More on clean beauty, supplements, baking soda and mineral oil – episode 195

Valerie (0:00)

Hi, you're listening to The Beauty Brains.

Hi, and welcome to The Beauty Brains, a show where real cosmetic chemists answer your questions about beauty products and give you an insider's look at the beauty industry. This is episode 195 I'm your host, Valerie, and with me today is my cohost, Perry Romanowski.

Perry Romanowski (0:28)

Hello, Valerie, so good to have you back.

Valerie (0:31)

I'm glad to be back. On today's episode, we're gonna answer a ton of beauty questions about color cosmetics for protection from the sun. Is it okay to apply baking soda to your skin?

What's up with mineral oil and other fillers in cosmetics? And do beauty supplements really help improve your looks?

Perry Romanowski (0:50)

Well, it sounds like we have a PAX show.

Valerie (0:53)

We do, we do.

It's been a long time since we've had a chance to talk. I know I've been out with some medical challenges and traveling for work, and you have been literally not at home.

Perry Romanowski (1:05)

I know, I've been literally traveling around the world, trips to California, to California again, to Florida, to Italy. Woo, I'm finally back home for at least a little while.

Valerie (1:19)

Yeah, you sound a little bit like me. What stinks is the day you came to Los Angeles, I actually had to be somewhere else for work and we couldn't connect. That sort of stinks.

Perry Romanowski (1:28)

Yeah, that was actually a pretty good show. And actually, there was a guy before me, there were two talks. So I gave the talk and I gave the talk on clean beauty, which we'll get to momentarily. But there was a guy who did a talk before me about the wonders of holoerotic acid. And there were some interesting stuff, but can I just say, if you're giving a presentation, don't use font size 12 on your slides. It's very distracting.

Big fonts, people.

Anyway, he did this talk on holoerotic acid and someone on Twitter asked me about how a company can claim 75% holoerotic acid when you can only make a 2% solution of HA before it gets too thick. You ever try to thicken holoerotic acid? So if you just take water and you dump in, once you get to 2%, it gets so thick it's a gel and you can't put anything else in there. So how do you imagine they claim 75% HA in a product?

Valerie (2:30)

I think it's 75% of a solution.

Perry Romanowski (2:35)

Right, and that seems a little bit misleading to me. You know, it's not 75%. Because the consumer is going to see 75% of the holoerotic acid on the side of the label, and they're going to think there's 75% of the holoerotic acid in there.

But there's not, there's 75% of a 2% solution, right?

Valerie (2:55)

Yeah, it's certainly not very honest, and I think that's where marketing comes in to play a little bit. Or maybe they've done something we don't know.

I think it's more likely it's marketing.

Perry Romanowski (3:11)

Yeah, well, I did ask the expert of this, and he sort of danced around the question, but I...

Valerie (3:17)

Did he get on his tap shoes?

Perry Romanowski (3:20)

Well, it was LA, right?

Valerie (3:22)

Yeah.

Perry Romanowski (3:23)

And yeah, and I think ultimately he sort of skirted around it, but he kind of said that too. Well, it's kind of a marketing thing.

Valerie (3:31)

Oh, well, well, that happens. Well, are you ready to get on with the show?

Perry Romanowski (3:36)

Yeah, let's get going.

Valerie (3:43)

We're gonna start with our segment, Beauty News, and I read an article that basically says clean beauty is not safer.

Perry Romanowski (3:51)

No kidding.

Valerie (3:53)

No way. An editorial article was recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Dermatology, about clean beauty. That publication is colloquially known as JAMA, and it's an international peer-reviewed journal that has been in continuous publication since the late 1800s.

They publish information concerning the skin, its diseases, and their treatment. The article was really an editorial portion of the journal that argued that the arbitrary terms of clean or natural, to denote that the product doesn't contain any of the hundreds of demonized ingredients, does not make products safer for consumers.

Additionally, ingredients, they feel, are denounced haphazardly in an attempt to greenwash the product. The authors then claim that the ingredients that have been recommended by dermatologists for years to treat skin conditions are making these lists. For example, Whole Foods has denounced Petrolonum, which has been recommended by dermatologists for decades to patients with skin barrier disruption due to its non-allergenicity, great quality sesahumectin, and economical costs that make it accessible to patients of all backgrounds.