Part of labmuffin.com
The science of beauty, explained simply
There’s a lot of haircare advice based around the idea of “hair porosity”. This is a pretty complex term that can mean a lot of different things in different contexts (this might become a longer deep dive one day!). A lot of the advice does lead people to products that suit their hair better, but this is mostly just coincidence ...
How water interacts with hair is one of the biggest sources of myths about hair. One of the biggest myths is the idea that wetting and drying hair over and over again inherently damages hair – common referred to as “hygral fatigue”. This isn’t true! Let’s dig deeper into this… This article is adapted from my video on hair hydration. ...
Should you hydrate your hair? From all of the hydrating hair products out there, you’d think the answer is obviously, yes. But quite a lot of hair experts (including scientists) say that water is bad for hair, and causes damage. Neither of these are entirely true! Water is one of the most confusing topics in hair science. It’s a huge ...
I recently came across a Threads post from @idea.soup that said: “I don’t have any evidence for it but I have a weird feeling the anti-polyester movement is about to become a right-wing pipeline” This was a lightbulb moment for me! I started doing scicomm in 2011 because I realised the “non-toxic” clean beauty movement could be a pipeline to ...
What Is Hyaluronic Acid? Hyaluronic acid (HA), along with its cousin sodium hyaluronate, is an immensely popular ingredient in skincare and makeup. It’s also naturally found in the body. Most of it dwells in the extracellular matrix, the scaffold which holds up the cells of your skin. Hyaluronic acid is found in both the epidermis and the deeper dermis, where ...
This post is sponsored by Ulike. I did a deep dive into the science behind red light a little while back. Since then, I’ve been trying out more products and the Ulike ReGlow LED mask (use code MUFFIN for $100 off) has been one of my favourites so far. It has great specs, along with really user-friendly design features that ...
There’s been a lot of people testing heat protectants on receipts lately. You spray a heat protectant on a thermal paper receipt, then use a flat iron hair straightener on it. Since receipt paper turns black with heat, the receipts that stay white have the more effective heat protectants… … Or so the logic goes, anyway. But does this test ...
Does retinyl palmitate in sunscreens increase skin cancer? This is a myth that’s been promoted a lot by clean beauty organisations like the Environmental Working Group (EWG), especially in their annual sunscreen guide. More recently, this was included as the first point in toxicologist Dr Yvonne Burkart’s video: “You’ve been lied to about sunscreen: Toxicologist reveals 6 things you should ...
Your scalp’s itchy and inflamed – and none of the products you’ve tried seem to be working. And now, maybe your hair’s even thinning. Here’s the problem: Most scalp products aren’t treating the right cause, and no one’s really explaining what that is. And a lot of scalp products actually make things worse. I’m the owner of a problematic scalp, ...
I’ve become a bit of an airborne transmission nerd during the pandemic. Every once in a while I’ll share some of the tools I use on social media, and I’ve realised quite a lot of other people are also interested in how to not get sick, or at least get sick less, outside of getting vaccinated. So here’s a quick ...