I am deep into the all the new summer collections that have been coming out over the past few years but I have decided to switch topics a bit for today. I love to read books of all subjects when I am not studying for grad school and I often visit my local library looking for books of all topics that I might find interesting. One that I found a few months ago was a full book written by the people who write The Beauty Brains blog (thebeautybrains.com), they are a group of scientists and skincare experts who use their forum to help educate consumers to find the right products for their skin woes and when they may need addition help in the form of a dermatologist. The official author of this book is Perry Romanski and is published by Harlequin books, I found it quickly and easily on the Barnes and Noble website and I hope that some of you will consider reading the whole text of this book.
This book allows the readers of The Beauty Brains blog to write in and ask questions of the experts. It would appear that the most asked questions were answered and then written up for this book. The majority of the questions are about what price beauty comes at and what specific ingredients and chemicals do for your skin, hair, etc. This is not one of those books like those written by the "Cosmetics Cop" Paula, they are 1005 objective since they do not make any money from their recommendations of certain products.
I have chosen three questions from the book that interested me and are a good representation of the types that are asked of The Beauty Brains.
Are Perfumes Made From Natural Ingredients?
"Are perfumes made from real flowers or fake chemicals?"
- Perfumes are made with a mixture of natural and synthetic ingredients and one fo the most interesting approaches to creating synthetic ingredients involves capturing the scent that a living flower exudes.
Powerful Perfume - Perfume is wonderful, but nothing smells quite as nice as a fresh-cut flower. Or does it? It is possible that modern science can make a perfume that smells just like a real flower? The answer is yes! Scientists at International Flavors and Fragrance (IFF), one of the world's largest fragrance companies, have developed a new technology that allows them to reproduce the
exact scent of a living flower - without even having to pick it. Floral fragrance ingredients were originally created by picking a flower and processing it to extract the chemcial components responsible for its aroma. While this process did isolate some of the chemicals responsible for the flower's smell, it dit not capture the
exact same scent molecules that were released by the flower and picked up by your nose. That's because as living flower releases differnt chemicals than a dead, cut flower. Therefore, it was really impossible to replicate the exact scent of fresh flowers.
Living Flower Technology - But IFF's new Living Flower head-space analysis technology changes all that. Now head-space analysis does not refer to some kind of psychoanalytical technique. It's a way fo collecting the scent of a living, growing flower, instead of just extracting chemicals from a dead flower. It works like this: A large glass globe is placed around the living flower to capture the scent it releases. This globe is connected to a sophisticated gas chromatograph that analyzes the exact composition of the scent. Chemists then use this analysis as a road map to create a synthetic chemical that smells exactly like the original (This same technique can be applied to fruits as well as flowers.). So instead of chopping up dead flowers, scientists can now create more natural-smelling perfumes from living plants. It's another great example of better living through chemistry.
The Bottom Line - In our opinion, the best products take something from nature and improve on it. And that's how Living Flower technology works.
The Best Skin Moisturizing Oils in the World
"Since the weather is getting drier, I've decided to look for some treatments to keep my cuticles from drying out. I've noticed that a lot of products include very similar ingredients, like jojoba oil, apricot kernal oil, shea butter, and, in particular, sweet almond oila nd lavender oil. Do these ingredients really help to moisturize and what excatly do they do? I've noticed a lot of body care products emphasive shea butter. I've also noticed some body lotions have coconut oil in them. Is this another beneficial ingredient?"
- All the oils you mentioned can moisturize skin, but they're not the
best moisturizers. Which
are the best, you ask?
How Oils Moisturize - Moisture evaporates from your skin by slipping through tiny cracks and fissures. Oils form a barrier layer on top of skin that prevents the water molecules from escaping. It's all about stopping evaporation! This property is called occlusivity and it's measured by a rating called transepidermal water loss, or TEWL (pronounced 'tool'). The TEWL value has been measured for various oils, and the ones that have the highest raing (those that stop the most water from escaping your skin) are listed here.
Top Five Moisturizing Oil (according to cosmetics science)
1. Petroleum jelly (at a concentration of 5%, reduces TEWL by more than 98%)
2. Lanolin
3. Mineral Oil
4. Dimethicone (a type of silicone)
5. Others, including other oils (like coconut), fatty alcohols and waxes.
The Bottom Line - Some of the other oils you mention are still benefical - they can make skin feel softer and smoother. But if you really want to keep your skin and cuticles moist, you need to reduce evaporation with one of these top five.
Can You Really Rebuild Your Hair?
"What is the deal with 'restructing' treatments for hair? I get that the vaque concept is to 'restore proteins' to your hair or some gobbledygook, but isn't hair essentially dead? Can a restructuring treatment really force-feed amino acids or whatever into our manes?
- The Beauty Brains love Amanda's skepticism, because the idea of being able to slather on a hair restructuring treatment to actually re-form hair is ridiculous. True, hair is made of amino acids and putting them on hair may provide some minro benefit. But it won't restructure, restore, or rebuild the hair. This would be like be a bit like trying to repair a weather-worn Kate Spade bag by pouring a basket of thread and fabric on it. Sure, the stylish sack is made of thread and fabric, but you can't just randomly put them on the worn bag and expect to get a new purse.
Restructure Hair? - It's the same with hair and amino acids. To restructure the hair, the amino acids would have to be chemically arranged in a specific way. This arrangement can only be done in the hair follicle when the hair is growing. After that, nothing can be done except coat the hair with a good conditioner that mitigates some of the signs of damage. So what are these restructuring treatments? In essence, they are just glorified rinse-out conditioners.
- Let's take a look at the ingredients in a 'restructing' conditioner:
purified water, glyceryl stearate, PEG-100 stearate, stearamidopropyl dimethylamine, cetyl alcohol, propylene glycol, stearyl alcohol, dimethicone, triamino copper nutritional complex, hydroxyethylcellulose, panthenol, aloe vera gel, soydimonium hydroxypropyl hydrolyzed wheat protein, hydrolyzed keratin, citric acid, methylparaben, fragrance, disodium EDTA, propylparaben, peppermint oil, tocopheryl acetate, cholecalciferol, retinyl palmitate, vegetable oil, FD&C Blue 1, D&C Red 33. The rules of cosmetic labeling require that ingredients be listed in order of concentration above 1 percent. In general, the more of an ingredient in the formula, the greater the impact it has on the product. The ingredients near the end of the list are just put in there to make a nice marketing story or are color, fragrance, or preservatives. In this formula, some of the main working ingredients are stearamidopropyla dimethylamine, cetyl alcohol, stearyl alcohol, and dimethicone.
- But then tale a look at the ingredients list in a regular rinse-out conditioner:
water, stearyl alcohol, cyclopentasiloxane, cetyl alcohol, steaeamidopropyl, dimethylamine, glumatic acid, dimethicone, benzyl alcohol, fragrance, panthenyl ethyl ether, EDTA, panthenol, methylchloroisothiazolinone, methylisothiazolinone. Notice any similarities? The main working ingredients here are stearyl alcohol, cyclopentasiloxane, cetyl alcohol, stearamidopropyl dimethylamine, and dimethicone.
The Bottom Line - A restructing conditioner will not rebuild your hair any better than a standard rinse-out formula. And it certainly won't rebuild your hair better then thread and fabric would rebuild a worn-out Kate Spade bag.
These are just three examples out of an entire book, there are many more questions that this team answers. Out of all the questions, I found these three very interesting since many people have asked me how fragrance is made and I never had a very good answer for them. The same holds for the second question, so many of my friends ask me why different skin creams perform the same that they do and I have heard so many companies proclaim that their combination of ingredients are the best and that no one should ever use some of the listed chemicals on their skin. This answer was a huge eye-opener for it. The last questions was something that I had always suspected with using protein treatments for head, affirming what that I believed that these products were barely different than traditional conditioning formulas.
I learned so much from this book and I hope that the examples I provided from it are enough to send you guys out to read this work and check out The Beauty Brains website. And yes, you can get hooked on lip balm!
photo courtesy of Barnes and Noble
