Hi, I'm Valerie and you're listening to The Beauty Brains. [Music] 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 423. I'm your host Valerie Georgian with me today is Peri Romanovski. Hi Peri. Hello Valerie, great to see you. Great to see you, birthday boy. On today's show we're going to cover lots of questions including, does NAD skincare actually have real efficacy data? Do hair masks give better results if they're left on longer? Does shampooing after depositing hair color weaken or degrade it and, last but not least, is glycerin drying skin at high altitudes? But first, that's anane chit chat. Whoa, Valerie, didn't you just come back from California or something? I did. I had a production in Los Angeles two days off site at a facility. It was a project I completed a while ago, but it cashed in their chips as I like to say and said, "Guess what? You were coming now and we're going to scale up and that's what I did." Oh, that's fun, yeah, I guess that's a job that a lot of people don't know that the cosmetic formulae they will do. You know, you make the formulas in a lab at small levels, maybe, I don't know, what's the most two kilograms? It's the matte mocks you're going to make of something. 3.5 is kind of my max reliable quantity, less for hair color. Right, but normally you're making batches of like 500 grams, so just over a soda can worth a product. And that's great for the lab and for testing as such, but when you have to actually make it thousands of bottles, well then they're doing it in a tank, I don't know what size it takes, our tanks were like 3,000 gallon tanks, like huge tanks, we center stirers and stuff. Oh yeah, well in full production, yes, this was just the pilot scale up, so we were just making a few hundred pounds or I think 35 working gallons is what we were doing, but it is interesting, a lot of formulas, I think, oh I can make it in a beaker and don't think about the production side, but as I have my own R&D facility, I have to guarantee it can be scaled up and so essentially, I'm on site at production, especially if there's no process engineer working at the facility, or even if there is a process engineer, actually I'm on site for all those types of scale-ups, and you modify the process, viscosity sometimes come out a little different, so you want to understand what's happening in production. Okay, oh we need to recirculate, take the product out of the bottom of the tank and put it into the top on this step, all those types of things. And you know, it was, I enjoy doing it, I always complain like, I gotta go to manufacturing and put on my stilto boots and all that, but I really enjoy being there. We always had a rule that the formula belongs to the lab, so if it screws up, it's the lab's fault right into the first production run, so if, so every time there was a new production run of a product, somebody from the lab who's developed, helped develop the formula, had to sit there and watch the compounders make the batch and make any notes, and if it came out within spec, then it's handed off to manufacturing, and so if it screws up in the future, it's manufacturing fault, but if that first batch screws up and you can't make it, they're gonna blame the R&D people for not giving them a good formula. Yeah, that's true. Well everything went really well. All right. Can't complain, it came back home, I'm pretty tired still, and it's always hard keeping up with work, especially because I'm headed out of town again for work, but this time it's a fun trip. Me, Mr. Cosmetic Chemist and BBC are headed to in cosmetics, global in Paris. Ah yes, in cosmetics, well that'll be fun, I'm not attending this year, but I have in the past, and that's like the biggest chemical suppliers show in the world, I guess. And they always show new launches there before they come to the US and get shown at suppliers day New York. So I'm excited, you know, my family's coming with me, we're gonna meet some more family there and have a great time. I'm going to Germany beforehand to spend time with extended family that I have in Germany like I do every year, so I'm pretty excited. Wow, what part of Germany do you go to? Just outside of Frankfurt. Oh, Frankfurt. Oh yeah, sorry. No, that's okay. Frankfurt. Yeah, Frankfurt, that's how we say it here in Chicago. No, I actually accidentally stayed overnight in Frankfurt one year, because we were coming back from Italy and the plane had to stop there overnight. Oh nice, yeah, it's a nice little airport. Yeah, but we're gonna do a few days there, had to Paris, I just made a list of all the coffee shops I'm gonna go to. Oh, fun. So that's pretty exciting. There's one in every little quadrant of Paris, like there's 20, or red dots, moths, or whatever they call them. You know, I'm not a really great at French. I took a semester of it and I was like this, why do they have rules of everything's an exception to the rule? But nonetheless, I have my list of coffee shops, we have all our meals planned out. I'm excited to take a couple days to myself. You know, you should start like social media coffee person. I know, I know. Well, do you know, it's a really big bummer. My university is doing a trip to Paris. They have a partnership university there or a campus there. And they're doing a trip the following week. Oh, wow. All that kind of stuff. It's they're really great experiences. And I'll be missing it because I'll be there the week before. But, oh, see you back next time. And you had a birthday. How was it? I did. It was fun. You know, it's all do all my favorite stuff. Juggling, feeding cats, karaoke, playing cards, going out to dinner. And hanging out with Fred. So that was, that was very cool. And, you know, I do this thing where on my birthday, I tried to, I have this notion I'm gonna run my age. So I'll run the distance of my age in miles. Oh, Perry, come on. Don't pretend that this can be done. Not with your knee. No. Well, here's what I did. Instead of, because I just turned 57. So instead of 57 miles, I went 5.7 miles. Okay. All right. Well, when I was in my 30s, I used to do the, I used to run the, that my age. Really? Yeah. Well, a couple times. Okay. Yeah. All right. I would have stopped after one year old. Now, the longest I ever run is 50 miles without stopping. You've done 50. Yeah. Yeah. I used to hold a world record. The fastest 50 miles done while juggling. Okay. Oh, you didn't know I had to actually get this world record. I knew that. I didn't know it was for 50 miles while juggling. I just thought it was like you just juggled a lot while you were not to jog. It was 50 miles. It was in, it was like in a, I have official get this record plaque and such. Wow. So you actually juggled the whole time you ran 50 miles eight hours and 23 minutes. Yep. I mean, I can't even run that long with training even. I don't think I could. Well, to be fair, I did do have a heart condition. But to do it while juggling, I can't even juggle standing still. Well, once, once you get good at it, it's, it's just the same as running. Now, did you drop them during that time? I had four drops during the whole eight and a half hour run. But the rule is that if you drop, you have to go back where you dropped and then start juggling before you can advance again. So it is, drops are allowed. Okay. Very cool. I had a few. Yeah. It's good. Actually, I didn't have my first drop until about four and a half hours in. Wow. I'm just flabbergasted. Yeah. That was back in 2007. So it's been a little while. And somebody broke my record. So I don't own the record any longer. And you're probably not going to get it again. Probably not. I'm not as spry as some of these young jogglers out there. Oh, wow. Well, speaking of things that just happened, let's head over to Beauty News. Valerie, I've seen these articles have just been popping up about refillable products. And so I thought, let's chat about it. This one was from, it was a Veda and Aero Flex debut. This lightweight curbside recycling refillable technology, which it looks interesting. It says the up to 85% less plastic use. It's supposed to be a neat squeeze convenient. But it seems to me that refillables has been around in our industry for a long time. Many years. And they just, they just never seem to take off. Yeah, they, they never seem to take off. We do a lot of time talking about them. But what I found interesting is how they're pushing curbside recyclable. Yeah. That's a claim I really struggle with just because something could technically be recycled. Doesn't mean it's going to be recycled. Right. Absolutely. And I also think that I don't know. Consumers really want to buy refills of stuff and put it in a container that they already have or something. I just don't think I've seen evidence that consumers want to do that.
Well, I've done it to hand soap. You have a really beautiful hand soap dispenser on your bathroom sink and you want to keep using that. Now actually in the lab we have the simple human, the kind you just stick your hand under and it squeezes the gel out. Oh nice. Those are refillable. That's just a big bag and yeah. But that's just hand soap. We do it with dish soap. I'm not going to do that with shampoo. It's a bottle that's been sitting in my shower, the plastic turns, pink after a while. I'm not doing that. Yeah, yeah. And you are sort of probably more progressive in this kind of thing than most people would be. I think for consumers there has to be like some. Honestly, there has to be like an extra tax or something to try to change consumer behavior to get them to adopt these refillables. Because I don't think on our own consumers are not going to do this. No, why when you could just go get another bottle or delivered to you by Amazon or that incentive would have to be insanely financial. Yeah, yeah. You know, I. good on evata for trying something here, you know, trying something novel, but I. I'm skeptical about it. I wish I wasn't, but it's still where at the point where virgin plastic costs less money than recycled plastic. And as long as that's the case, people are just not going to be using recycled plastic very much. Unless state laws require them to. Like the state of Washington has a PCR scale-up program, but so many brands could be exempt from that on the smaller brand side, of course. Yeah, no, that's really, really interesting. But I just have to work through all my retail bottles here. So there was that organization where they would collect your bottles and you had to send them in. Terror cycle. Terror cycle. Are they still around? I think they are. So essentially how that worked and when I was in my prior life at a salon brand, we looked at partnering with them. I think there's a couple organizations that do this, but that organization, if I'm recalling the name correctly, you essentially. It is right. It is Terror cycle. You had custom stainless steel containers and the product would go into them and you could get ice cream this way. I mean, all sorts of companies participated, but the product had to come in special containers that were reuse time and time again. And I think they did a study. I said, how many times can you reuse a stainless steel container before it has to get discarded because it's broken, damaged, can't be sanitized properly again. And I think the number at that time was like 10 uses. So I said, okay, well, what are the metrics to produce the steel to reuse it for the bottles because it seems pretty like energy intensive. Right. To be able to say it's better for the environment than plastic. And I couldn't really get the data or I don't recall it, but it wasn't impressive point being that they. After 10 uses of getting and reclaiming the stainless steel, they would sanitize it, return it to the brand. It just felt like all the work. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, we're still making more bottles, more plastic bottles. So if they're having an impact, it isn't a huge impact as of yet. Yeah. Well, we do have some listener feedback from a few episodes ago. A few episodes back, Perry, maybe five or six at this point, we were talking about estrogen. And Marya brought us and said that we might find an article interesting regarding facial estrogen creams. This research article she shared with us will put it in the show notes. They essentially tested different products with different concentrations containing estrogen. And ultimately the lack of estrogen in skin was a big impact, but the result of the facial cream was not very clear. Cheers, Maryam. You know, I looked at it's episode 407. Wow, 16 ago. Yeah, there you go. So she did share an article with us, which was published in. International Journal of Women's Dermatology. There you go. And essentially the article that she shared with us was not actually new research. It was actually a review paper. And essentially the conclusion that I was drawing from this is that the evidence that topical estrogen is going to improve your skin condition is pre-limited. And authors themselves say after looking at all these review papers, more research is needed. The evidence that using these creams to improve your skin is promising, but it's certainly not strong enough. The evidence isn't strong enough to say that you should firmly recommend using these products. Now, if somebody has been using them and they like how their skin feels, they keep using it, but it's not really a science-based thing because we just don't know. Well, we know that the lack of estrogen in skin plays a role, but I think where this focus was like the opportunity for commercialized products, I take away from this, and this is just how I feel. Like estrogen is a hormone. It does things in the body. And this paper kind of left with like we really need a lot more data because there are safety concerns. Like should we be adding estradiol topically to skin? We need more information. And my instinct is, I don't know, safer than sorry. I'm going to avoid it. Yeah, that's a good strategy to take. Now, the people selling estrogen creams probably wouldn't agree with you, but I don't think they have the supporting science on their side. It's just an open question. Yeah, very interesting. Well, thanks for that, Miriam. Speaking of questions, let's head over to beauty science questions. Alright, we got a question here from Nikki. Hi, Perry and Valerie. I hope you can help me with this. If anyone has the knowledge and background to investigate this, I think it's you too. I've been hearing about NAD from my doctor's friends for a while, but mainly as an oral supplement. I recently heard a podcast episode interviewing one of the executives at Aremor, a brand that is selling only a couple of skews of NAD supplements, but also a topical NAD face cream cream or serum and an NAD eye cream, both claiming next gen anti aging benefits. The Aremor's pricing is on the higher side 110 for the NAD face cream at age 40 with a lot of signs of aging starting to really show through on my neck and face. I am ripe for falling for newfangled anti aging ingredients and products like this, but I'm trying to be cautious and not just throw $110 away at a serum that may or may not have truly good clinicals behind it. Other website sites clinical data, but it seems like it's more the usual consumer perception study results versus true clinical tests of some kind. Are you guys able to assess whether this brand or any manufacturers are brand selling NAD skincare actually have efficacy data that would trust it enough? Thank you, Nikki. Thanks for that question, Nikki. So are you familiar with this Aremor products? I'm not familiar with Aremor. I'm familiar with NAD in the skin. We learned a lot about it when we studied biochemistry and talked about the creb cycle NAD and NADH replenish each other there part of the. Well, the ATP synthesis ultimately exactly basically the cell energy type process. Now I went to the Aremor website and I mean I totally would try this. I'm not going to lie. Okay. Do I think it would work? Probably not. I just kind of like the imaging and I'm sure the formulas are really nice. I don't know if I would take the supplement. I mean, probably not. I personally recommend against supplements just because I don't really trust that they're properly regulated in the US. Yeah, that's maybe you heard my hesitancy, but basically, yeah, you know, I just unless I know the company where they're made at a lot of people produce supplements that I don't think should be producing supplements that they're not doing all like the testing and they can really damage your liver. So anyway, I went to the Aremor product page and all the products are lined up on this little silver bookshelf and you know what it reminds me of? No, what's that? It reminds me of when you're at the doctor's office and you have to urinate in a cup and you have to open this little metal door and put the product put your pee on the shelf. Oh, wow. That's what it looks like. The products are sitting on to me. Like a little shelf person. Yeah. Sure. Sure. Anyway, well, it looks like they're a little glass jars, bullet kind of products here. So, but let's talk about this NAD cell energizing treatment and it's I'm just looking at the formula. Water, pentaling glycol and then a thickener and a mollion. It takes a few ingredients to get us down to the phosphatutocoline. I'm not seeing so I don't know. I see there's a lot of a lot of standard humectants and stuff here. Well, I'll tell you why I would try it because one I really like the polymer that's used in the product. It is a polymer that kind of melts into the skin and the product. It's lightweight. It's not too heavy. It's not.
like a traditional cream per se, but this is really like, I mean, it's kind of creamy, but it's really like a lightweight gel type, and I just, I think I would love it from a texture perspective. I also like Capcap Triclissarite on skin, which is the amolean that you mentioned. Now, would I try it because of the hydrogenated phosphatidylcholine or nicotinamide mononucleotide? I don't think topically that those are going to do a whole lot, of course, they have some studies that show, you know, the skin barrier strengthened, which is always something really great that you want to see. They have tons of before and after showing pigment is being reduced, which is always really nice, but I don't know that it's going to restore skin in the way that a consumer thinks they're going to be safe from this product. Yeah, I'm just looking at it. I'm a little skeptical, just based on the claims and what they're showing. I see before and after pictures and those kinds of things don't impress me much at all, because it's so simple to not, you know, you change the lighting a little bit, and it's so finicky to show really a fix there. And so I don't really have much faith in before and after pictures. No, you're not a fan of before and afters at all. So I guess the bottom line is, you know, kind of is a lot of money for a cream. I think we've talked on previous episodes for every 1.7 ounces. This is probably about six weeks worth of product. One ounce usually if you're applying it once every day last two about a month. So 1.7 ounces is probably going to be, you know, six weeks if you're doing your face and your neck and stuff like that. So if you're thinking that, hey, $110 is kind of a lot for that time period. You probably could get a lot of really great products for less money that have a similar texture. The polymer that's used, which is the Hydroxyethyl Acrylate Sodium Acryloil Dymethyl Toreyte Co-Polimer is a very popular polymer. And so I think you can find something that's pretty comparable is the NAD plus piece going to be beneficial. I don't know. I mean, there's other ingredients that are purported to improve NAD to NADH conversion within your skin. Niasinamide is one of them, but it has to be a pretty high amount of Niasinamide order to do that. And it has to be able to get into the skin and that kind of stuff. So I would say there's other things you could get that probably cost less money. I also find this develop a Harvard scientist. I mean, I don't know a lot of cosmetic chemists come in out of Harvard. No, not at all. But then also I think too, I mean, if you're really worried about NAD plus, like I see there's companies online medspas that really, you know, you can get injections. And I just, you know, if you're only going to buy this product for the NAD plus regeneration, I don't know that this is what I would do. But as Valerie says, you might enjoy using it because it probably has a nice texture. Well, our next question comes to us from Diane with the dry hair. Hi, Beauty Brains. I love your show. Oh, and by the way, I'm not saying Diane has dry hair. She signed her name like that. Oh, yeah. Just so you guys will think I'm making fun of Diane. Okay. Hi, Beauty Brains. I love your show. And I look forward to each episode. Question. Do masks really give improved results? If you leave them on for longer periods of time, like five, 10 or 30 minutes. And if so, what is the reason? Does it take longer for ingredients to penetrate or coat the hair or can use them as conditioners and leave them on for one to three minutes? And the same question goes for conditioners. If I leave them on longer, will I see improved results? Thank you. Diane with the dry hair. You know, the first time I read this question, I thought she was talking about facial masks. Oh, like you put a facial mask on your hair? Yeah, I don't recommend that. No, not on your hair. Just on, not on your hair on your face. Oh, okay. All right. That's a spot. But I got it. It's because she mentioned hair. So here's my thought on this. I can already tell by the tone of your voice, we're going to disagree on this. Oh, Gidey. Well, I just know we used to have this product called the three minute miracle or something. I thought you were going to say VO5 and I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no. We, well, there was a popular product, three minute miracle, right? And that was all there. And it was like an packet and such and it's like a once a week treatment. And well, on our brand, I trust the maybe we wanted to make a version of this. So we took our standard conditioner, which is a very good conditioner. And why I think that's subjective. Well, I mean, it is subjective, although we did a lot of consumer testing and it scored very well in consumer testing. Okay. I'll give you that. Wasn't just I'm sure I'm sure it was just fine. I'm sure it was just fine. We got it to a point where it scored as well as Pantene, which at the time was always scored the best. So yeah, anyway, so we had some data say it was okay. So all we did was take it and we reduced the water content, which doubled up the the seed of alcohols, the sterile alcohol. So we made it thicker and we just put it in a packet and we called it like a three minute miracle. I don't like this story. Edit it so fine. So at least some of those masks out there are just thickened up versions of regular conditioners. Now, I hate this story. I don't like what you did. Oh, you know, that's that's just a you know, this is the insider's look that people don't use again. I know. All right. Well, let's get to the the meat of this question though. If you leave your mask on or your or your fancy conditioner on for longer time, are you going to notice any difference? My professional opinion here is no. I think when you put on a conditioner, it all of the effect that you're going to get is is happening pretty much right when it's all distributed through your hair. And if you leave it on there longer, not much else is going to happen. And I have done some trust studies to see if we could see any differences. And I could, you know, putting on it for five minutes, 10 minutes. I don't think we go in more than 10 minutes, but I didn't notice any significant difference. And I would be skeptical that a consumer would. Well, let me tell you what I've done, Perry. All right. Now, we never took any, I worked at a salon professional brand. And we didn't take any like old products and be like, oh, just add more seedle alcohol. Although I suppose that's actually a really good approach now that you mentioned it, the easy approach for sure. But we did have salon professional use only products. And so these were treatments that were very expensive from a cost per pound perspective. And we only sold them to salons. And it would be a back bar treatment. So you would come in and say, oh, my hair is extra dry. And they would upsell you on this hydrating treatment for your hair. After they do whatever they do to you, they put this treatment on. And then you sit under a hooded dryer with either a light application of heat or steam. If you had like a climazon, they were called where it put out humidity onto the hair while it was coated in the product. And then they would wash it out and style it. And you get this deep conditioning treatment. Now we did a time study analysis because sometimes if a product wasn't good, they would be like, well, would it be better if it was left on longer? Or if they wanted to get best use instructions for a salon professional, we would time it at 5, 10, and 15 minutes, ambient temperature in a hooded dryer and under a climazon with humidity. And I will say when you were under the heat or heat with humidity, which is the climazon, the results were a little bit better on hair for some of the treatments we were developing over room temperature processing. Sometimes at room temperature, we couldn't necessarily see a difference in time application. And I do agree the way conditioners work. Your hair is going to be instantly coated in this conditioning product. And the positively charged materials are going to stick to your hair pretty much right away. But I do think there are some materials that can penetrate or partially penetrate. And I think that's where you get some of the advantage. Depending on the formula, not every formula, you might get an advantage with some kind of like time and temperature instructions. Yeah, honestly, I don't think I've seen any independent published research on this. So, you know, right now, we're just kind of going with our own experiences and the work that we did that honestly was unpublished. But yeah, just knowing the way these things work, once you put it on, it's pretty much going to work, how it's going to work. And I don't think beyond the like the experience of just leaving it on and feeling good, I mean, honestly, I put hair conditioner on and then I shaved my face and then I rinse it off. I don't really think it helps any because I could just put it on and rinse it out. But, you know, it's convenient for me to do that. So, that's what I do. Now, what product
What is that? That's my own conditioner that I created. Okay. What if I created a conditioner and you did them half head and tried it? I'd totally do it. And I would put lots of things that have data to pin us right there. Sure, sure. But I will also add that while you may be able to show some effects in a lab, consumers would be hard pressed to see any effects at all. Well, maybe the average consumer, but I will say like we didn't try this on presses. The work was done like we had a salon in our lab. And the people always love to tell you and people being the professional salon evaluators. They would always love to tell you how terrible your product was or no difference or not good all those things. And you know, I don't think they would have misrepresented the data. Now what an average consumer have noticed. I guess that's a different question they were professionals. And they could detect really minute differences in between products that is not an average consumer. Yeah. And so unless you're way into it, I'd be skeptical and average consumer would notice. Well, Diane, my advice to you is just leave it on for a few extra minutes. That's what I do if I like the conditioner if I don't ever rinse it off right away. And see if you like what's happening. You could even do a half head experiment in the shop with your product. But even if you do an experiment and you come to some conclusions, it's not really conclusive for generally. It's just conclusive for you. You're such a downer. If I could, you know how there's an expression called Danny Downer. If I could come up with one for Perry, I'm going to like just say that all the time. Well, I, some of my friends ironically call me Perky Perry. You are Perky. I do like that. Yeah. Well, our next question is an audio question. Let me cue that one up now from Adriana. Hello, beauty brains. My name is Adriana and I really love your show. I have a question that is related to hair color, specifically the included shampoo with the package for the L'Oreal Paris Excellence Creme Triple Care Color. I've been using this brand for the last three years and in the last year, the Kid Includes a shampoo and of course the conditioner. Both are absolutely lovely. The instructions know to use the shampoo to remove any remaining hair color after rinsing away and making sure that the water runs clear. I color my hair primarily for great coverage and have to do it every four weeks. So I haven't really noticed any color degradation. Maybe wondering if for consumers that expect a permanent hair color to last wouldn't shampooing after depositing the color weekend or degree the color in any way would love to hear your thought. Thank you. Alright, I ate it. Oh, a hair color question and we just happen to have one of the industry's foremost experts in hair color on the line now. Valerie, how are you? Oh my gosh. Me, are you sure? Okay. That's what I've heard. Alright, well this is actually a really great question. I've actually, I don't know that I've tried the triple care color but I'm familiar with L'Oreal Paris Excellence Cream Hair Color. Oh, okay. It's pretty nice. L'Oreal is actually the brand I recommend for home hair color because I think it's really nice stuff. I think they do a good job. Well L'Oreal certainly does have the science funding and they do the research for sure. Yeah. Well, so Adriana, this is a really great question and of course you're worried you just colored your hair as putting shampoo on it going to actually be detrimental to the hair color. And the answer really is no. Even if you were at a salon getting your hair done, you would want the person to shampoo any extra color away from the hair. This is because hair color uses an excess amount of hair dye in the product to ensure that you get a lot of penetration and just with some work that we've done in the lab, about 90% of the color does not penetrate the hair roughly but you need it to be super saturated. And you don't want that excess color sticking to the outside. You don't want it sitting on the scalp. And so the shampoo really is there just to kind of take away the excess stuff so that it's not transferring to a towel or to your clothing. It's not going to get the stuff that's gone into the middle of the hair fiber. And so I recommend just using the shampoo for those safety reasons. Also hair color, especially like home hair color tends to be like intrinsically very greasy or oily. So you want to get that off of your hair. It's kind of like not pleasant feeling to leave it on and then you want to condition afterwards. But yeah, getting that excess color off is a safety and a mess type of concern. And it's not going to weaken or degrade the color in any way. Yeah, I was saying I've done some hair color studies. We were working on a product to keep the color in hair better. And I did find, because we were just doing it on dresses and I would use a red hair color. But I did find that if you shampooed it too much, the color would look different in the hair. Oh, yes, but not after the first, I mean the first wash is to get the excess off. Right. Then you're talking about color removal studies, which is what you're doing. You're doing it multiple times, right? Right. Exactly. Then the shampoo would be a problem. But this first wash, you just want to get the excess stuff off so it doesn't have contact with your skin or clothes. Exactly. And generally doing hair color at home is hard too. I had a guy who was our hair color guy and he always recommended that people should get their hair colored by professionals. Yeah, it can't be messy, but I'll tell you where there were real differences. And this was never popular when I would say at the salon brand that I worked at. Yeah. And the hair color and salon hair color they use the same chemicals. Right. Yeah. So I'm not reaching for different chemicals when someone says, oh no, make it for home hair color, right? It's the same stuff I would be reaching out for salon color. But in general, home hair colors usually like safer from a color result perspective. They usually shades of brown, kind of hard to mess up. And if you want like a really unique look or highlights or kind of advanced coloring techniques, you're not going to get that with home hair color. Right, right. I think that was kind of his point was that just the whole mechanics of you having to put it on your own head and you're combing it and you're not able to see somebody behind you taking care of your hair is just going to do a much better job. I can always tell them if people color their own hair. Yeah. Yeah. Our next question and last question comes to us from Tammy. Hi, I live in a high altitude 8 to 10,000 feet climate. Every dry Southwest Colorado town. And I've heard that glycerin in skin care products for face, hands, and neck actually draw moisture from the stratum corneum, which is the outermost layer of skin instead of the water in the air due to a lack of moisture in there, causing drying of deeper skin layers. Most products I see have glycerin at the top of the ingredient list. So I'm wondering if you know of a product that has less glycerin for those of us living in low relative humidity environments. Thanks so much for all you two are doing to help educate us Tammy. Well, you know, this one is one that comes up every so often and it's one of those skin care ideas. It sounds scientific, but I think it's way overblown. It is, it is true that glycerin and other humectants, the hyaluronic acid, for example, sodium PCA, they do attract water. And yes, if the very dry environment doesn't have a lot of moisture in it, it's not going to pull a lot of moisture out of the environment. But that doesn't mean it's going to suck the water out of your body into your skin because the thing is about products is that they don't just sell you just glycerin. There's also amolies in there. There's also a clusive agent. And so it's a whole formula. The glycerin is one part of that formula that can help to hold water. The rest of the formula, two matters though too. And so just avoiding glycerin, there's no good reason, I think, to avoid glycerin, even if you're in the conditions that were described here. Some skin care formulas have glycerin at a really high percentage. And I would actually say that's very few because glycerin has a very sticky dry down. And a lot of people don't like that tacky phase. And you really, really notice it above even just a couple percent of glycerin, to be honest. I make my own facial toner and I like to put 5% glycerin in there. And you can really feel the stickiness, but that's something I enjoy. Maybe you could use that percentage in a lotion, but for sure people, chemists are formulating with less than 5% glycerin in their formulas. And one of the biggest reasons is, yeah, you want to improve the feeling of the water face but it's primarily a free-slaw situation. You want to help.
Make the formula a little bit more stable. And for those reasons, I think it appears towards the top, it's usually used like at one or two or maybe three percent for a stability type purpose. And honestly, a lot of ingredients are just used less than that. So I think it looks like there's more glycerin in the formula than there actually is. - I will also say the glycerin is one of the best studied and most reliable moisturizing ingredients in cosmetics. If it was routinely drying people's skin out in different climates, we would have already known that. And formulas would have got away from that for those specific climates. It's traditionally never been a big issue. Even though it's just one of those stories that sounds good, I don't think there's any validity to it. - I mean, 8 to 10,000 feet high is pretty high. You don't think it's a little extra dry up there? I noticed the difference when I leave Texas and go to California in terms of humidity. - No, no, it's 100% more, I mean, yeah, it's absolutely more dryer up there. You go skiing and you're surrounded by snow and your skin feels very dry still. That's true. I just don't think that the glycerin is in your. - Contributing. - Yeah, and your skin products is a problem, you know? - I would agree with that. And like you said, if you are worried about losing water content in your skin, that's what choosing really rich moisturizers will help do. They contain the amoliance and the occlusives, which are going to form basically a water protecting barrier over the skin to prevent water from leaving your skin. So Tammy, I would look for kind of rich moisturizers to use on top of a serum or a lighter weight moisturizer that has more water content. - Yeah, and don't forget to buy your skiing pass for next year 'cause they're going on scale now. - Oh. - For actually, it's like. - I think it's smart business. Speaking of business, I have to go get some work done before my trip. Thanks for listening everyone. If you get a chance at over to Apple Podcast or Spotify and leave us a review, that will help other people find the show and show we have a full-docket beauty question to answer. - And the beauty brains out on Patreon. If you appreciate that we don't have commercials and we can say pretty much whatever we want, that's only because we are supportive by our listeners on Patreon. So if you like what we do and want to support the show, go to patreon.com/thebeautybrains and subscribe at any level. You also get a transcript of the show and your questions get a higher priority of answering. - Also, if you have a question and want to hear your own voice on the show, don't forget to send us an audio question. We also prioritize those. You can record one on your smartphone and email to
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