Episode 352 - Do depilatories make hair grow?

Perry Romanowski (0:01)

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 352 I'm your host, Perry Romanowski, and with me today is Valerie George. Hello, Valerie.

Valerie George (0:32)

Hi, Perry.

Perry Romanowski (0:33)

It's a lovely hair net you have on today.

Valerie George (0:36)

Sometimes you gotta wear them in the lab, yeah.

Perry Romanowski (0:40)

You know what, I always appreciate that about you, that you wear the hair net because sometimes you see these TikToker chemists and stuff on there, and not using proper safety stuff that you use in the lab.

Valerie George (0:52)

Well, you don't always see the hair net in the lab, but my lab is temporarily in a production space. And so in production for GMP, you gotta wear the hair net. You don't want to see your hairs all over the floor.

Perry Romanowski (1:04)

That's right. And if you're going to be making a grilled cheese sandwich there, you need it for that, too. Of course, you can't make food in the lab, right? All right. Well, on today's show, we are going to cover a little review of what we've done in the year and our coming goals for the next year. But we're also going to answer some questions because we always like to answer questions. And we got a few good ones. What do we think of Coenzyme Q10 as an anti-aging ingredient?

Do depilatories make your hair grow more?

Interesting. And do you really need to shower every day? And what does earwax have to do with any of that? But first, little chit chat. Valerie, you're just back from Christmas.

Valerie George (1:49)

I am.

Perry Romanowski (1:49)

You just had a holiday here in the US. How did that go?

Valerie George (1:53)

Well, it was pretty nice because I didn't do a lot. We had planned on seeing family, but honestly, the last six months have been insane for me.

And we ended up having to work in the lab moving stuff in because that has been very delayed. So that's what we did, but it was nice. And we got Chinese food because that's pretty much what's open, at least in Dallas. I'm used to LA having coffee shops open and restaurants open. And we did our best to find something, but turns out not everywhere is LA. So we did Chinese food.

What did you do?

Perry Romanowski (2:30)

Well, I went out to my sister's and we had about 16 people there and played some games.

Valerie George (2:36)

All Romanowski brothers and sisters? I know you come from a large Polish family.

Perry Romanowski (2:41)

There are seven of us and so and a bunch of them have reproduced. So there's a lot of nieces and nephews too. I am not one who's reproduced at least as far as I know. Hello. No, it was a good time. And then the next night we went to Wisconsin and on the my wife's side of the family. And we they had all these games set up to play like bounce the ping pong ball into the cup and you'll win something and rip the ribbon off of somebody's back.

I think my wife went to like Instagram or TikTok and got all these inspirations for all these holiday games.

Valerie George (3:25)

Oh, that's fun.

Perry Romanowski (3:26)

Yeah, it was. It was pretty fun. So and yeah, so overall a good, you know, ate too much, drink too much, but at least now I've gained enough weight where when I lose weight next year, I have goals for that.

Valerie George (3:40)

That's like writing a list and putting a couple of things you've already done just so you can cross them off and feel really good about it.

Perry Romanowski (3:47)

Exactly. It's these little wins.

Valerie George (3:50)

Well, we'll get to our goals in a minute.

Perry Romanowski (3:52)

Why don't we move on to some beauty science news? Right here at the end of the year, what did you see, Valerie?

Valerie George (4:03)

Big news, and I should say a big Christmas gift to the brand K18, they have sold to Unilever.

And while that may not impact consumers today, Perry, you've been part of an acquisition and actually I think a Unilever acquisition, correct? Hence Uniclever, is that what they call it?

Perry Romanowski (4:21)

Well, actually, I had left before Unilever took over my company, but I was part of an acquisition. Alberto Culver had bought another brand called St. Ives.