Hi, I'm Perry and you're listening to The Beauty Brain.

Hello, welcome to The Beauty Brains, a show where real cosmetic chemists answer your beauty product questions and give you an insider's look at the cosmetic industry.

This is episode 416 and it's the first one of the new year.

I'm your host Perry Romanowski and with me today is Valerie George.

Hello Valerie.

Hi Perry.

Welcome to the new year.

Happy New Year.

New Year, New Us.

You know what we do on this New Year is The first show of every new year we typically look back on the year before and how our predictions went and we make predictions for the coming year. But we're also going to be answering some of your questions. And those include, when do you need heat protectors in your products? What do we think of the color

locker products from phenola? And should people be worried about chemicals in their laundry

detergents? But first, Valerie, how's this new year treating you?

You know, so far it's not been great. So I this mystery virus that i caught i've been very sick

actually since the middle of december yeah actually that's why we didn't get a we didn't get an end of the

year show mainly because you were ill very ill and then i developed an infection on top of it not good

oh no i'm fine. Thanks for asking.

And I'm on the met. Point being, I can actually talk. I mean, sometimes I still cough, but

they gave me a lot of medicine and I'm doing good. I'll follow up with my regular doctor.

Hopefully that's the only sickness I get this winter. Yeah, you get it out of the way,

and then you're golden, right? Isn't it kind of warm there in Texas right now? Oh my gosh,

it was like 80 degrees on Christmas Day. Now, the weird thing is, it really is a mystery bug. It's

not a strain that they have the ability to test for. I think they tested me for like 30 different

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