Episode 380 - Patented ingredients, porosity, quats and more

Perry Romanowski (0:01)

Hi, I'm Perry, 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 380 I'm your host, Perry Romanowski, and with me today is Virtual Valerie. Hello, Virtual Valerie.

Valerie (0:31)

Hi, Perry.

Perry Romanowski (0:32)

The real Valerie couldn't be here today due to some lab issues and the holidays coming up, so I thought we'd have Virtual Valerie here, her AI doppelganger, to help me out.

Valerie (0:43)

With all due respect, Perry, I don't think that would be a good idea. You know how Valerie doesn't like any of this AI stuff, and well, I'm not sure most of the listeners do either. You should probably just do this one on your own.

Perry Romanowski (0:56)

All right, I guess that's a good point, Virtual Valerie, but can I just keep you here to laugh at my non-sequiturs and my dad jokes?

Valerie (1:03)

I don't think that is going to work, but you have a good show.

Perry Romanowski (1:07)

All right, well, thanks, Virtual Valerie. I guess this will just be a solo show, unless I can get Sarah Bellum to poke her head in here. Anyway, since it's a solo show, let me get right to answering a bunch of your questions. And I'm going to answer questions about whether quats and hair conditioners are causing bacterial resistance, what I think of the Wish Skin Health products, whether more expensive heat-protectant products work better than less expensive ones, how to figure out whether hair is high or low porosity, is it worth buying products online instead of in drugstores, and are patented ingredients really game changers, or are they just marketing gimmicks? But first, some of that chit chat. Well, you know, I'm just here alone, since it's just me sitting in a closet here. It's my wife's closet. You know, I was setting up this chair, and the whole podcast, the microphone, and my cat, Teddy, who was just sleeping on the bed, he just gets into the closet, jumps on the chair, and then sits there, right where I was going to sit. What is it about chairs that attracts cats? Well, anyway, you know, I see, I'm coming to the end of the year, and I was looking at my Goodreads book tracking app. I'm on Goodreads, and I had a goal of 70 books, and I'm like 15 books behind. So I got a lot of reading to do in the last month. We'll see. You know what happens is I like reading books. I do the audiobooks mostly, but then it's like a competition between podcasts that I listen to. I listen to a fair amount of podcasts and audiobooks. And so I don't like to get behind on the podcast, but there's so many podcasts. People are putting out so many episodes of good stuff, but it's really a lot of content, and it gets in the way of my book listening. Anyway, I'm going back to that. It's okay to delete an episode here and there, I guess. Anyway, all right, that's enough of my rambling. Why don't we get started with answering some questions?

And our first question comes from Haley. And just so this isn't just listening to Perry drone on about stuff, I'm going to do some virtual voices for some of these questions. So our first question comes from Haley. Haley, what do you got for us?

SPEAKER_4 (3:34)

Hello, Beauty Brains. I follow the general advice to avoid antibacterial soaps as their overuse can cause bacterial resistance. I was surprised when I read the labels to find many of the same antibacterial quats are also used as hair conditioners. This is my real concern with quats, that I could be unknowingly affecting my microbiome or contributing to wider bacterial resistance every time I condition my hair. Are all quats the same and is my concern founded? Thanks.

Perry Romanowski (4:04)

Quaternary, ammonium compounds, or otherwise known as quats. Now, there are a bunch of different quat ingredients that are used in cosmetics and personal care products, mainly the two things that you've suggested, including antibacterial agents and conditioning ingredients for personal care products. They're also actually used as emulsifiers in some systems. Now, their use in antibacterial soaps and disinfectants is pretty well known, and it's a valid question to ask whether the potential impact on the microbiome and bacterial resistance when used for other applications. Fortunately, not all quats are the same. Now, I won't get too much into the chemistry, but I think it is important to know that quats are positively charged molecules. And this is useful because, you know, it helps them stick to surfaces like your hair and to cell membranes, which have proteins that have negatively charged sites. Now, let's talk about quats as used in antibacterial products first. Now, these are quats like benzalkonium chloride and benzothonium chloride. They are effective antibacterial agents, because they disrupt the bacterial cell membranes, you know, like, you know, bacteria has cell membranes, they're single cells, and these quats can go on and stick on those cell membranes, and then that by that positive charge, and it binds to the negative charges on the bacterial membranes. And then the hydrophobic tails that are on these ingredients, they can kind of integrate into that cell membrane, and that sort of breaks things up, and this interaction messes up the membrane integrity, and then that can cause leakage out of the cells, and eventually the bacteria dies because of this. Quats are particularly effective against gram-positive bacteria, a little less so against gram-negative bacteria, due to the structure of those types of bacteria. They can also work a bit against some fungi, and even some viruses, but the bottom line is these quats really do work. But they're not all equally effective as antibacterial agents. The quats that are used in hair formulas are things like bahine trimonium chloride, sterolconium chloride, or citrimonium chloride. These have positive charges that bind to the negative sites on hair strands, and they can reduce static, they can smooth the hair, they can make it easier to detangle. Although some quats have mild antibacterial properties, they are really not too good at killing bacteria. Instead, their formulation is optimized for the surface activity, improving the texture and manageability of hair. Really, the overuse of antibacterial quats in household and personal care products, that does raise concerns, because these bacteria can develop resistance to it. And what happens is, you know, the stuff doesn't leak out of them, because they mutated, and then those mutations can no longer be affected by these quats. And so, that is a real problem. However, you know, as far as hair conditioner quats go, the issue really is minimal. The rinse-off formulations, they don't leave a lot of residue on the scalp or hair. And this significantly reduces the potential for them to disrupt this microbiome membranes and promote resistance. So, as far as the scalp microbiome goes, you know, any potential impact of quats and conditioners is really mitigated by the low concentrations that are used, and by the fact that these things are rinsed off. While long-term effects of quats on the microbiome are not really well studied, you know, the use in rinse-off products poses far less risk compared to, say, leave-on antibacterial products or disinfectants. So, the bottom line really here is that while quats can kill bacteria, not all of them are effective the same, so their functionality depends on the specific chemical structure and the intended use. Now, while quats in antibacterial products can pose a concern about bacterial resistance, the quats that are used in hair conditioners are just really primarily conditioning agents, and they really don't have antibacterial effects that we need to worry about. But if you are concerned about this, you can look for conditioners that use silicones and cationic polymers instead. You know, they're gonna work pretty much just as well. These might be a little bit more microbiome-friendly than the products that have quats, but again, we don't really know that much about the microbiome and, you know, how it should be made up in your hair, so it's probably not a thing you need to worry about.