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

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 429.

Today we're doing something a little different since Valerie is on vacation and I just got back,

we've decided to do a best of episode, built around one of the questions we get asked all

of the time, what beauty products actually work?

And that's a harder question than it sounds because beauty companies are very good at making

things sound scientific. They'll talk about clinical studies, peptides, collagen, growth factors,

dermatologists will talk about things and all sorts of impressive sounding ingredients.

But as we've learned over the years, sounding scientific and actually being scientific, are not always the same thing.

So for this episode, we pulled together a few of our favorite segments that help answer the bigger question.

We'll talk about how to tell whether a study

should be trusted. Whether collagen supplements are worth taking for your skin, what actually

makes a hair conditioner condition, whether epidermal growth factor is worth the hype, and how

exfoliation compares to sunscreen when it comes to keeping skin looking younger. Basically, this

is a beauty brain survival guide for your bathroom cabinet. Now, since this is a best of episode,

you may hear a few jumps from one conversation to another, but I tried to keep the

transdistance pretty smooth. The theme, though, is still the same throughout. How do you

separate real cosmetic science from marketing nonsense? We'll be back with a regular episode next time,

but let's get started with one of the most important questions we've ever had to answer.

How do you know if a beauty study can actually be trusted?

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