Instead of talking about sunscreen like I usually do, we’re going to dive into some of the things you can use to protect your skin apart from sunscreen (I can feel my sunscreen propaganda shillbucks slipping away right now). As much as we all love sunscreens, they are a bit of a pain in the butt. You have to apply them right, …
Warning: Very nerdy content ahead! If you’ve been following sunscreen discourse (apparently this is a thing now) you’ll know that mineral sunscreens mostly work by absorbing UV and only scattering a small amount, in the region of 4-5% across the range of UV. This was quantified in a pretty commonly cited 2016 paper by Curtis Cole, Thomas Shyr and Hao Ou-Yang, “Metal …
The myth that “60% of what’s applied to your skin is absorbed into your bloodstream” is one of my pet peeves. It’s so far from the truth, and it’s cited with such an air of authority that it really ticks me off. It also tends to be cited by the sorts of people who push “non-toxic” products, which is very …
Being the “sunscreen nerd” person, I get a lot of questions about unusual sunscreen products and whether or not their claims work out. Last time I talked about the Colorescience powder sunscreen and the Skinnies “pea-sized amount” claim. Related post: Do They Work? Colorescience SPF Powder, Skinnies “Pea-Sized Amount” (with video) This time I’m talking about two more products that people …
The Inkey List are a brand that I generally quite like (well not anymore, now that I’ve seen their response to me raising this issue, and some of their other practices). They’re probably the main competitor to The Ordinary, which I also quite like. Both brands have lots of products, and many of them work well on my skin. They’re …
I’ve recently been approached by several natural deodorant companies to talk about the health risks of aluminium-containing antiperspirants. As much as I’d like that sweet sweet cheque… I can’t. Because the science just isn’t there. So instead, I’m going to debunk the aluminium scaremongering. (Note to deodorant companies: There are valid reasons to switch to natural deodorants. Aluminium ingredients can …
I’ve had a lot of questions about certain sunscreen products with unusual claims, and what I think of them. I’ll be talking about what I personally think of the claims for 2 products in this post, but there are a lot more products that I’ll talk about later – let me know if there are more products you’re wondering about …
Recently you might have heard that one of my former favorite sunscreens Purito Centella Unscented Sun tested at SPF 19, which is much lower than its labeled protection of SPF 50+. There were rumours that it didn’t match the label claim before, but until INCI Decoder published the two in-vivo SPF tests on their blog, a lot of scientists were …