Episode 366 - Will Hyaluronic acid dry out your skin?

Valerie George (0:01)

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's look at the cosmetic industry. This is episode 366, our 200th episode hosted together. Speaking of which, I'm your host, Valerie George, and with me today is Perry Romanowski. Hi, Perry.

Perry Romanowski (0:30)

Hello, Valerie. So good to see you.

Valerie George (0:32)

200 episodes together. Wow, that's more than you recorded with the other guy. What was his name?

Perry Romanowski (0:38)

Oh, that's my... Randy, yeah.

Valerie George (0:41)

Which I often get called Randy still after 200 episodes together, but this is also our first live recorded episode with our Patreon audience listening in. Feel free to say hello and post questions in the chat. And if you're brave enough and the technology works, we'll try to get you to come on live and ask your questions. But this is a regular show too, so we're going to cover lots of questions, including can face and body treatments and moisturizers be used on the scalp? And is it okay to use Hada Labo toner on the scalp daily? Is it true that hyaluronic acid should not be used frequently in dry weather? What are some surprising industry developments or things you have changed your mind about as more research has come out? And what happens to hair as it turns gray? And do products for gray hair make a difference? But first, that inane chit chat.

Perry Romanowski (1:28)

Well, I should point out we also have a question about Epsom salts that I snuck in there and I forgot to put in there.

Valerie George (1:34)

All right, well first, that inane chit chat.

Perry Romanowski (1:37)

Yeah, hello, well, welcome to all the patrons. Thank you so much for attending today and thank you. If you have any questions, feel free to post them. Valerie, have you gotten over the power outage in Texas so far?

Valerie George (1:51)

Not completely over it. So for those of you guys who don't know, we had some big storms over the weekend. First, it was a windstorm on Saturday with up to 80 mile an hour gusts. And I pulled into the lab. Well, there's a little debris where I live, but I pulled into my lab on Saturday just to check it out, make sure it was okay. And someone's roof was in my parking lot. And I was like, well, I hope that's not my roof because I've had a lot of issues with the lab already. It turns out it was my neighbors. But we didn't have power, yeah, which was a bummer because I have a lot of stability equipment like ovens, temperature sensitive things plugged in. So that was a bummer.

Perry Romanowski (2:29)

That's interesting. So what happens to your testing when the electricity goes out?

Valerie George (2:35)

You kind of just have to fire the ovens back up and make a little note in the stability logs that there was a power outage between these two intervals. So it really stinks, but that's what it was. So we finally got electricity back online Monday, only to have a mega storm Monday night that was not predicted in the weather.

Perry Romanowski (2:54)

Wow.

Valerie George (2:54)

I basically woke up to an alert going off, and I thought it was an amber alert or something like that. And I thought, gee, like 4.55 in the morning, it's kind of early. But then I saw it was a wind storm warning, and then the tornado sirens started going off. Then I got a second alert on my phone saying, JK, it's actually a tornado warning, take cover. And this insane storm blew in with a green sky and everything. And our neighborhood has so many trees down, our whole area was without power. So then I went to the lab, which is in a different part of town, and did not have power again, and it was also flooded. So that's been my last 24 hours.

Perry Romanowski (3:38)

This sounds like the weather in California, quite frankly. It's kind of like the weather is following you.

Valerie George (3:44)

You know, I don't mind bad weather, I mind the lack of predictability. It was not in the forecast.

Perry Romanowski (3:49)

As a person from Illinois, I look down at Texas and think, it's just a big desert. Now, I've been to Austin enough times where I'm like, oh, you know, it's not just a big desert. There's actually some greenery here, and wineries even, who knew? But it's still in my mind that it's just the big desert, like in the Road Runner and Coyote cartoons.