Does Pantene’s "Abundant and Strong" Really Improve Your Hair Health? - Episode 417

Valerie George (0:00)

Hi, I'm Valerie and you're listening to The Beauty Brains. Welcome to The Beauty Brains, a show where real cosmetic chemists answer your beauty product questions and give you an insider look at the cosmetic industry. This is episode 417 I'm your host, Valerie George, and with me today is Perry Romanowski. Hi, Perry.

Perry Romanowski (0:27)

Hello, Valerie. Always good to see you.

Valerie George (0:29)

Good to see you. We have a lot of stuff we gotta cover on today's show, including questions like what are your thoughts on Pantene's Abundant and Strong system? Is The Ordinary Lash Curl Finisher safe? Do we have recommendations on Barrier Repair Moisturizers, which is so important because it's the middle of winter right now, at least in the Northern Hemisphere? Are Ionic Hair Dryers better for your hair? And finally, is there anything unique about the Renpure Coconut Whipped Creme Leaving Conditioner? But first, that inane chit chat.

Perry Romanowski (0:59)

Yeah, Valerie, how are things going for you?

Valerie George (1:02)

You know, I'm in a daze. I have not had time to work on any of my New Year's resolutions.

Perry Romanowski (1:08)

Oh, no.

Valerie George (1:09)

I don't even remember what they were.

Perry Romanowski (1:13)

It's supposed to write them down. That helps, right?

Valerie George (1:15)

I know. But I think I forgot where I jotted them somewhere, but I don't even really remember where. But just trying to get footing from a whirlwind end to last year. But we received some good news, both Perry and I this past week, that we wrote a book and it's been published. Well, we helped write a book.

Perry Romanowski (1:37)

Right, we were contributors to a book. I was an editor and a chapter author and Valerie was a chapter author too.

Valerie George (1:45)

It turns out some of our listeners have already bought the book and read our chapters. Really? Yeah.

Perry Romanowski (1:51)

Oh, that's right.

Valerie George (1:53)

Yeah, that's right. I believe it was Natalie in Australia who sent us some really kind feedback. Thank you, Natalie, for your support.

Perry Romanowski (2:00)

Yeah, the book was published by Springer, Nature to Link and the book is called Customatic Science.

Valerie George (2:09)

Look at that. I can't believe we didn't remember that. We were like, what was it called?

Perry Romanowski (2:14)

Yeah. Who knew it was so simple?

Valerie George (2:18)

Exactly. But we had one of our listeners from Australia, one of our top listening countries, Natalie, who actually read the book. Natalie, thank you for supporting the text and saying so many kind things about our writing.

Perry Romanowski (2:33)

Yeah, I appreciate it too. She is very specific too, so that was nice.

Valerie George (2:39)

Guess what? Not only is the book available digitally, which is great if you love a PDF version of something, but it's actually in print and hard copy, and we have a little surprise for our patrons.

Perry Romanowski (2:52)

Yeah, if you're a patron of good standing, at some point, we're going to have a drawing, and you could win the book if you like. We'll have to figure out the details of that, but I think if you're a patron in the month of February, then you'll be in the running to get the book.

Valerie George (3:14)

And if you guys aren't sure what a patron is, Patreon is how we support the podcast. If you'll notice, we don't actually have any ads on this podcast. It's completely ad-free, which allows us to be unbiased. So we do need some funds to support the cost of putting on this show. It's not totally free for us, and so you can help support the podcast by going to patreon.com/thebeautybrains and subscribe. Usually Perry does this part, so I'm fumbling a little bit. How am I doing?

Perry Romanowski (3:46)

You're doing good. You're doing good.

Valerie George (3:48)

Oh, my gosh. I'm like, I hate plugging things. But anyway, that's been pretty exciting. But other than that, I mean, it's been a really slow week. And in fact, we're going to head to Beauty News and see. We don't have much going on at all.

Perry Romanowski (4:02)

Yeah. And does the beauty industry have much going on?

Valerie George (4:06)

I think we're still recovering from the holidays and these super viruses going around.

Perry Romanowski (4:16)

Well, I saw this article in Global Cosmetics Industry, GCI, and it was the top 10 beauty brands across categories according to Spate. And I was interested in this because to me, the top beauty brands are the ones you find at Target and Walmart and places like that. But Spate really looks at beauty brands based on online searches and stuff. And so I guess that's kind of the reason why I didn't recognize some of these brands. So let's go through what they say are the top 10 Brands because I only recognized a couple of the brands here. So top brand according to Spate magazine was Medi-Cube.