sunscreen that's hard for companies to sell sunscreen because everybody is restricted, at least in the United States and around the world. You're restricted to the ingredients, just different ones. But everyone is restricted to the same ingredients that they can use for the active ingredient, the part that makes the sunscreen. Not now, you can put other ingredients in there and you can get some variation there. But as far as if you're making a sunscreen, there are actives you have to use in the United States. Zinc oxide is one of those actives. Titanium dioxide is another one of those actives. And then there are all these organic chemical sunscreens, avobenzone, the ones like that. So there's, you know, there's 16, there's really only eight that are still produced in the United States. But anyway, everybody has to use those. And then, so if you're, you got to use those and they tell you the, the maximum you use for zinc, for example, is 25%. They use 15% here. And presumably they get to some level now they have this diamond core technology and this is purely marketing spin because, you know, it's just zinc oxide with, mixed with diamond powder. And now they claim it eradicates 80% of the reactive oxygen species and boost collagens. But then they don't provide any studies on that and they're not transparent about their methodology. So, okay, so you can just say that, I mean, how, how are you going to measure that you've eradicated 80% of the reactive oxygen species. And just because you did that, that, does that mean anything? 80%. But you know, if 20% will do just as much damage, you haven't really helped anything. So, so I don't know. It doesn't help for me. Then this is touted as SPF 30. And then they have the PA plus plus, which is the way that, you know, that's the Japanese and Korean rating. We don't really do that in the United states. There's only SPF. So it's SPF 30 that is regulated. But the PA, which indicates a UVA protection right now, that's not regulated in the US So the actual performance, you know, that's just depends on the various test conditions that there's not really a good way to test for UVA protection, despite what companies will put on there. There are tests, don't get me wrong, there's just not a good one. Because you see, SPF testing is easy. Sun protection factor is what you can measure when somebody burns, how many minutes does it take them to burn? And you put your cream on and then you can see how long does it take to burn with our cream on. And then you get your SPF. So SPF 30 means that you can be in the sun for 30 times, however minutes it takes you to burn. So if you're a person who goes out in the sun and you burn in one minute, you wear an SPF 30. Well, you can be out in the sun for 30 minutes if you burn in 10 minutes and you wear an SPF 30. Well, theoretically, you can go out in the sun for 300 minutes. Or was that six hours or five hours? Well, I wouldn't, you know, you want to reapply, but that's, that's the idea with spf. So there's a way to measure that with uva. We don't know how to measure UVA because we, you know, it takes a long time. UVA is the one that's responsible for tanning, and so it takes a long time for tanning to show up. So there's no test you can do to measure how well something protects from uv? No, no good test, in my opinion, for measuring uva. So anyway, that's, that's why we haven't worked out here in the US Now Pavus brags about having this photo aging defense cocktail, and that includes niacinamide, astaxanthin, pycnol, pycnogenol, silymarin, licorice extract, transexam, you know, all these things you have in other things. But, you know, while individually, some of these might be able to show benefits if you isolate them, whether that translates to a product, I don't know. But when you cram them all together at these, all these different concentrations, how are you going to know that this is. First, Are they effective? Are they stable? Do they have any meaningful effect at all? They could just put on there at a small level and, you know, not do anything. But. And that's very common here. So, you know, I, I'm skeptical of it. Like, if they forgot one, it's, it's a lot, A lot of times these ingredients are like that mushroom extract, where whether it's in there or not, you're not really gonna notice. Now whether these are in there at high enough levels to do anything with all the other stuff going on, I'm, I'm a little skeptical of that. Now, this brand features stats like 87% of people noticed reduced photo damage. But, you know, how did they get that? That looks like it's a survey. Users. And, you know, honestly, I've been involved in enough consumer surveys where you can pretty much get any kind of data you want for something like that. You know, how is a consumer going to notice reduced photo damage? Well, if you go out in the sun and you don't get sunburned, you say, oh, I didn't get photo damage. Well, of course you didn't, because, you know, you have sunscreen on. So, you know, I don't Put a lot of faith in the survey users or consumer reported results. Of course you're going to have good results. I would say, why Was it only 87%? Why didn't everybody notice? But you know, so this isn't controlled clinical data. These, I'm way skeptical of surveys. There's plenty of room for placebo and biases here. Now looking at some of the reviews of this, people say that it's smooth and it's a non white cast mineral spf. So it might be great for some people. But you know, like any kind of zinc oxide sunscreen, you're probably gonna have a slight cast to it. So if you have darker skin, it's, you know, it's probably, it's probably gonna show up a little bit there. So you know, that's just the nature of zinc oxide. It's just how it is. Unless you go to like nano, which you know, people kind of want to stay away from nano. But then I looked at this. The retail price is 148 for 30ml. That's hugely steep for a sunscreen. I mean sunscreen is expensive as it is. But this, this is ridiculous. This is probably one of the most expensive mineral sunscreens I've ever seen on the market. So. Wow. So, okay, so is pampas effective? I'm going to say yes, it's of course it's effective. It's zinc oxide based sunscreen. So definitely it's going to provide you your UV protection. And I have no doubt that they've done the as well. I have no reason to doubt that they've done the SPF testing. So if they says 30, it's an SPF 30. Is this a revolutionary product? There's nothing about it that seems revolutionary to me. You know, mostly it's the anti aging claims. They rely sort of just on marketing fluff and ingredients that you've seen everywhere else. There's no robust bust, independent evidence and $148 for 30amp mils. Wow. That for me is very hard to sell. You're paying super premium for branding, luxury packaging and then this proprietary zinc oxide blends which is just zinc. I mean there's plenty of better lower cost alternatives in my opinion that offer SPF 30 to 50. And the, you know, the formulas are good and you know, if antioxidants still intrigue you that much, I would suggest you just do a separate niacinamide serum or something to your routine. So Pavis is this luxury mineral sunscreen with this fancy story. But you know, the Core ingredients, the zinc oxide, that's. That's old news. And this, this diamond and glitter stuff, you know, that's. That's all just kind of marketing here. You're essentially paying for branding and exclusivity. There's not a lot of breakthrough science here. Okay, enough of just hearing my voice. We've got a real person who sent in an audio question.