Does skin need to breathe?

In short, for humans who are not premature babies, the answer is “no“. Not in the traditional sense of taking in oxygen for the rest of your body, anyway. Your skin’s essential function is to prevent things from the environment from entering your body, and things you need (e.g. water) from leaving the body. It’s very good at its job! …

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Sleeping beauty – benefits of getting enough shut-eye

  (You think you love your sleep? If you’re not Japanese – think again. The Japanese are HARDCORE SLEEPERS. Google images of “Japanese subway sleeping” for some pro-level public transport power-naps that most of us mere mortals can only aspire to.) I’ve been staying up til all hours recently for a number of reasons (Diablo, nail painting, thesis – in …

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Is mineral oil dangerous? Part 2

Angela Mabray I’m looking at whether mineral oil, an incredibly common moisturiser – possibly the most common moisturiser, check your moisturiser’s ingredients – is dangerous again. Read part 1 here! 3. Mineral oil is comedogenic and will make you break out – FALSE Mineral oil appears on a large range of “comedogenic ingredients” lists. Once upon a time (well, in …

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Is mineral oil dangerous? Part 1

Angela Mabray Mineral oil gets quite a bad rap… why? We’re going to take a look at the most common reasons people give for why you should avoid mineral oil this week in a 2-parter: 1. Mineral oil comes from crude oil… I’m not putting gasoline on my face! – FALSE Flcelloguy While it’s true that mineral oil comes from …

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Big 3 – Formaldehyde

Reminder: Only a few days left to enter my giveaway! Good luck everyone 🙂 This is the last of the Big 3. The other two were covered earlier: DBP – Toluene Formaldehyde – form-AL-de-hide – MSDS Other names: methanal. When mixed with water, formaldehyde forms methanediol, which is also known as formalin, methylene glycol or formaldehyde monohydrate. Not to be …

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Big 3 – Toluene

Second in Lab Muffin’s Big 3 series is toluene. Part 1 – DBP Toluene – TOLL-lew-een – MSDSaka toluol, methylbenzene, phenylmethane Where is it found? Nail polish, permanent markers, paint. Why is it there? Toluene is a solvent – in other words, it dissolves up all the other bits in nail polish so you’re not putting chunky powder across your …

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Flashback: Big 3 – DBP

I’ve decided to finish off the Big 3 (maybe even Big 4!) series I started on at the beginning of this blogging journey, and thought revisiting my original DBP post would be a good way to start – read on… If you’ve ever looked at the ingredients list on the back of any of your cosmetics, you’ll see a massive …

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Interesting nail facts

First off, the best and worst thing about working in a chemistry “wet lab”: We wash our glassware with acetone. On a productive day, I can go through a litre of the stuff! This means:* I always have acetone on hand for nail art – yay!* My polish is almost always messed up by the second day. Onto 8 interesting …

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