Will vitamin supplements make my hair grow? Episode 224

Perry Romanowski (0:00)

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 224, and I'm your host, Perry Romanowski. And with me today is a lot of audio questions. Valerie sends her regrets, but work has been keeping her super busy, so she won't be joining us today, but she'll be back for the next show. I did also talk to Sarah Bellum, but she's busy, and I wonder what Randy is up to. Anyway, on today's show, I'm going to be answering questions about whether beauty supplements can make hair and skin look better, what exactly is skin pH, and whether you have to mix your products exactly to get them to work. I'll also give you my thoughts on a few beauty science news items that I stumbled on in my internet feeds.

Of course, I like to warm up with a little chit chat. First, I hope everyone is staying safe during this pandemic. I know a lot more things are opening up here in the United States, but boy, just keep wearing those mask people and practicing social distancing. I know they're a pain. I'm not actually a huge fan, but they do help to stop the spread of the virus. And so you should keep wearing them. Of course, this can't really be too good for makeup sales, I figure, right? You know, it's certainly not lipstick. Incidentally, when I mention masks, I'm not talking about those facial masks. I'm talking about the ones that go over your nose and mouth. I did actually see a story of somebody in the UK. They had a facial mask on, and they were riding on public transportation. Amusing, it was probably staged, but it does bring up an interesting point. Although, you know, now I wonder, actually, I don't really wonder. I'm sure this is going to come out. Soon you're going to see facial masks that are infused with anti-aging ingredients. I'd be skeptical that those work. All right, why don't I move on to some beauty science news?

One of the things that I always keep a lookout for are articles about sunscreens, and specifically about SPF, because I often give the advice that, you know, once you get up to 50, anything higher than that, is probably overkill. And I always thought, you know, SPF numbers has turned into like a marketing thing, and that's before there was SPF 15, then there was 30, then there was 50 and 75, and now 100 and 100 plus.

And these numbers, from a science standpoint, these numbers are always, these numbers seem a bit misleading to me, because as a consumer, you see a number, SPF 15, and then you see a number, SPF 30, it obviously means, it seems like it means that the 31 is twice as good as the 15 But SPF is actually a logarithmic scale, and so 30 is not twice as good as 15, as far as blocking the amount of UV radiation that's coming in. And also, then when you go 30 to 50, 50 is not nearly double as good as 30 It's just not like that, but the way that these things are marketed, it can certainly seem that way. So when I saw that someone came out with a SPF 100, it just seemed like pure marketing gobbledygook to me, because once you get up to SPF 50, you're blocking almost 99% of all UV rays. And so if you put on SPF 100, you're not really blocking that much more.

So I've always been skeptical of these really high SPF values. But I'm always open to new research, and I saw some research here in Science Direct asking the question, does SPF 100 work better than SPF 50? And according to this research, after five days, 31 participants, which was 56% of people, had more sunburn on the SPF 50 plus side as compared to only 4 or 7% using SPF on the 100 plus side. So this is what they did in this study. They had groups of people, and they'd have them put sunscreen on one side of their face and sunscreen on the other side of their face. SPF 50 was one, SPF 100 was the other, and then it was an observational study, and they just observed them over time.

According to their research, overall the mean erythema intensities, that's the sunburn, showed statistically significantly less erythema with the SPF 100 side as compared to the SPF 50 side. Now the first observation of sunscreen exclusively on the SPF 50 side occurred after only one day of sun exposure, whereas it took three days of constant sun exposure on the SPF 100 side. So they conclude from this is that in practice, SPF 100 was significantly more effective in protecting against UV radiation-induced erythema and sunburn. It actually worked better than the SPF 50 And this was in actual use in a beach vacation setting. So what does this mean to you? I mean, it would suggest that the SPF 100 does provide at least some benefit. Now, I'm sure the researchers who, I think this was from Johnson & Johnson.