If you’ve ever looked up sodium laureth sulfate (SLES) and sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS) in a clean beauty app, like me, you might be surprised to find that SLES is dirtier than SLS. These apps are terrible and based on pseudoscience: SLS and SLES are both safe in your products. But if you’re a skincare nerd, you’ll know that SLS …
Vitamin C is an amazing skincare active, but ascorbic acid can be annoying in products. That’s why vitamin C derivatives were developed – these are slightly altered versions of ascorbic acid that can get around these issues (irritation, instability, stained fingers, fake tan smell). Two of the INCI names for derivatives that you might’ve seen on ingredient lists are ascorbyl …
You might’ve seen Matter of Fact skincare all over social media lately. Their star product is a vitamin C serum, and they’ve been doing a lot of sponsorships with influencers, particularly the ones that come across as “sciencey” (with a science background and/or make scientific skincare content). You might’ve been surprised to see me in one of their influencer ads …
Good Molecules is a brand with a pretty unique marketing strategy – they show their ingredient lists with the percentages of all the ingredients, saying they have “nothing to hide”. They claim this is a “new level of transparency”, and that they hope that others in the industry will do the same… but is that really transparent? The YouTube video …
You’ve probably seen hundreds of these sorts of videos and infographics giving you lists of foods to stop eating to cure your acne. Is there any truth to this? Are all these foods actually giving us acne? Here’s a deep dive into the science behind food and acne. A quick warning: I’ve had a lot of requests for this topic, …
This is a sponsored post. If you’re a skincare nerd, you’ll know that mixing foundation with sunscreen is a Bad Thing, even though a lot of people do it, and some brands even recommend it. While mixing a couple of drops of foundation in with your sunscreen solves a lot of problems (takes the edge off any white cast, removes …
There’s a new paper on zinc oxide sunscreens not working and becoming toxic after 2 hours of UV exposure. A lot of people have sent me this paper, so here’s my analysis of it. In short, the researchers found that sunscreen ingredients broke down when mixed with zinc oxide and exposed to UV light, and the degraded mixtures had lower …
Vitamin C is one of the most commonly raved about ingredients in skincare, with lots of evidence to back up its effects. But it’s also one of the most confusing. There are just so many different vitamin C ingredients and product types, and this is before you even get to all the different products you can buy! So this is …