Do anti-aging patches really work? Episode 135

Julia (0:00)

You're listening to The Beauty Brains Show, where real scientists answer your beauty questions.

Perry Romanowski (0:06)

And now, here's Randy and Perry.

Randy Schuller (0:19)

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the program. I'm Randy Schuller, co-founder of The Beauty Brains, and I'm here in the studio with my brainy partner, Jerry Romanowski.

Perry Romanowski (0:28)

It's actually Perry.

Randy Schuller (0:31)

But since when do I have to fact-check every single thing I say on the show? I can't work like that.

Perry Romanowski (0:38)

It's funny, growing up with a name that...

an airy name, you know, you get called all kinds... Yeah, it's an airy, right? Perry, but there's Terry, Jerry, Hairy. I'll respond to any of them, because I've so frequently been called all of them.

Randy Schuller (0:53)

I don't feel so bad. Hey, let's see if you respond to this. Here's what we're talking about on today's show. We're going to tell our audience if anti-aging patches really work, whether or not it's safe to melt coconut oil in your microwave, and if you can really scrape conditioner buildup off your hair with a knife.

Perry Romanowski (1:16)

Well, those all sound fascinating. I can't wait to hear what we say about that.

Randy Schuller (1:19)

Well, you're going to have to wait for just a minute, because I want to quickly thank Jeanine for recording the intro for the show today. Do you want to tell people how they can record an intro for us?

Perry Romanowski (1:31)

Yeah, no, that was a fabulous intro. And if you want to have your voice on the beginning of our podcast, all you have to do is record it on your smartphone and then email that to us. And what you say is, what do you say? Hi, this is The Beauty Brains. You're listening to the...

Randy Schuller (1:47)

See, clearly you don't even listen to the episodes after I post them.

Perry Romanowski (1:51)

It is true. I'm just a couple of months behind.

Randy Schuller (1:53)

You say, you're listening to The Beauty Brains, where real scientists answer your beauty questions. And now here's Randy and Perry, and always mention my name first.

Perry Romanowski (2:03)

Wait, P comes before R.

Randy Schuller (2:04)

It's anti-alphabetical.

Perry Romanowski (2:06)

I have to say, I was at a conference yesterday, Michigan Society of Cosmetic Chemists. And there was a speaker there. And as I am wont to do at the end, I raise my hand and I ask a question. And the speaker knows me.

We've known each other for a long time. We've met on, we've gone out to dinner. And when I raise my hand to ask a question, he points at me and says, what's your question, Randy?

See, yeah.

Randy Schuller (2:41)

I should explain for the audience.

The reason that's so hilarious is, I think for our entire career at Alberto Culver, people would mix up our names, mostly calling Perry my name. So it's hilarious after whatever it's been, five years down the road, people are still doing that.

Perry Romanowski (3:00)

So I thought you'd find that. Actually, it was a pretty cool conference. But the only reason that I went there was Mrs. Romanowski was actually a speaker. Really?

Yeah. She spoke on the topic of beauty trends.

Randy Schuller (3:16)

We'll put a link to that YouTube video in the show notes.

Perry Romanowski (3:19)

Yeah, no YouTube video. However, if you go to my chemist corner Twitter feed, I tweeted the entire meeting.

Actually, that's a thing I do. Instead of writing out notes at a conference, I will just tweet my notes for the whole conference.

Randy Schuller (3:38)

Oh, that's very clever, Mr. Live Tweeter.

Perry Romanowski (3:42)

Well, it makes me pay attention, which is difficult to do with some of these talks, especially when it's not a topic that I'm terribly interested. But it also gives me now a list of tweets that I can just turn into a blog post.

Randy Schuller (3:54)

Very good for your other blog.

Perry Romanowski (3:57)

There you go.

Randy Schuller (3:57)

All right. Well, Perry, are you ready for some beauty science news?

Perry Romanowski (4:01)

I am. Bring on the music.

Randy Schuller (4:09)

You know, we generally have a light-hearted banter about the latest beauty science breakthroughs, but sometimes there's a darker tone to the news. So let's take a moment to talk about skin allergies and infections. I have not one but two stories that kind of scared the crap out of me. The first one involves a woman in Florida who is allergic to her own sweat.

What? Yeah, it's a condition called cholinergic urticaria, and it causes her to break out in hives in response to her own sweat. So I'm not sure if this is over her entire body or just where you'd have a lot of sweat, like under your armpits or whatever. I had never heard of this, and given how incredible it sounds, I just assumed it was extremely rare. But research published in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, which by the way was titled Prevalence of Cholinergic Urticaria in Young Adults, says that this is as high as 20% of the population, depending on the age group. I know.