Curology questions – Salon conditioners and bar soap shampoo – episode 178

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 scientists answer your beauty questions and give you an insider's look at the beauty product industry. This is episode 178 I'm your host, cosmetic chemist Perry Romanowski. And it's another solo episode, but don't worry, we'll have our regular Brains hosts back very soon. It's a lot of traveling this season with trade shows and production problems and that sort of thing. But I'm here. And on today's show, we're going to be answering your beauty questions about the differences between salon and store-bought deep conditioners, whether Curology is better than going to a dermatologist, and what are the pros and cons of using bar soap forms of shampoos and hair conditioners. Plus, I'll cover a few stories about the beauty industry that I found interesting. But before getting into that, I want to thank all of our new patrons. Thank you to our patrons Melisande, Lauren, Kimberly, Emily, Kimberly C. Magdalena, Maury, Ellie, Mario, Ayu, Heidi H. Jill T and Maya. Thank you so much for helping support The Beauty Brains. If you'd like to join our growing list of patrons and keep The Beauty Brains ad free, feel free to head on over to patreon.com/ The Beauty Brains. Being a patron also has the benefit of getting your questions answered first.

It's time for a little Beauty Industry and Science News.

You know, it's a truism in the media industry. If it bleeds, it leads. Fear-based news stories really are preferred for news organizations, and stories about cosmetic products are also included in that. Fear-based news stories prey on our own anxieties, and in this online world, they also lead to more clicks, social media shares, and advertising money. And they all follow the same formula. First, you grab the attention with some scary headline, and then at the end, you offer some solution that's going to reduce that fear. And here's a classic story from Elle which follows the formula perfectly. In this story, it claims that there's hidden hormone disruptors in beauty products that might be behind your bad skin and health. And then they have the added ominous tagline, do you really know what you're putting on your skin? Then the article is filled with more fear-inducing quotes and questions like, do you know the real effects of what you're putting on your body? Our favorite everyday beauty products might be secretly packed with ingredients that are wreaking havoc with our hormones.

Changes to your hormones can cause irregular periods, birth defects, illnesses, and cancer. Or they have this gem. We're exposed to over 80,000 toxins circulating in our environment every day. I'm surprised it's only 80,000. And finally, shampoo, skincare, makeup, hair dye, tooth fillings are all to an extent endocrine disruptors.

And then in true fear-mongering fashion, they offer you a solution to avoid the evil endocrine disruptors. Advice like, one, avoid parabens in beauty products. Of course, science shows that parabens in beauty products are perfectly safe. The amount that's required to be an endocrine disruptor is way beyond what you'd ever be exposed to in beauty products.

Their next advice is ditch plastic packaging. I mean, good luck with that. Also, giving people advice to use glass containers in the shower is just a terrible idea, I think. Then there's the advice that you should avoid synthetic fragrances. Of course, almost no beauty product company uses phthalates in their fragrances anymore, but, you know, the article just kind of ignores that. And finally, they end the article with a listing of where you can shop for toxic-free beauty products.

Surprisingly, they also mention that they earn a commission for products purchased through the links in the article. But they want you to ignore that, too. These type of fear-mongering and sales articles are just all over the internet, and they're not based on any science, and they're really just hidden advertisements parading as some kind of news story. Rather than talking to a toxicologist who would be an expert in product or ingredient safety, they usually talk to a biased brand owner who, surprise surprise, benefits from keeping you scared of mainstream products.

Why are no toxicologists contacted when writing articles like these? Well, it's probably because the stories would not be nearly as scary or as effective in getting you to click on their toxic-free beauty products.

All right, speaking of fear marketing, it seems Michelle Pfeiffer is launching her own Clean Fragrance line in which she's following the lead of companies like P&G, L'Oreal, and Unilever by making the full ingredient list available online for anyone who wants to see it. I'll provide a link to the new line in the show notes. Pfeiffer said to Forbes magazine, it was when she had children that her interest in clean beauty was sparked. She says, I began to look for products that were not only healthier but had the same quality that I was used to. I then fell down a rabbit hole looking at different products' ingredients and quickly realized that anything with fragrance was flagged as toxic.