Can K18 serum reduce hair fall and reverse grey? Episode 431

0:01Perry Romanowski: Hi, I'm Perry and you're listening to The Beauty Brains.

0:16Perry Romanowski: 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 431. I'm your host, Perry Romanowski, and with me today is Valerie George.

0:30Valerie George: Hello, Valerie. Hi, Perry. Long time no see.

0:33Perry Romanowski: I know, it seems like forever, but we're back. And on today's show, we're going to cover lots of questions, including... Do you have to worry about BHT in cosmetics? Are hair masks worth using? Will biomimetic hair longevity serum reduce shedding? Can you mix products together to reduce irritation? And what's the deal with, quote, professional hair color? But first, some of that chit-chat. Valerie, we tried to record another show in July, but we did have two shows in July. But I went traveling and I was overseas and it was just hard to do, especially when you're like eight hours difference or whatever.

1:15Valerie George: You know what? I think that's okay. Every summer, it seems we take a hiatus. we're going full steam at the beginning of the year and then once summer hits you're going somewhere i'm going somewhere it's just plain old hot too hot to record and we just get busy and then i feel like we pick up steam again in september so i'm not worried to me it was our usual summer hiatus but you were in greece it did make it a little hard to get together

1:46Perry Romanowski: Yeah, I was in Greece for a couple of weeks, and I was in Albania for a couple of weeks. Have you ever been to Albania?

1:53Valerie George: I've not been to Albania, but I've spent a long, a lot of time, I should say, in Greece. In fact, I lived a whole summer there working at my church camp, Ionian Village. It was the best summer of my life.

2:06Perry Romanowski: Oh, wow. It was a very cool experience just to go to Greece. That was the first time I've been there. And you know what they have there a lot of? feta cheese olive oil they have a lot of yeah a lot of greek food yes but do you know it's interesting to them it's just food right yes i i get what it's it just seems like good you go to the restaurants and the restaurants all kind of have the same menu yep that's but the same kind of thing happens in italy you go to italy and they're all kind of italian restaurants and don't get me wrong. The food is very good. It's just all, you know, it's a one kind of food.

2:46Valerie George: Yeah, you're ready to get back to North American eating. That's what you're saying.

2:50Perry Romanowski: That's right. And they also have a lot of cats. I love seeing all the cats. Yeah. If you follow me on Porch Kitty, I did a few videos of all the cats that I saw there.

3:01Valerie George: Oh my gosh. Did your kitty at home miss you?

3:04Perry Romanowski: they totally miss me because when i got home i mean my neighbors feed them so they like three weeks they were getting fed but they don't get they get dry food when the neighbors feed them

3:14Valerie George: i feed them wet food so they don't get spoiled like when daddy's home now now they kind of want

3:20Perry Romanowski: to come in because you know our we we gave away the kittens too so we're not fostering anymore so we kind of miss them and the house is kind of empty now sounds like you need to foster again could happen now so that's mine's uh the one other thing i will say about the trip is that the whenever i travel i always come back to the u.s and one of the most things that i appreciate best about our country is our ability to make sidewalks we are just so much better than everyone else in the world at making sidewalks sidewalks in europe are terrible my mind went to air

3:54Valerie George: conditioning because I tell you what it has been hot hot hot here this summer in Dallas I can't take another 100 degree plus day and you may be saying well 100 that's not bad the problem is it's brutal you open the door and boom you just get hit with this wall of heat and when the sun goes down the heat doesn't go away it's still oh great 105 during the day cool 92 at night It's crazy. I can judge the day, how it's going to go from a heat perspective, by the temperature at 730 in the morning. If we're 85 or lower, not going to be too hot. If we're 85 to 95, particularly towards 95, the day is going to be brutal.

4:39Perry Romanowski: Now, California wasn't like that, right?

4:42Valerie George: Not really. I worked where I worked in California. It was on the edge of the high desert. So it would get up to 105 routinely during the day. Okay. Sometimes 110 during the hottest part of summer, but you had a breeze. There was no humidity. And once the sun started to go down, the temperature went down, and it was perfect in the evening. You don't get that in Texas.

5:05Perry Romanowski: Yeah, I guess you'll just get used to it because you've only been there a little while.

5:08Valerie George: It turns out you do not. And I ask around. I always tell transplants here, oh, look, how long was it before you got used to the heat? And usually it's never. but someone did say well at least 10 years so I have a while to go you have some time to go but what else is going on with you you know nothing too eventful just getting all my medical stuff wrapped up this summer today I had to do a cardio treadmill test have you ever done one of

5:34Perry Romanowski: those I don't think I ever have but what they put uh you like you gotta put some mask on and you run on a treadmill?

5:41Valerie George: Not a mask, but essentially they do an EKG while you're walking fast, jogging on an incline, and they essentially keep ramping it up until your heart hits a certain speed.

5:52Perry Romanowski: I don't think I've ever done one.

5:53Valerie George: I don't recommend it. I didn't have a good time. You are not supposed to eat before you do them and no caffeine for 24 hours and all that kind of stuff. So, but I got it over with, I go to the dermatologist next week. I get my full body scan done. I actually think I I have actinic keratosis or something worse on me. Yeah, I've had all this stuff before. So I usually get my skin checked every six months because I have had some cancerous things in my skin. And I neglected it since moving to Texas. So getting that, but just trying to wind down summer. I had a horrible sickness while you were gone.

6:30Valerie George: That's the other thing that happened. So it's a good thing. You can maybe kind of hear it in my voice. It's a little husky. but I had a horrible cold slash flu. And after I had it, Baby C got it. And then Mr. Cosmetic Chemist got it, but only after Baby C was done getting it. So it was just, why couldn't it hit us all at the same time?

6:52Perry Romanowski: Well, maybe it's easier that way. Speaking of all at the same time, how about we head on to some beauty news?

7:05Perry Romanowski: Valerie, the first story I saw was published in the New York Times, and then lo and behold, who did I see quoted in there but you? Me. It was about this Yuka app. They're saying millions of users are using this Yuka app, the Y-U-K-A app, to judge beauty products. They say that apps like Yuka, they use it to scan beauty products, and then they receive an instant safety score. Of course, these apps judge individual ingredients that they say cause harm, and then they add it together. And so it's the typical problem that these things, the typical toxicology error where it tries to simplify a complicated topic down in an oversimplified way.

7:52Perry Romanowski: So I don't know, but people are really using these a lot, huh?

7:56Valerie George: They really are. And in the article, I was quoted stating that when I get asked to formulate products for brands, one of the requests is that it looks good in the Yuka app. That is always a request. And as a formulator, it's hard to do that. You just can't put one ingredient in and say, what does the Yuka app think? Not because it's not based on one ingredient, but they're judging market products. So I have to go find something similar on the market and see if it's calling anything out. but I don't like these requests because they're not based on any science.

8:30Perry Romanowski: Right. That is one of the challenges of being a formulator in industry. You know, in the old days, we used to be able to make formulas that worked as good as we could make them work, right? So the whole goal of formulating is you say, let me make the best possible product that I can make in terms of how well it works. but over time with the influence of natural formulating organic and now clean beauty and now these apps and things consumers have been more informed and i would say misinformed that now we've had to reformulate things and that reformulation is often using ingredients that don't work as well and so the products that we use today probably aren't nearly as good as the stuff that we used to be able to make or or at least they're more expensive i mean honestly i always say this like consumers probably can't tell the subtle differences of how products are now versus how they were you know 20 years ago certainly 20 years ago but uh as far as them being more expensive and probably not working as well i think apps like this and trends like clean they really make products it makes it harder for formulators to make products that work as well as we can make them work.

9:50Valerie George: I think it also just continues to perpetuate this unnecessary fear cycle that consumers have. Like products are safe. And, you know, Yuka has been challenged and they've been challenged in this article that they're rating ingredients as not being safe. And at the end of the day, they're like, well, we don't believe they're safe. So it kind of actually doesn't even matter what the science says to them. I mean, that type of thought process to me is just, it's really crazy. And consumers really put a lot of weight into this app and it's not going to go away. And I don't know the solution. I'm certainly not downloading it.

10:29I actually was asked to download it and, you know, and test it specifically for this article.

10:34Valerie George: And I was like, nah.

10:37Perry Romanowski: Well, I think I got it because somehow I got on their email list. But I think originally Yucca was not beauty products, but it was food.

10:46Valerie George: It is food. And they are entangled in so many lawsuits, particularly from the food company Goya, because they have said Goya is putting a lot of unsafe product on the market. And Goya, they're in court right now. Or, you know, I'm not sure what the status is. But when I last looked, they were in a lawsuit against each other because it actually really has damaged Goya's business. and there's no basis to the claims that Yuka is making about their product. And I think this will be really interesting because I think the only way to get it to go away is for companies to file lawsuits against these types of apps for stating, you know, things that aren't true.

11:29Perry Romanowski: Well, they want to make it go away.

11:33Valerie George: That's bad. Oh, my goodness.

11:37Perry Romanowski: I saw another one I saw my old brand was in the news oh tresemme they're in hot water yeah well you know I remember I got contacted because I was quoted in this article because I was contacted by the people over at beauty matter but in this article they talked about a new lawsuit that claims tresemme shampoos cause hair loss because they contain dmdm hydantoin that's a preservative that we had but that it's used a lot it used to be used a ton in the industry until people became afraid of formaldehyde donors until what they're claiming until the state of washington

12:19Valerie George: uh banned formaldehyde donors and now people really have to pull them out

12:25Perry Romanowski: right although i would say like dmdm hydantoin you know the last time i took a look at the shampoo shelf, there were still a lot of big name brands that had DMDM hydantoin in it.

12:37Valerie George: We used to use it all the time. It's affordable. It's used at low levels. It has a very strong safety profile. And the amount of formaldehyde that it could potentially degrade into is almost not even detectable.

12:53Perry Romanowski: Right, right. It's, it's puty. It's, it's just one of those things that one combined with methylparaben, you just pretty much put that in any kind of colloidal solution that you had, and you never have to really worry about microbial growth.

13:07Valerie George: Unless your colloidal solution was milk. Right.

13:11Perry Romanowski: Don't put it in milk. No, do not do that. Well, anyway, so in this article, they talk about a lawsuit where the plaintiffs are trying to say that, oh, Tresemme shampoo had DMD and hydantoin in it, and it made my hair fall out. And, you know, first of all, it's unlikely that DMDM hydantoin was making people's hair fall out. Now, some people, you know, can't possibly have some sensitivity to DMDM hydantoin. And, you know, just like people can have sensitivity to any kind of chemical. So there's nothing special about this chemical. But there are some people that do have a problem with it. And if you have that problem, it's not going to cause your hair to fall.

13:59Perry Romanowski: It might cause like skin irritation or something like that. But, you know, I think what happened, somebody had sued Suave some years ago for a DMDM high dantuin thing. And I think they settled. And so they're like, well, Unilever, you won't trust me. Let's go after you now.

14:17Valerie George: This is a classic money-making scheme where I dare say no one was really harmed. It's really hard to prove that the product made your hair fall out or an ingredient at less than 0.35 % in a product made your hair fall out. I think that's really hard to prove. And I think what's happening is they're just on the ingredient du jour and filing these lawsuits because they know they can make money from it. Right.

14:45Perry Romanowski: I mean, because, you know, Unilever has got to make the calculation to say, OK, if we go through a trial, Well, maybe, I mean, we should win it on the science, but maybe the jury is like, oh, big corporation formaldehyde, guilty, like the whole Johnson & Johnson thing with talc. But, you know, even though science is on your side, you know, these lawyers who make these lawsuits, and they try to make them into class action lawsuits, so then the settlements are huge, at least for the lawyers, for the people who bought the products. I don't know, what, you get five bucks back, maybe? So, you know, it's not like the consumers get much.

15:24Perry Romanowski: And that's kind of a strategy to make money in the cosmetic industry without actually having to make any products. And it's too bad it happens because now you've got, now, of course, Tresame will take this DMDM Hydantoin out. And now, you know, you've got products that might not be preserved as well. And the ingredients they replace it with might have other problems. So, I don't know. It's just the world of cosmetic industry.

15:50Valerie George: Speaking of the world of cosmetic industry, we have a celebrity launch.

15:55Perry Romanowski: Oh, really? Did we predict this one?

15:57Valerie George: I don't think we did, but a brand hasn't launched yet. But Lindsay Lohan filed a trademark for Linlow Beauty. She has dropped hints that she is getting ready to launch a skincare brand over the last year. and the trademark filings the classes they include are body creams cleansing milk stuff for the eyes sunscreen makeup nail polish self tanning etc it was over a bunch of different classes so we'll see if it happens or when it happens but this is a pretty a pretty big step there are a couple other recent trademark filings singer tate mcrae uh had a recent trademark filing as well and that popped up in cosmetics business also this week I suppose sure so I look for them I guess so I think I have

16:55Perry Romanowski: I know a new way to start making my prognostications in December so Lizzie Lohan she kind of was hot

17:03Valerie George: and then she kind of disappeared didn't she yeah I feel like I'm surprised that she wants to create to beauty line. I mean, she has a lot of plastic surgery and I feel like she's tried to reverse the look of her plastic surgery a little bit, but I don't know. I guess I'm always surprised when a celebrity wants to launch a line because it's not like there's a product out in the world that's needed. Like, oh my gosh, thank goodness Lindsay Lohan is launching a product line because we're missing that kind of stuff. So I just never know what the impetus is for them to invest in doing that unless it's like hey i have a lot of money let me just do it i don't really know

17:41Perry Romanowski: well i will have to say this the thing about lindsey lohan is like she's got kind of a unique look at least she did she's like the redhead girl right yeah so i can't think of a brand where i'm like oh who's the redhead girl celebrity right now i i can't think anybody except the thing is i think she's blonde now she's been going blonde for a while yeah she has been blonde as she was I have to admit the last time I saw her in a movie was some stupid, I think it was like a Netflix Christmas thing where she met some guy skiing.

18:16Valerie George: Do you think she should be a redhead again?

18:18Perry Romanowski: I think it helps differentiate her, right?

18:21Valerie George: Yeah, she looked good as a redhead.

18:23Perry Romanowski: There we go. So maybe she'll go back to being a redhead, or maybe I don't know what the hell I'm talking about. But I do know what I'm talking about when it comes to answering questions. So why don't we move on over to those?

18:40Valerie George: The first question comes to us from Kitty Softpaws. And it's not really a question, but Kitty Softpaws did tag us in a post on Instagram where somebody is talking about Bath and Body Works products and how they are toxic and terrible for you because they contain BHT.

18:58Perry Romanowski: And because the Yuka app said all of their products are rated like three or lower in red. And I'm like, come on, Yuka?

19:07Valerie George: The person in the reel did suggest the Yuka app and said they were super terrible. I forgot about that. How could I have when we just talked about Yuka? So, Perry, at the end of the day, is it a problem that BHT is in a product?

19:21Perry Romanowski: Well, no. First of all, if you watch this, and I'll link in the show notes, But if you watch this Instagram reel, she says BHT is in all of Bath and Body Works products. And it's like toxic and you should stay away from it. But BHT, first of all, it's not in all of their products. BHT is called is butylated hydroxy toluene and it's an antioxidant. and it's added at small amounts to try to keep oils and fragrances and some other ingredients that keeps them from oxidizing, becoming rancid, or changing color. So it's added to formulas to kind of stabilize the formulas. And, you know, it's not going to stabilize every formula, so that's why it's not in every formula.

20:11Perry Romanowski: It has a lot to do with fragrances, so helping to stabilize fragrances. Now, the concern about BHT comes from animal studies where they had these really high oral doses in animals, and they caused some problems, health problems for those animals. But, you know, that's it. So don't eat high levels of BHT orally for humans. It just makes no sense. So all that does is, you know, it tells us BHT can be hazardous if you ingest enough of it, but you're not going to get that much coming through your skin when it's applied from a beauty product. And these ingredients have been safety tested through both the CIR, which is the Cosmetic Ingredient Review Board in the United States, and even more importantly or more impressively, the SCCS, which is the...

21:04Valerie George: The European Safety Consortium.

21:08Perry Romanowski: Yes, the European Safety Consortium, who is... They're paid for by the government. They're not paid for by industry. One of the knocks on the CIR is it's funded by the cosmetic industry. And people say, of course, industry funding is going to find a safe. But that's not really true because CIR and the SCCS, which are funded differently, both come to the same conclusion. And that is BHT, which is permitted in cosmetics up to 0.8%. For the typical consumer, there's no problems that you're going to have because of this ingredient. And so while BHT might sound scary, it's not. It shouldn't be.

21:49Valerie George: The structure of BHT actually is really cute. It reminds me of a little snowman. Like it has little branched arms and the hands look like little snowflakes. It's so adorable. I love showing it.

22:00Perry Romanowski: So it's like a little couple of benzene rings, right?

22:03Valerie George: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the arms coming off of it have also little branches. And so they're very cute. But what I will say about BHT is, you know, depending on the application, max level 0.8%, almost all BHT occurrences on the label are from occurrence in raw materials. Not a lot of people intentionally add it. You can, but if you did, 0.1, 0.05 % is really enough to keep a product stable. And when you think about an oil or maybe even a zokerite, all a zokerite has BHT in it. you think, okay, well, if in Azokarite or this other oil, it's at 0.05%, and then I'm only using that at a tiny percentage in the product.

22:48Perry Romanowski: Right.

22:49Valerie George: In final product, it's at an even tinier percentage resultantly. Tiny, tiny. You don't have anything to worry about just because you see it on the label.

22:57Perry Romanowski: Fear-mongering sells in our industry, sadly, and we've got Yuka and TikTok helping at that. all right valerie we got our next question that comes from val val says hi beauty brains i wonder if you or valerie might have a response to the question about hair masks i noticed that as i near the end of perimenopause that my hair has gotten drier i'm wondering if a hair mask would help i've noticed some are quite pricey for example k18 what factors compose a good hair mask Do I really need one or is a conditioner sufficient? Thank you, as always, for sharing your expertise. A hair mask. Well, you know my thoughts on products like this, right?

23:48Valerie George: And we're not interested in hearing them because nobody in the audience will like them. But...

23:54Perry Romanowski: No, everyone will like them. Let me just say, and I'm not saying every company does this, but the company that I work with, when we wanted to make an intense conditioner, which people now call them hair masks, but back then it was a three-minute miracle or intensive conditioner or something like that. We would just thicken up our regular conditioner and put it in a packet and call it three-minute miracle. So, okay, how are the new ones different?

24:20Valerie George: Well, I think they're pretty different, at least when I get asked to make one. You generally get more money for the formula. They are thicker, that is true, but I think you take into consideration, okay what type of person or what type of hair is going to be using this mask and you modify your conditioning agents and your occlusives that coat the hair fiber a little bit differently so they provide the perception of benefit accordingly now it makes sense that val has experienced drier hair it's not actually that the hair has gotten drier but as you go through perimenopause and menopause, you start to produce less.

24:59Perry Romanowski: That's my full name.

25:00Valerie George: I think you've said that before. That's right. Perimenopause, um, Romanowski.

25:07Perry Romanowski: No, I just, pericles. No, not that either.

25:12Valerie George: Not that. Yeah. Okay. So as you go through, as you go through perimenopause or menopause, you start to produce less sebum and your scalp has the highest number of sebaceous sites on the body and your scalp produces sebum that coats the hair fiber. And so as you're producing less sebum, of course your hair is going to feel drier. So I think a mask is a good choice. As long as the mask, and you probably have to do some experimenting, but as long as the mask is pretty coating on the hair, I would look for ingredients that really stick to the hair or make the perception of dry hair a little better.

25:51Valerie George: So behin trimonium chloride, amodimethicone, or even dimethicone. And I also would recommend perhaps a leave-on serum with a dimethicone as well, just to help mitigate that dry feel that your hair has. But really what it's missing is sebum. You don't need to spend a lot of money. I mean, do I recommend the Tresemme Intense Conditioner, which is just the conditioner disguised as a mask?

26:18Perry Romanowski: To be fair, that was when I was working on the VO5 line. The Tresame line, we didn't necessarily do that.

26:26Valerie George: All right, I'll leave Tresame alone, the VO5 brand. But, you know, would you be happy with that approach from a brand? Maybe not. But I don't think you need to go out and spend$60 or even$50 on a hair mask. There's a lot of really great bargain ones at the store. Pantene has some really great mask products. I actually really enjoy the Kerastase mask products. Amika makes some really great masks that I think are going to help mitigate that dry feel and make your hair feel a little bit soft. So hopefully that helps you. Just pick one according to your budget and look for those ingredients I mentioned.

27:04Just from my perspective, though, the thing that has kind of made me cynical about things, products like masks and things is that I've seen how consumers are able to differentiate between

27:17Perry Romanowski: products and the reality is they're not very good at it and so what when I say something like oh you if you just take a regular conditioner and you use it and you take a mask and use that most consumers will not be able to tell any noticeable difference now they will notice a difference because they know that oh I got in the shower I use this and I rinse it out and that's going to be different than oh I put this on my hair I kept it on my hair and I had this whole process and so that experience will make you believe that the your hair is better even if we went in the lab and we measured it and there was no differences that still doesn't mean that the consumer won't notice differences so there's like a halo kind of effect here and that's kind of what I think mostly masks are, but on a blinded basis, I doubt you'll see much difference between a mask and just a regular good old conditioner.

28:13Valerie George: I think it depends. I agree, but I think it depends on the product.

28:17Perry Romanowski: And the person.

28:18Valerie George: Our next question comes to us from Janie, a patron. Hello, beautiful brainiacs. I've been wondering for some time if I'm doing this correctly. I have a tretinoin gel that's kind of a pain to apply because it doesn't glide on the skin. So I started adding Trader Joe's Marula oil to make it easier to spread and be more gentle. Am I compromising the composition of the tretinoin product by doing this? Thanks.

28:44Perry Romanowski: Well, that is, that's a pretty good question. I was looking at these tretinoin gels. This is tretinoin. This is a, this is prescription product, right?

28:53Valerie George: Correct.

28:53Perry Romanowski: Have you used one of these prescription ones?

28:56Valerie George: I don't use tretinoin, but I use azelaic acid gel by prescription. I've also used the foam, but the foam is really draggy. And in my opinion, they probably have a similar construct. So usually these pharmaceutical gels have a carbomer, a solvent, so like usually propylene glycol. I've never seen propane dial or buccanolene glycol in them. And they adjust the pH and maybe a preservative in there. and of course water and so there's no frills in there they're not really concerned about the aesthetics like oh is it the user experience really great like their job is to make a gel so it doesn't run all over the place and can be put in a tube the solvent solubilizes the active or aids in penetration and like that's it that's what you get well you know what else you might

29:47Perry Romanowski: find in there what bht oh perhaps in a gel like an azelaic acid you don't have to worry about it

29:55Valerie George: but perhaps in a tretinoin gel you might have to worry about that and so i could see that the user experience isn't great but perry question does a little oil hurt in helping it spread out i don't

30:08Perry Romanowski: think so i am in complete agreement with you here so what i would also say is that it depends on how you're doing it if you're if you get the product and you're dumping the oil in there and you're mixing it don't do that oh right yeah if you're just dabbing it into your hand and then you mix a little oil on there and then mix it in your hand and then use it right away well then yeah

30:31Valerie George: I think that's okay to do you know I made an assumption that that's what Janie was doing like in the hand because I'm like who would like it never would occur to me to like oh let me mix them in package, but you're right. People might do that. And yeah, that's a bad idea.

30:47Perry Romanowski: Yeah. Don't do that. But if you're just mixing it, you know, while you're using it, you know, you might dilute it and you're not, you know, you're not getting the full strength of how much you're using. But again, that's, that's probably not a big issue. I don't think

31:06Valerie George: I don't think so either. All right.

31:09Perry Romanowski: Our next question comes to us from Katie. Katie says, K-18 has a new product called Future IQ, trademark, biomimetic hair longevity serum that claims to reduce shedding and graying and protect scalp longevity. Whoa. Can you imagine that? These people over at K-18, they're always coming out with something. So she included the ingredient list. I'm going to take a look at the website here. Biomimetic Hair Science.

31:43Valerie George: I feel like this is a product where the marketing team sat in a room and was like, what are all the possible buzzwords we could put in one product name? Biomimetic. Longevity. The longevity movement is very big right now in cosmetics. And at the end of the day, it's another way to say anti-aging. essentially i can't tell you how many products i see the term iq on or phrases with iq in them like i bought flower do you know your flower iq i'm staring at it right now it literally says it on the package so it just feels like very buzzworthy well i'm looking at so before we get

32:25Perry Romanowski: to the ingredients we're looking at like what are the claims here that's their key benefits they say in month one 100 of people showed reduced hair fall wow and then 82 of people said it did not contribute to hair oiliness and 95 people agree the product did not increase scalp sensitivity okay i mean you can get consumer surveys to you know say pretty much anything you want right

32:55Valerie George: You know, I've done a bit of these surveys, and the questions get asked in a lot of different ways to make sure that the consumer understands what you're trying to ask from them. But a cynical way to look at it would be to get the answer you want.

33:11Perry Romanowski: Yeah, yeah.

33:12Valerie George: I thought this claim of 19 ,000 more hairs with three months of nightly use was very interesting. That's a lot of hair.

33:19Perry Romanowski: i just wondered i like how are you supporting that up to 19 000 more hairs for volume like in a head i don't know because that's because if you say oh uh the average person's head has a hundred thousand hairs and that's about right although redheads have less and brunettes have more but that's like the average so 19 000 would be like 19 percent more volume I wonder why they didn't say that.

33:51Valerie George: Well, I think 19 ,000 is more impressive than 19%.

33:56Perry Romanowski: Yeah, but did people count up the 19 ,000 hairs?

34:01Valerie George: And at month two, you get up to 10 ,000 more hairs. And I think that feels really fast because you have to hope that your cells are in the cell cycle at an appropriate point to start the antigen phase again, where the dermal papilla connects and tells the hair to regrow. And that phase lasts a couple years. So presumably hair grows about a half an inch per month. And so that activity would have had to start in month one for you to realize it in month two. So it's pretty impressive if it's indeed the case.

34:38Perry Romanowski: I will say that the way the claim is worded up to 10 ,000 hair, That's doing a lot of heavy lifting.

34:47Valerie George: Well, you have to do that because not everyone got those results.

34:51Perry Romanowski: Right, right, right. That's your outlier.

34:54Valerie George: Well, what's in the product?

34:56Perry Romanowski: So in the product, they have water and penthylene glycol. So you have your water, your humectant, glycerin, another humectant, niacinamide, diethyl isosorbide.

35:10Valerie George: Oh, dimethyl isosorbide is a penetration enhancer. It also helps solubilize like oily materials.

35:17Perry Romanowski: Sure, sure. Then their preservative system, sodium benzoate, their thickener, hydroxyethylcellulose. And when are we getting to the part? I guess the zinc sulfate hepahydrate.

35:30Valerie George: Lysine carboxymethylcysteinate.

35:33Perry Romanowski: Yeah, and the palmitol dipeptide 52. So I guess that's what they're hanging their head on, right? The peptide and the...

35:42Valerie George: It would have to be because everything else in the formula after hydrolyzed yeast, protein, and palmitoyal tetrapeptide 20-amide is all incidental ingredients or preservation.

35:56Perry Romanowski: Anyway, I'm looking at this. You know, I've never been impressed with the performance of peptides, especially in hair. But not everyone agrees with me.

36:06Valerie George: Well, you're looking at one. But just the scalp is a really tough environment. and there are a lot of follicles things can get in i would be curious to try this the problem is am i willing to spend 120 on it well currently discounted to 108 i'm not it's it's a big risk especially you know hair scalp products have a low rate of adoption was this once daily twice daily i don't know what the directions say but they're just really hard hard to distribute um you know am I going to see the same results? And by the way, you got to use it for three months. You're in for$360 at this point.

36:49Perry Romanowski: Right. And I'm also saying, like, reduce graying.

36:54Valerie George: Ah, come on.

36:56Perry Romanowski: I mean, they're getting to some of this stuff is, like, drug claim kind of land. Now, they get away with it, I guess, because it's kind of a weak claim. But, like, reduce graying. how are you even going to prove that? Like, unless you count all the grays on your hair and then you don't see any new ones starting? I don't know.

37:20Valerie George: That's what you have to do where you have to see a gray hair turn black. Again, and the graying mechanism is very complicated, actually. So these ingredients have to stop the oxidation pathways that you're undergoing. It would be really tough to do. But Perry, I mean, what's stopping me from trying this? the 120 bucks per month i know so tough you know if this were free i would try it and then if it worked i would pay double the price to make up for it well no i wouldn't do that i would track that

37:54Perry Romanowski: i i would i would start buying it if it worked sure i'm just super skeptical that it works as as the claims imply not that they're lying or anything uh but i think they're you just got to remember research in cosmetics is not scientific research it's research meant to support a story and while they have like the trappings of science they're not trying to figure out what's true they're trying to figure out what can they prove yeah so that just makes me skeptical certainly at that price three ounces but i'm not the target market because you're you read this and you're like oh i'm curious i read this and i'm like yeah well you know you looked you sent me a picture

38:37Valerie George: when you were on vacation of you with a beard and i was like you look really good in a beard you should keep it and you were like no it's too gray so here's my idea perry we both get bottles for three months except you put yours on your beard and i put mine on my head i wonder if they

38:58Perry Romanowski: would make that claim that it works on beard hair there's only one way to find out and that is you

39:04Valerie George: buying the bottle you putting it on your beard but only half your beard i'll tell you what if the k18 folks want to send us samples and they don't mind us talking about it and trying it but we would need six samples because we need three months yeah and you have a big face just kidding especially

39:24Perry Romanowski: Especially when I smile.

39:26Valerie George: Oh, goodness.

39:26Perry Romanowski: All right, Valerie, looks like we got time for one more question. Our last question comes to us from Heather. Hi, Val and Perry. I've recently heard about a professional product called Quote Hair.

39:37Valerie George: It's actually coat. There's no U after the Q. It's really bothersome for me when companies do this. Like, instead of spelling coat with a C, they put a Q. I don't like it. But anyway, coat.

39:49Perry Romanowski: You know, if they use the wrong font, they could say goat hair. but it doesn't.

39:56Valerie George: I actually think it was goat when it launched anyway.

39:59Perry Romanowski: Oh there you go. Okay well the marketing information says coat professional hair color top coat is a professional color preservation top coat designed to extend the life of salon color between appointments by targeting the structural and elemental factors that contribute to premature fading. Instead it works to stabilize the hair fiber after this service, helping support color longevity between appointments. So the ingredients don't look like anything revolutionary. It claims restore hydrophobicity, but doesn't replace conditioner. What's the deal with this product? Can you demystify whether this is just another gimmick or does it actually do what it claims?

40:38Perry Romanowski: Thanks, Heather. I am not familiar with this product, but it sounds like a salon service product.

40:45Valerie George: Well, it is a take-home product introduced through the salon. So it was started by a salon professional and it's meant for salon professionals to use after a color service for their guests and to extend the life of the color. Now from an ingredient perspective, I'll tell you the product really does work, but I don't like the spin that they put on it where this has never been done. This is revolutionary. They discovered something and at the end of the day their hero materials were introduced 10 years ago and they're nothing to write home to mom about so they're overplaying the revolutionary party i think so so the material that's really doing the work for color protection is polyquaternium 113 113 and this material uh chromahance 113 was launched in the last decade by Ashland and essentially this is a it's a polymer so it's a polyquiternium it's positively charged sticks to hair and forms or create some kind of hydrophobic interaction on the hair strand to repel water this is really important it's because water is what dissolves the dyes in your hair and then they get washed away in the shower and so if you can restore this hydrophobicity your color is retained a little bit better and this material really does work i have looked at it myself in different applications and behind the chair and great material but is this something you know to write home to mom about i don't know it's true that it wouldn't replace your conditioner because this is not a conditioner it has conditioning agents in it so you can comb through the hair when it's wet, but it really is meant to just coat the hair with this polyquaternium to extend the life of your color.

42:50Valerie George: So there's that, but, you know, conditioners also inherently are color protecting. So.

42:57Perry Romanowski: Right, right. I'm, I'm curious if you would notice a difference. You know, I worked on that Trussamay Color Lock product where that actually had a level of formaldehyde in it where it reacted with the hair and made the hair more resistant to opening up and losing dye. So that's a different strategy. So I wonder how that would compare to this.

43:21Valerie George: Well, I think what you worked on is like an inside strategy. And this really is like a topical strategy. You're just glazing the hair with this polyquaternium. You know, the name is, although you know i just hate the letter q in it um you know it really does coat the hair right and you know surely it does help keep color in a little bit longer i think there's a lot of other things that uh could be used um i think what is interesting is that it's a professional treatment but then the guest is going to go home they're going to use whatever water they're using whatever shampoos.

43:59Perry Romanowski: Or shampoo, yeah.

44:00Valerie George: Eventually this stuff does rinse off, and so it'd be really great to see some kind of take-home products with it.

44:09Perry Romanowski: You know, that does occur to me. You know what would make a good coating for your hair? Just use VO5 hairdressing, the old stuff. That'll coat your hair. Oh my gosh, it would look so greasy and gross. It totally would look greasy and gross, but But functionally, it'll make your hair color last longer if this coating does.

44:30Valerie George: Well, it really would work. It sure would be hydrophobic.

44:34Perry Romanowski: That's probably why they didn't do it. Speaking of do it, do you hear that music?

44:38Valerie George: Thanks for listening. If you get a chance, head over to Apple Podcasts or Spotify and leave us a review. That will help other people find the show and ensure we have a full docket of beauty questions to answer.

44:49Perry Romanowski: and speaking of questions if you have one you can just record it on your smartphone and email it to thebeautybrands at gmail.com or you can also call us at 1-872-216-1856 and leave a message or you can just fill out the form in the show notes for your questions hey beauty brands are also on patreon and you've heard a couple of patrons ask questions today and they get the highest priority of answers to their questions. In addition, they get a transcript of the show and other little goodies we sprinkle in there throughout the year. If you want to support the show and appreciate that we don't take ads, go to patreon.com slash thebeautybrains and subscribe at any level.

45:30Valerie George: Perry, who was the president in 1856? Don't you have a memory castle for this?

45:37Perry Romanowski: 1856 was, it could have been Breckenridge, or I'm sorry, not Breckenridge, Buchanan.

45:45Valerie George: Who was before Buchanan?

45:47Perry Romanowski: Breckenridge. Before Buchanan was Franklin? Franklin Pierce.

45:52Valerie George: Franklin Pierce. Exactly. You're so good. I had to look that up. I didn't even know. He was not a great president. A largely contributing president. But anyway, nonetheless, don't forget to follow us on our various social media accounts on Instagram, Worth of Beauty Brains 2018. On X, Worth of Beauty Brains. On Blue Sky, Worth of Beauty Brains. We have a Facebook page, a TikTok, and a YouTube.

46:13Perry Romanowski: Hey, you know, I actually put some stuff on TikTok, so you can see those videos.

46:18Valerie George: I'm not on TikTok, so I can't.

46:20Perry Romanowski: You are not.

46:21Valerie George: Well, thanks again for listening, everyone. And remember, be brainy about your beauty.

46:26Perry Romanowski: Thanks, everyone.