Low pH shampoo - hard water - supplement sunscreen and more - episode 415

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

Perry Romanowski (0:27)

Hello Valerie, good to see you. Last time I saw you, you were on the other coast.

Valerie George (0:32)

We were in New York together, which we'll get to talk about. On today's show, we're also going to cover lots of questions including, do low pH shampoos preserve color? Can the supplement provide you sun protection? What effects does hard water have on hair color? How significant are the health risks with taking topical tretinoin? And what's the difference between aerosol and non-aerosol sprays? But first, that inane chit chat.

Perry Romanowski (0:56)

Valerie, how was your trip back? Uneventful, hopefully?

Valerie George (1:00)

Well, I always have eventful travel. As you know, if you see me on a flight, run. And this was no exception.

Perry Romanowski (1:11)

Yeah.

Valerie George (1:11)

I won't even get into it. It would take too much time. But basically, by the time I made it to a different airport, because I had to buy the last flight out of New York for the night, something happened to my original flight.

Perry Romanowski (1:21)

Oh, no.

Valerie George (1:22)

I was very nauseous from the taxi ride, and I smelled like a pack of Camel cigarettes. It was a horrible cab ride. But I made it home, and the actual flight itself was pretty good.

Perry Romanowski (1:33)

Well, that's good, and mine was uneventful. I did get to watch a movie as I like to do on those. I watched that movie The Long Walk.

Valerie George (1:41)

Mm, haven't heard of it.

Perry Romanowski (1:43)

Ah, it's a Stephen King one. Essentially, it's the Hunger Games where people are walking, and if you slow down too much, you get shot.

Valerie George (1:51)

Oh, well, I'm very good at walking, so I think I would make it pretty much long in the race.

Perry Romanowski (1:57)

Yeah, you know what? I mean, you can't sleep. But one of the things about the movie that bugged me a little bit, like the first person drops off after eight miles of walking. I'm like, you're picked to do this walking thing where you're going to have to walk a long way, you're going to be able to go more than eight miles. Come on.

Valerie George (2:13)

Well, you might be surprised. What did you think of the actual meeting itself? For those of you who aren't aware, Perry and I attended the Society of Cosmetic Chemists Annual Scientific Symposium, which took place in New York City this year. Next year, we'll be in Los Angeles. Essentially, there's some scientific talks by people from all over the industry, poster presentations, etc.

We attended some of the talks together. We got inaugurated as Perry, the Vice President, me as the Vice President-elect.

Perry Romanowski (2:47)

That's right.

Valerie George (2:47)

Of the National Society of Cosmetic Chemists. It was a lot of fun.

Perry Romanowski (2:51)

It was. Overall, the meeting was pretty good. I mean, it's late in the year. I hope we could make it a little early in the year, which we're going to do next year. Because it's a little too close to Christmas. Although New York at Christmas time is pretty cool. They have all the decorations and such.

Valerie George (3:06)

Yeah. And snow.

Perry Romanowski (3:07)

But as the meeting goes... And snow, that's right. You know, I was juggling in Central Park, and I slipped and fell.

Fortunately, I didn't hurt myself too bad, but I did lose a bean bag. And I was looking around for it, and some nice New Yorker, there are nice New Yorkers, she pointed down the road where my bean bag had rolled all the way down. So I saved it.

Valerie George (3:35)

Oh, good.

Perry Romanowski (3:36)

Well, I went to some of the hair talks.

Valerie George (3:40)

As did I, yeah.

Perry Romanowski (3:42)

You know, they had some interesting topics they were covering.

Valerie George (3:45)

Underwhelming in my opinion.

Perry Romanowski (3:47)

Yeah, I mean, the topics were good. It's just the presentations felt a little too marketing-ish to me, you know? They were light on the science and heavy on the hype, which I don't like to see.

Valerie George (3:57)

Exactly. Well, the last talk was the CEO and co-founder of K18. And at first you might think, oh wow, we're actually going to hear about peptide design and all the things that they did. And it basically was how amazing K18 was. And so I was just like, you know, you talk about this peptide and how it sticks to hair, but how well does it stick to hair? There's a specific scientific metric for like how well proteins bind. I studied proteins in graduate school. So I was very keen on this topic. And he basically was like, oh, you wouldn't need to know that. And another gentleman who also spoke about novel peptide design for hair said, yeah, that's not something that's important because hair just keeps getting damaged. And the K18 guy agreed. And I was like, which basically tells me you either didn't do the testing or the data is not impressive.