Hair bond builders and more - Episode 413

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's look at the cosmetic industry. This is episode 413 I'm your host, Valerie George, and with me today is Perry Romanowski. Hi, Perry.

Perry Romanowski (0:28)

Hello, Valerie, great to see you. I see you showered, yay.

Valerie George (0:33)

I'll talk about that in a minute. On today's show, we're gonna cover lots of questions, including how do you know an ingredient in a formula is at a working percent? Why would a company use a dangerous ingredient in their product? Do heatless curls damage hair? What's the deal with Milk Shake Direct Color? How do hair color products with conditioning effects work? But first, that chit chat.

Perry Romanowski (0:58)

Valerie, we're coming up on a big holiday. Are you hosting a big dinner?

Valerie George (1:03)

We are not, we're just keeping it quiet. We're doing our own dinner here, making our own food. Just me, Mr. Cosmetic Chemist, Baby Sea.

Perry Romanowski (1:13)

Or you may door dash McDonald's, but.

Valerie George (1:18)

Perry, last week was a rough week, okay?

Perry Romanowski (1:23)

We're heading out to my parents or my mom, or my sister's house, I would say. Well, they all kind of live around the same spot. But I guess we got to bring food or something. I bring my appetite, I don't really bring much else.

Valerie George (1:38)

Yeah, well, I have a pie you could use.

Perry Romanowski (1:41)

Oh, really?

Valerie George (1:42)

Yeah, one of our friends brought us a really giant apple pie, very good, it's from a local bakery. We had it last year. Yeah, pretty amazing. We actually brought it to a Thanksgiving dinner last year. Did we keep it a little longer than it should have? Yes, but...

Perry Romanowski (1:59)

You're not bringing the same pie from last year.

Valerie George (2:02)

No, no. Well, last year, we also got this exact same pie from them. And we had it for probably a week and a half. And then we brought it to a Thanksgiving dinner.

Perry Romanowski (2:13)

Oh.

Valerie George (2:13)

It was still good. It was fine.

Perry Romanowski (2:15)

Yeah, yeah, sure. I mean, those pies, they got a high level of sugar, low water activity. You're not going to get a lot of bacterial or bold growth, right?

Valerie George (2:24)

Exactly. So that's what we did. But yeah, no big plans, really just trying to relax. It's really challenging, you know, having such a baby baby around.

Perry Romanowski (2:36)

Yeah.

Valerie George (2:37)

It's nice to just kind of not have work on top of waking up at 4 a.m. to be with baby Sea and all those things.

Perry Romanowski (2:46)

Well, you know, I got up today at 430 because my cat wanted to eat. And he just jumps on your head and hits you in the head.

Valerie George (2:55)

Oh, you don't leave out food for him overnight?

Perry Romanowski (3:00)

He wants the wet food. I leave dry food for him, but he wants his wet food at 430 in the morning, so yes, I get up at him.

Valerie George (3:10)

What a creature of comfort.

Perry Romanowski (3:12)

I'm an early riser.

Valerie George (3:14)

Oh my goodness. Well, we have a big show today, so let's head over to Beauty News.

Perry Romanowski (3:27)

What did you see, Valerie? I see you were quoted in a Science News article?

Valerie George (3:32)

Yeah, Science Direct, they wrote an article on barrier repair, and they asked me to talk about it, and I did. That's kind of the long story short.

Perry Romanowski (3:43)

Now, when you talk about barrier repair with skin products, are these skin products really repairing the barrier, or is it just sort of an aesthetic thing, or is that what barrier repair is?

Valerie George (3:59)

I think it's both, because your skin is biologically living. I mean, hair is different, repair is different, because it's biologically dead. It's literally almost like a physics issue at that point. So when you disrupt your hair, you can't really repair it. You can make it feel better, but the damage is done. It's like fabric.

But with skin, it's, you know, very dynamic. It's constantly evolving. And really what you're doing when you're repairing the barrier of your skin is you're maybe restoring the lipid content to the outermost layers, and you're allowing your skin to not lose as much water. Maybe the microbial environment is being restored. We have bacteria and yeast living on our skin. They can get disrupted. And when your barrier is broken, meaning you lose too many lipids on your skin and things can start to get in. So I really just spoke to-