Bella begs to know…I recently read on Eco-Chick  and a couple of other places that adding a little baking soda to shampoo can help get rid of styling residue and other gunk in your hair. How does this work? Is it safe for hair?

The Right Brain responds:

Adding baking soda to shampoo is a very persistent beauty myth. Using baking soda as a shampoo substitute (i.e., as a dry shampoo) does make some sense because the powder can absorb oil and some surface dirt. But will adding baking soda to shampoo really result in better cleansing? There are three potential reasons why this might work:

3 Ways Baking Soda MIGHT Clean Your Hair

Enhanced detergency
Detergents, which belong to a chemical classification known as surfactants, work because they have both oil and water soluble properties. Baking soda, on the other hand, is a water soluble salt which doesn’t really have provide any detergency. You can easily demonstrate this by dissolving some in water and adding a drop of oil. If the baking soda was good at washing away oil it would disperse the oil droplet. (But it doesn’t.)

Increased abrasion
If you had some very insoluble substance stuck in your hair that shampoo would not remove, like chewing gum, the gritty texture of baking soda might help physically abrade it. But for the common types of soil that you will find in your hair (sebum and styling residue) you don’t need this increased abrasion.

Raising the pH to dissolve styling residue
At first glance this approach potentially makes the most sense. Styling polymers are neutralized with acid to make them less water-soluble (that’s why they can hold your hair in high humidity.) One way to get rid of styling gunk is to make it more soluble by raising the pH. Since the pH of a baking soda solution is about 9 this could work, right?

That, as they say, is a testable proposition. So we added a 1/8 teaspoon of baking soda to 1/2 ounce of the shampoo we’re currently testing (the new Mark Anthony Oil of Morocco Argan Oil shampoo.) Then we measured the pH using litmus strips.

As you can see from the strip on the left, the initial pH is pretty close to 7 which is neutral. After adding a good slug of baking soda the pH strip turned slightly darker. The lighting in the picture makes it hard to tell, but it looks like it went up to about 8 or 8.5.  Unfortunately, this much of a pH increase won’t provide much cleaning boost to the shampoo because baking soda is a weak base and it won’t do a very good job of neutralizing the weak acids present in the styling resins.

The Beauty Brains bottom line

While adding baking soda to your shampoo won’t hurt your hair it also won’t help much. So if you like to do this and you think it gives you a little bit of an edge in cleaning power go for it. But, if you’re going to run out and buy a 50 gallon barrel of baking soda just because you think it’s critical for clean hair. then save your money.

Image credit: http://capl.washjeff.edu/2/l/5761.jpg

P.S. Did you like the way we slipped the mention of Marc Anthony Oil Of Morocco Argan Oil Shampoo? That’s because we received a free sample to try. If you like moisturizing sulfate free shampoos, you might want to give this a try. If you buy it using our link you’ll be helping to support the Beauty Brains.

Here’s an interesting product that I’m filing under my favorite topic: “Do beauty companies think we’re stupid?”

The ingredients they tell us about…

It’s a body wash under Colgate’s Soft Soap line. According to the front of the package, it features crushed Coconut and Jojoba extracts in a creamy body wash base. As you can tell from the picture it’s a nice enough looking product. It’s a nice creamy beige color and you can see the little scrubby bits inside. What do you think those are? Probably the “crushed coconut” that they proudly mention on label, right?  Wrong.

 …and the ingredients that really work.

Take a look at the ingredients on the back and you’ll see that it indeed contains coconut extract but it’s coconut oil. That certainly won’t give you little brown scrubby bits that we can see in the package. So what are those? We see elsewhere in the ingredient list that apricot seed powder is included in this product. So that’s what those little scrubbing particles are.

Now to be honest it doesn’t matter to me if I’m scrubbing my body with apricot seeds or coconut husks as long as I like the way the product works, that it leaves my skin feeling nice, and that it smells good.  But would it have killed Colgate to say on the front label “with Coconut oil and Apricot seeds?”  Or maybe they thought the word “seeds” might make us think it will scratch our skin?  Well if that’s the case, shouldn’t we have known that? Now I grant you in the big scheme of things this is a pretty minor deception. Still if we’re going to hold cosmetic companies responsible for respecting our intelligence we have to start somewhere!

Image credit: http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6130/5992837346_f653e6f707.jpg

What do YOU think? Is Mid Brain off on another rant or do label “deceptions” like this annoy you too? Leave a comment and share your thoughts with the rest of the Beauty Brains community.

MidBrain asks…I noticed in the comment section on my post about a replacement term for “Chemical Free,” someone suggested “food grade.” She also provided a link to her site where she sells organic products. Is it really possible for cosmetics to meet food grade standards?

The Right Brain responds:

It seems a little incestuous to have one Beauty Brain ask a question and have another Beauty Brain answer it but, what the heck, let’s give it a try.

What standards do we measure naturals products by?

Can you make a food grade cosmetic? Sure, you can slap almost any ingredients together and call them a cosmetic. Just mash up an avocado with some wheat germ oil and smear it on your face. It will certainly hydrate your skin but will it FEEL like a moisturizer should? I think the question should be: “Can you make a food grade (or natural) cosmetic that’s of comparable quality to a “regular” cosmetic? ” That’s where it gets a bit tricky because in many cases it’s difficult, if not impossible, for truly natural ingredients to provide the same level of performance as a synthetic ingredients that have been specifically engineered to deliver a desired benefit. That doesn’t mean natural products are bad, it just means you should expect them to be different. And, you need to ask yourself if this difference is acceptable and worth paying more for.

Let’s look at two examples from the website in question (organicglow.com) and assess how well they would be expected to perform based on their ingredients. For the sake of discussion we’ll look at two hair care products: shampoo and a hair gel.

Miessence Dessert Flower Shampoo Ingredients

Certified Organic Aloe Barbadensis (aloe vera) Leaf Juice, Coco Glucoside , Yucca Schidigera Extract, D-panthenol (pro-vitamin B5), Non-GMO Xanthan Gum, Citrus Aurantium Amara (bitter orange) Fruit Extract, Certified Organic Helianthus Annuus (sunflower) Seed Oil, Certified Organic Citrus Aurantifolia (lime) Essential Oil, Citric Acid. Certified Organic Persea Gratissima (avocado) Fruit Oil, Certified Organic Equisetum Arvense (horsetail) Extract, Certified Organic Urtica Dioica (nettle) Extract, Certified Organic Arctium Lappa (burdock) Extract, Certified Organic Rosmarinus Officinalis (rosemary) Leaf Extract, Certified Organic Salvia Officinalis (sage) Leaf Extract

First we feel compelled to point out that this company is taking some liberties with the ingredient labeling laws since aloe is the first ingredient instead of water.  This is a trick that many companies use because it makes their product look more concentrated because there’s “no water.” In reality, the water comes in from the Aloe Leaf juice, which is 99.5% water and only 0.5% solids based on industry standards. (reference: Active Organics). But by including the water they get to list it first on the ingredient list instead of at the bottom so it looks more appealing to potential consumers.

Based on the composition, we’d guess this product should stack up pretty well against a standard shampoo. It should clean your hair just fine and the coco-glucoside should provide adequate lather. Most of the other ingredients will just rinse down the drain, though. And, if you’re used to using a moisturizing shampoos that contain silicones or cationic polymers, you’ll notice quite a difference in hair feel with this one.

What about styling ? Creating a natural styling product is much more of a challenge because styling products have to hold hair in place under a variety of environmental conditions. That’s why hairsprays, gels, and mousses are made with hard holding polymers. Let’s look at their own styling product, a gel.

Miessence Shape Hair Styling Gel Ingredients

Certified Organic Aloe Barbadensis (aloe vera) Leaf Juice, Certified Organic Ethanol (sugar cane alcohol), Organic Fermented Grain Extract, Certified Organic Rosa Rubiginosa (rosehip) Seed Oil, Chondrus Crispus (carageenan) Gum, Non-GMO Xanthan Gum, Certified Organic Pelargonium Graveolens (geranium) Essential Oil

The product descriptor contains the term “shape” and the website describes it as providing “medium body and hold for most hair types.” Therefore, I think it’s reasonable to expect this product to hold like a typical gel would. Unfortunately, a review of the ingredients does not reveal any fixative. This product certainly not won’t provide  the kind of hold one you would get from a gel formulated with acrylate polymers (which most of the industry uses).  The natural gums in this product will provide some style retention but they don’t have the humidity resistance or proper film forming properties to really hold hair in place. It would appear this would be much better positioned as a hair-conditioning leave in treatment rather than a shaping product to provide medium hold.

The Beauty Brains bottom line

Again, we stress that it’s all about your expectations. If you would rather spend more money to ensure your products are free of synthetic free product and you’re less concerned about matching the performance of “regular” products,  then Miessence may be good deal for you. And bravo to Miessence for providing alternatives to consumers alternatives. However, they need to be careful not to imply that their products will function just as well as those with “evil” synthetic ingredients.  While food grade cosmetics are a possibility consumers need to be aware  of potential trade-offs before spending a lot of money on them.

Image credit: http://s0.geograph.org.uk/geophotos/02/63/47/2634796_d0e23e6d.jpg

What do YOU think? Would you be willing to sacrifice performance to get more “natural” products? Leave a comment and share your thoughts with the rest of the Beauty Brains community.

Have you tried the latest Vaseline Intensive Care lotion restage? According to the fine folks at Unilever (manufacturer of the Vaseline brand), this new product is different because it contains Stratys-3™. What is that you ask? Well, they say that some moisturizers stay on top of your skin where do a good job of moisturizing but make the skin feel greasy. Other lotions penetrate the skin well so there’s no greasy feeling, but they don’t thoroughly moisturize. Apparently Stratys-3™ this is the “Goldilocks” of lotions because it gets moisture just right. It’s just unfortunate that they’ve chosen to give the ingredients in this lotion such a faux-science nickname.

What does Statys-3 REALLY mean?

First, lets take a look at the ingredients:

Water, Glycerine, Stearic Acid, Petrolatum, Isopropyl Palmitate, Avena Sativa (Oat) Straw Extract, Dihydroxypropyl Trimonium Chloride, Hydroxyethyl Urea, Acrylates/C10 30 Alkyl Acrylate Crosspolymer, Dimethicone, Glyceryl Stearate, Cetyl Alcohol, Lactic Acid, Fragrance, Magnesium Aluminium Silicate, Potassium Hydroxide, Propylene Glycol, Methylparaben, Propylparaben, Disodium EDTA, Phenoxyethanol, Titanium Dioxide

Now, let’s break it down by skin layers:

The tippy top layer of skin
Petrolatum and dimethicone are the classic “sit on top of skin and seal in moisture” ingredients. These are the ones that could potentially make your skin feel greasy. Isopropyl palmitate sits on the skin as well but it is a very dry feeling ester.

The in between layers
Glycerine, because it is hygroscopic, works at the surface and beneath the skin to bind moisture.

The deeper layers of dead skin
Hydroxyethyl urea works from within the stratum corneum (the upper “dead” layers of skin) to hydrate. Lactic acid helps in this regard as well.

So, Vaseline has a good mix of skin moisturizing ingredients. But then again, so do a lot of other products.

How does Vaseline Total Moisture give you the best of both worlds?

Reading between the lines here, we’re assuming that the Unilever chemists have managed to balance the greasiness with the moisturization so it feels like you get the best worlds. This is quite an accomplishment considering that petrolatum is the fourth ingredient.

How does it feel?

From a sensory perspective, the lotions do feel nice. And they provide a nice range of three fragrance types so hopefully everyone will find something they like. (The coconut one is particularly yummy.)

Even though the Beauty Brains don’t do traditional reviews, from time to time we like to share new products that we’re trying. We want you to know that we received free samples in exchange for a mention on our blog and that we’re not necessarily recommending you buy anything. We’re just sharing new product news; please do your own research before you buy.  But if you do choose to buy this product, please use our link for Vaseline Total Moisture and help support the Beauty Brains. 

Jasmine says…I am an unfortunate victim of adult acne and I’m being bombarded with different advice from doctors, cosmetologists etc on different creams that all basically do the same thing- mildly exfoliate. I am however using a 20% salicylic acid peel every 10 days to get rid of scars and “unclog my pores”. A relative who is a doctor suggested I try azelaic acid instead- having Indian skin. So my question is: Is there really a difference between these? Do they act on the skin differently? Perhaps molecule size makes a difference?

The Left Brain responds: 

It’s not clear from your question whether or not the doctor you spoke with is a dermatologist. The reason I bring it up is a general practitioner may not have the background required to adequately diagnose your skin condition. Regardless, I would never countermand a doctor’s diagnosis, however I can give you some basic scientific background about the difference between these two active ingredients.

AHAs and acne

Salicylic acid is a beta hydroxy acid which means it’s more lipid or oil soluble so it can penetrate into the “pores” better which makes it effective in treating acne. (So molecule size isn’t the key factor. ).

Azelaic acid is an alpha hydroxide and is also used to treat acne. The mode of action is antibacterial and, according to WebMD, it doesnt work on acne that’s not infected with bacteria. I’m assuming that the sal acid has an advantage here because it can help loosen skin cells that could potentially plug your pores even if there is no bacteria infection.

Azelaic acid also has the ability to reduce inflammation and so can be used to treat rosacea and it used to treat post-inflammatory hyper pigmentation. That makes it a good treatment for post-acne scars.  I couldn’t find any information that indicates it’s suitable for use on Indian skin.

If you’d like to read more, here’s a great reference on the difference between AHAs.

The Beauty Brains bottom line

Unless otherwise indicated by a dermatologist , I suspect that Sal acid is more effective at clearing clogged pores.

References:
Grimes, Pearl E. (2007-07-01). Aesthetics and Cosmetic Surgery for Darker Skin Types. Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. pp. 74–. ISBN 978-0-7817-8403-0.
WebMD

Image credit: cynicsgirl.blogspot.com