#chemistry log

Here's a list of cosmetic things I think are overpriced things that do nothing or very little

Food supplements: unless you have a deficiency in any of the micronutrients that are advertised as promoting hair growth, skin rejuvenation, and other wizardries, you'll likely just eliminate them through your metabolism.

Hair repairing products and expensive treatments: hair is dead stuff. It cannot be repaired. Once broken, forever broken

Professional (gel) manicures: imo the worst thing you can do to your nails is getting them done by nail techs, even by the best ones. I’m not immune to this, as I’ve been visiting a salon for a couple of months to feel like a rich bitch, but buffing the nail, cutting the cuticles, filing the gel down are horrible things to do to nails. The reaction of your nails to the idea of going to a salon should be the same as my cat's when he understands we're going to see the vet

Shampoos with "non-stripping surfactants": they don't exist. Also it's not true that sulfates are bad. Everything is in the formulation and in the hair type, and nothing will ever justify 20 € for a 200 ml shampoo bottle.

Anything that has to do with the word "rejuvenating": nothing can reverse ageing. You're old. You'll become older.

The organic/natural label tax: a product that is organic certified is not automatically better than a product that is not. Frankly, in most cases it's only more expensive. The sustainability of the product is also questionable - is murumuru butter from the Amazon forest really more sustainable than its counterparts used in standard cosmetic products?

Anything that costs more because of exotic fancy ingredients: platinum, gold, caviar extracts, plankton, frog breath, the cry of a newborn child, anything that is put in homeopathic amounts in cosmetic products only to inflate their prices. Will your skin really notice that the cream contains 0.000001 wt% of fermented seaweed water?

Disposable stuff: I hate this trend. In a world that is drowning in its own garbage, why do you need a disposable towel to dry your face every day?

Nail polish with active ingredients: nails are just as dead as hair. No nail polish can make them grow faster or make them magically absorb keratin.

Today I feel like writing about useful plants for hair

I bitch about the uselessness of most stuff all the time, and a lot of the stuff I bitch about is natural stuff, but I am actually a big fan of plant-based slurries of questionable colors and smells to smear on hair to dye it or make it look nicer, so here we go with some nature positivity for once

Dyeing plants

here, have these pics of my hair dyed with henna and with indigo

Henna my beloved

So henna is the dyeing plant. It is famous for mehndi (used on skin) and I know absolutely nothing about that process or the cultural background so I’ll just say what’s inside and how it works on hair:

Henna powder as sold for dyeing hair is usually powder of Lawsonia inermis leaves. In its dry powder form it contains lawsone in a sort of inactive form (as glycosides). When mixed with water under mild acidic conditions, the lawsone molecule is freed and oxidized, and can bind to keratin on hair. This is what “stains” the hair. The stain is somewhat orange and builds up on the natural hair color, which is why henna will dye hair ginger on natural blonde hair, auburn-ish on brown hair, and will be barely visible on black hair. Multiple applications deepen the color, which is what you see in my picture (at that time I’d been hennaing my hair for years, with very potent henna leaves and an extremely obsessive process to squeeze as much dye as I could from those leaves - my natural hair is medium-dark brown)

Also, it conditions hair and leaves a perception of thicker hair. If you like the color, and you can exclude allergies, it’s definitely one of the best plants for hair appearance and feel.

Indigo my beloathed

Indigo (Indigofera tinctoria) is henna’s dark counterpart. Its leaves contain a precursor of indigo dye, which is the active blue dye released when the indigo paste is prepared in water.

However, indigo dye does not bind to keratin so the indigo plant is not used on its own on hair, but after having used henna first.

Why my beloathed? Because using henna first is cumbersome, and because indigo STINKS. I loved my black hair but I really detested the smell of indigo paste.

Anyway, it’s really great if you want to dye your hair brown or black. For brown, you may not need to apply henna first and indigo next; a mixture of indigo and henna should do. And please for the love of God if you go for it, check the ingredient list: it must say Indigofera tinctoria and nothing else. Stuff like paraphenylenediamine should not be present. Good quality indigo forms a dark blue/violet shimmering layer on the surface of the water-indigo slurry after about ten-fifteen minutes. Also after the application and washing and drying your hair, your neck might become blue and stain everything you wear until you wash your hair again. The collar of my lab coat dreaded my indigo days.

Cassia

Cassia is not entirely a dyeing plant but since it has some very light dyeing potential it is usually put together with henna and indigo. It’s also called “colorless henna”. It may leave a yellowish stain on very light or gray hair because of an antraquinone molecule it contains, otherwise it’s indeed colorless.

I’m not dyeing my hair anymore so that’s what I’m using right now. It has great conditioning properties and leaves hair feeling somewhat thicker and shinier. I haven’t really investigated the chemistry, but the reason is likely a mixture of stuff like polysaccharides and mucillages (like in many plant products).

Cleansing plants

Shikakai / Acacia concinna

This one is obtained from its seed pods and contains saponins, molecules that act as surfactants and can wash stuff - including hair. The paste made with shikakai powder is acidic, so the hair looks pretty shiny after the wash, but please do close your eyes or you’ll regret it

Soap nuts / Sapindus mukorossi and Sapindus saponaria

Basically the same thing as with shikakai (contain saponine compounds so they wash). I find them somewhat more aggressive than shikakai, but hell do they make foam

More plants

There are many other plants that you can find in any natural cosmetic or new age shop selling cosmetic products coming from mostly from India and Pakistan.

I don’t think any of those really does much of what they are advertised for, because even if they did contain some molecules that stimulate hair growth or contrast hair loss or do whatever hair-changing thing, the dose and exposure needed would be much, much higher than those of the standard and safe use of these botanical products.

Provided that you do not have any allergies, they don’t hurt. Popular plants with some conditioning effects are known as amla, sidr, brahmi, methi (fenugreek), and some others I forgot.

There is however one specific plant I would like to mention on account of being the one plant that I believe smells nice:

Kapoor kachli / Hedychium Spicatum

today i have an update on the hair dyeing situation: here’s when i started vs. first henna application vs. today (about a month later - beware, however: it’s not only henna; more on that below)

so what i did was hennaing three times, on weekends: twice with only henna, once with a henna gloss (meaning half henna paste, half conditioner). the last application last friday was not henna but a temporary dye (specifically dark tulip by la riche/directions).

it sounds like cheating but that’s a way to boost the vibrancy of the color without damaging the hair or having weird color reactions with lawsone underneath.

those temporary dyes like la riche/directions and crazy colors are, from the formulation perspective, essentially conditioners. the ingredient list of the one i used is as follows:

Aqua (Pure), Cetearyl Alcohol, Distearoylethyl Hydroxyethylmonium Methosulfate (and) Cetearyl Alcohol, Ceteareth-20, Propylene Glycol, Citric Acid, Methylparaben, Formic Acid, Basic Violet 16, Basic Red 51, HC Yellow No.4, HC Blue No.15.

most of the formula is indeed a rather standard conditioner, but with a blend of temporary dyes that can sit on the hair and give it a different hue for a while, being gradually washed away. the mechanism is therefore different from permanent or oxidative dyes that can permanently bind to the hair (damaging it in the process). it’s a way to highlight the color i already had underneath, which was already quite red because of the three henna applications.

i know i know, i have asks to answer, but i had a thought about the target markets of the cosmetic industry and how not to waste your money and wanted to share

so long story short, in my opinion (which is based on knowledge about cosmetic formulation and not on being a dermatologist, which i am not - that is, none of this is medical advice), a lower-tier target market is not an index of lower quality of the cosmetic product.

cosmetic products fall under a certain set of categories from the point of view of formulation and of what they are supposed to do. a cleanser is generally a gel- or cream-like product that should cleanse. a moisturizer is a cream- or lotion-like product supposed to create a barrier on your skin to reduce water loss. a serum is a product containing a (hopefully) concentrated amount of specific ingredients. products can vary in terms of the fancy ingredients they may contain, but the ingredients that are essential to do the actual job are chosen from the same pool, regardless of the brand.

there are different markets targeted by the industry, and these are what dictates the price of the product. so it’s not the quality and it’s not the effectiveness, but rather the market “tier”.

i couldn’t find an “official” chart of these but i’d say the traditional macro areas are the drugstore tier, the luxury tier and the pharmacy tier. there are also some other areas, like the aesthetician tier and the organic/natural cosmetic tier. some are pretty expensive, like the luxury tier (the ones you find in perfume shops - example: estée lauder, lancôme) and the aesthetician tier (the ones they use in professional beauty studios, example: reviderm). the pharmacy tier (examples: la roche posay, cerave) and organic cosmetic tier (example: lavera, sante) can vary a lot in prices and go from almost-drugstore prices to almost-luxury prices. the drugstores also offer a variety of brands, some more expensive than others, but generally also have either own brands or popular brands that are in the lower price category.

but the point is: the effectiveness of a product does not depend on the tier it belongs to. and even pharmacy tier products can be tainted by marketing, claims and current trends.

to navigate this sea of marketing, you need to understand what a product is supposed to do and what ingredients are only claims.

one thing i learned recently for myself, for example, is that having combination skin prone to breakouts does not mean you should use those aggressive “purifying” cleanser. these may strip your skin of its barrier, only adding to the constant inflammation state and making you need even more products for fighting breakouts.

a simple cleanser that has nothing but mild surfactants should do the job of cleaning the skin. these are typically the mild cleansers for dry skin.

the same goes for moisturizers. what they should do is create a barrier on your skin. a lot of products marketed for combination or oily skin (in any market tier) do not succeed in that.

do these need to be expensive for being effective? no. they just need to have a decent formulation.

i don’t like to advertise brands but i would like to give some examples of what i think are simple and effective formulations that do their job without costing a fortune. some of the products below are pharmacy tier or kinda drugstore tier but on the pricier side. i’m sure there are similar basic formulations that cost even less. i put some links so you can see the ingredient lists (they link to european websites - cerave is available also in the US but i noticed they have slightly different products)

mild cleanser for dry skin (cerave)

moisturizing cream for dry/very dry skin (cerave) - this one comes in a big jar of about 400 g and can be used for anything, so even if the jar itself costs about 17-18 €, it’s a good deal

3.5% hyaluronic acid serum (aromazone) - i’m not sure 3.5% is really necessary but aromazone is a brand that was born for DIYers, so they are very transparent as regards the concentrations and ingredients of their own finished products. i tend to prefer brands that give the actual percentages for serums because otherwise there is a high chance that there are only traces of the ingredient you’re interested in.

10% glycolic acid serum (also aromazone; the ordinary also has one)

1% retinol in squalane (the ordinary) - the ordinary is a very hyped brand and does have a few products that fall inside the marketing claim category, but i generally appreciate the indication of the percentages of the active ingredients

30% AHA + BHA (the ordinary) - one of the few concentrated exfoliants out there, again i appreciate the percentage

and the most basic sunscreen i know, but that is not a cream so it doesn’t feel too heavy (but my husband says it smells like beach) - this one from dm

my favorite super boring and sulfate-based shampoo from dm for 0.65 €

for the records, a basic skincare routine does not really require any serum. you can live peacefully with a cleanser, a moisturizer and sunscreen. save your money for your crafting hobbies!

Update on my “user experience” - using products I know don’t do the magic they claim but help me earn “I’m taking care of the nail problem”-points

Here’s a before-after one week of “user experience”

What I’ve been using this week is the product with the ridiculous name (“keratin booster”), the nail/cuticle cream and the oil, 2-3 times a day on bare nails

I think what did most of the job were the cream and the oil and the job they did was keeping the skin around the nail soft and nourished, so it looks better

I don’t think there have been major changes to the surface of the nail and the growth is at a standard rate.

Yet I haven’t been biting my nails and I’m getting closer to the point of no return where I’m happy with how they look and so I won’t be tempted to pick them, so the mission has been accomplished

For the next week the “user experience” plan is to use the “s.o.s. base” and keep using the cream/nail oil

I really like to ramble about everyday chemistry and posting my chemistry log, but I don’t always know what to talk about and what people would like to know about the products we use or the stuff we eat

So here’s where you could help me: if you were looking for someone to ask dumb questions to about everyday chemistry, jump to my ask box!

I (try to) answer questions about:

- Cosmetic products my beloved - you can ask general questions about cosmetic chemistry, send the formulation of a product, ask how something is made, what I think about a cosmetic claim, stuff like that

- Food chemistry - what’s inside stuff, why do we use eggs for baking, how is cheese made, stuff like that

- Household cleaning products, like, should you really ditch your beloved baking soda

- To some extent I accept questions about drugs and generally the pharmacy area BUT

By NO MEANS I can give medical advice. I only talk about chemistry of things and at most some purely cosmetic procedures, so I can tell you how tablets are made but not what medicament to take for your problem

ASK AWAY, give my doctorate in formulation a meaning since I don’t use it for my real life job

Let’s talk about household cleaning products. Apologies - it will be a long ass post because I like to clean (weird I know) and I like cleaning products and making them (even weirder).

Maybe you saw my silly post a while ago, begging the world to stop using vinegar and baking soda alone. Now I feel like I should elaborate on this. Also maybe you’re on a budget and wonder if you can make effective cleaning products yourself, saving money and plastic bottles.

This year, I would like to go back to blogging about household cleaning products and cosmetic chemistry. Last year I tried to pick up this hobby again with a secondary blog, but I already have one secondary blog about W.I.T.C.H. that I tend to neglect, so I’ll just post some chemistry thoughts here on main when something comes up to my mind.

Today I’ll start with some background and with talking about a past hobby that was a huge part of my 20s, and that I never talk about: making cosmetics and household cleaning products at home.