DEEP DIVE - Get the Skinny on Sulfates

Trina Renea  0:07  

Hey everyone, welcome back to Facially Conscious with myself, Trina Renea - Esthetician, Dr. Vicki Rapaport - Dermatologist, Rebecca Gadberry – the Cosmetic Ingredient Guru, and our fabulous overly Educated Consumer - Julie Falls. We are gathered here together with you to talk about this crazy world of aesthetics. It's confusing out there in this big wide world. That's why we're here to help explain it to you all, subject by subject. We will be your go-to girls and from our perspective without giving medical advice, we will keep things facially conscious. Let's get started.

Hello, and good morning. I am Trina Renea, and I am with Facially Conscious, I am your pro-Esthetician, I'm going to call myself a totally different every time.

Rebecca Gadberry  1:12  

Like confusing the audience out there.

Trina Renea  1:14  

And this is my beautiful co-host, tell us who you are. 

Rebecca Gadberry  1:18  

I’m Rebecca Gadberry. And I am the Cosmetic Scientist here at Facially Conscious where you get the skinny on all things skin. I love saying it that way I feel like Vanna White or something. 

Trina Renea  1:30  

Well, you could say it every time. Today we're doing a deep dive. And we are very excited to talk about what is wrong with Sulfates. I mean, and to start it out, I get to give a tip. And my tip is – If you think that foaming makes the cleanser more effective, it does not. And we're going to tell you why today because we are talking about sulfates. So, listen up.

Rebecca Gadberry  1:58  

And sulfates are a group or a category of what we call surfactants, which are those ingredients that do the cleaning on your skin. They also, there's a certain group that helps to marry oil and water in your products, so you get a lotion or a cream. But the ones that we're going to talk about today are your super cleansers, they're super degreasers, and they're super foamers. They're called sulfates. And these are things like sodium laureth sulfate, sodium lauryl sulfate. These ingredients have been getting a bad rap from influencers and other companies that don't use them in order to create a place for themselves in the market. That's my opinion. However, they can be used at too high of a percentage and on the wrong skin. And so, they can be over drying to the skin, and how do we know it's overdrawing? Your skin feels tight. So, we don't want that tight, fresh feeling. Because you get that and that means that your barrier has been damaged.

Trina Renea  3:07  

Which so many people have been marketed to that. If you have that tight feeling after a cleanser, that means your skin is really clean. And that's not the truth. That means that your skin is very dry, because it just shifted of all the oil. And that is not the feeling you want to feel but I still hear people to this day say that – Oh, it gives me that squeaky clean feeling. And I like that. But that unfortunately makes your barrier messed up. And so, then you're fighting to put oil back into it and you have to use other products to fix it.

Rebecca Gadberry  3:40  

And the problem with that is that you get a sensitive skin, you get an easily irritated skin, you get a dry skin, you get skin cells that are drying and peeling and ashiness. And you don't want to damage barrier, if you want to learn more. Listen to some of our past episodes about barrier damage. But today we're going to talk about one of the groups of ingredients that causes barrier damage and those are sulfates and your sodium lauryl and sodium laureth Sulfates were one of the original groups of these cleansing agents that were developed back in the mid 30s. By some chemists from what I hear the lore is the myth is that there were some chemists at Procter and Gamble. They were saying that you know the cleansing agents are the soap that was used by their wives to clean their shirts because these were guys back then. There weren't a lot of women in doing what I do today. Being a cosmetic chemist, they were mostly men and their wives were having trouble keeping their shirts staying fresh and good. They would go through too many shirts in a very short time because the soap that was being used to clean the shirt was sticking around in the shirt damaging the cotton fibers and then they'd lose the shirt. So why don't we come up with an ingredient a way to clean this the shirts without the soap sticking around, without it sticking around, that would rinse completely from the shirt, they came up with the sulfates and sodium lauryl sulfate was the very first one on the market in the 1930s. We then learned that you could put that on the skin and it would rinse completely. So, when you use a true soap, which is a lie product with fatty acids in it, it will stick around on the surface of the skin, it can cause irritation, it can cause a buildup so your other products aren't going to work, which is especially heartbreaking when you're spending a bunch of money on a serum and it's not going to get into the skin because of the soap layer that's on your skin. So, we want to make sure that we get all of that off the skin.

Trina Renea  5:50  

I feel like soap is a thing of the past, although I've seen some people try and bring it back, bars of facial soaps. 

Rebecca Gadberry  5:58  

There are bars of facial soaps coming back. I don't like to see them because they don't rinse completely from the skin. And the way to test whether your cleanser is rinsing completely from your skin is to fill two bowls with water. Take your facial cleanser, put it into one bowl. Well don't even take two bowls. This is if you're comparing, just take a bowl of water, put your cleanser in there, take a drinking glass, turn it upside down so that the open end that you drink out of is at the bottom, dip it into the water. If there is a scum on it, then it's not rinsing completely. So, you want it to rinse completely you want it to come out of the water absolutely clean, really easy to test it. These sulfates, if you put in a sulfate product, for your cleanser, or your body wash or your shampoo, it's going to rinse completely. So, this is what we want. The problem is, is that they are so good at what they do, which is cutting grease, that if you do not have a thick layer of sebum on your skin, it's going to cut right through whatever is on your skin, get down into the lipids between your skin cells into the barrier, dissolve that away before you can get it off the skin. It happens within seconds. So, your skin is going to feel really tight.

Trina Renea  7:18  

And that is the feeling you don't want.

Rebecca Gadberry  7:20  

Right. And so, this is an issue with sulfates. There's also been a lot of people in the clean beauty category, saying that sulfates are dangerous, that they're carcinogens, that they stay in the body, that they're irritants. Well, yes, they are irritants because again, they can dissolve the barriers. So that causes irritation. So, let's take that off the table. 

Trina Renea  7:47  

Can I ask another question? Is sulfates only used in cleansers? 

Rebecca Gadberry  7:51  

No, sulfates are used in body washes. They're used in in shampoos.

Trina Renea  7:55  

Yeah, so cleaning but cleaning supplies. And is it okay to use sulfates in cleaning your dishes and cleaning your clothes and stuff, but just not to clean your body or your face? 

Rebecca Gadberry  8:08  

Right. They are so used to clean garage floors, and this is one of the problems is that the Clean Beauty area are saying, well, if you're using it to clean your floor or your garage floor, how can it be good for the skin? And they're not taking into account that there are different grades like we've been talking about for the last year. There are different grades of ingredients and the same is true for sulfates.

Trina Renea  8:32  

Petroleum and Petrolatum.

Rebecca Gadberry  8:35  

Well petrolatum has, yes, petroleum is the source, petrolatum is what comes from it, but it has different contaminants in it depending upon the grade. The same is true for sulfates. So, we might have a sulfate that is being used to clean a garage floor. But it is not the same grade as what will be used to clean the face.

Trina Renea  8:59  

Just like, I have another sample. Just like when people say olive oil is great for the skin. So, I'm going to use my extra virgin olive oil in the cooking kitchen and I'm going to put that on my skin and that it is also a different grade for the skin. And so therefore don't put the kitchen olive oil on your skin.

Rebecca Gadberry  9:23  

You say that to an Italian grandmother and you're going to get some argument but yeah.

Trina Renea  9:27  

My Greek friends say the same thing. They're like, oh no, I eat it, I put it on my face, everything, it saves you from cancer. They told me

Rebecca Gadberry  9:36  

My Greek mother-in-law would totally agree with that. It wasn't exactly, never mind. And so, when we take a look at these ingredients that the clean beauty movement doesn't like, a lot of times we're looking at different grades and in the case of sulfates, that's what we're looking at. So, a household grade. would be used to wash dishes, technical grade would be used to remove heavy grease off the garage floor, cosmetic grade would be used for skincare, could also at 1%, or less be a very mild emulsifier to hold the cream together, but that's a very old-fashioned way to do it. And you're going to want to see the sodium lauryl or laureth sulfate towards the bottom of the ingredient list. But even if it was in there, I would be a little cautious because it can help dissolve can be overactive on the barrier lipids, and then the drug or pharmaceutical grade. As a formulator, I prefer to get the purest, least contaminated ingredient version out there. So, your pharmaceutical grade would be the one that I would use. A lot of formulators are now using that, because there is a contaminant called 1,4 dioxane that is found in ingredients that have an ETH ending, like sodium laur‘eth’ sulfate, that is a carcinogen. And the state of New York has now banned 1,4 dioxane down to a parts per trillion. So, we want to make sure it's out of there. And we can do that if we use the pharmaceutical grade. But as we've also been saying – Do not judge what you're reading in the ingredient list, you've got to ask the brand, or the brand representative. How much 1,4 dioxane is in your product? It should be nothing. Okay, so that's what you want to check on. So, you need to determine whether there's any contaminants or not. Another bugaboo about it was that sodium lauryl and laureth sulfate are found in the body. Well, that's true, but they're also rinsed out of the body. The people that said that said, oh, it gets down into your hair follicles. No, it was entering through the eye. When you wash your hair, your face, it can go in through the eyes, but it's only retained for less than 24 hours and then it's excreted. And because it's excreted, it means it's not retained in the body. So, there's nothing wrong with that. So overall, I think that it's gotten a really bad rap, so to speak. So, the takeaway on this is, if you can, and you have a sensitive skin, or a dry skin, then avoid your sulfate group, especially sodium lauryl or laureth sulfate. If you have a really oily skin, you may be able to tolerate that. But there's other alternatives too out there. Now for ingredients that foam up, you started with our tip of the day, which is foaming doesn't equate to cleansing. Sodium Lauryl Sulfate is a super sudser, super filmer. And it does feel good, but it also doesn't penetrate as far down into the pore. So, we want a real thin product, maybe not have as much foam or any foam.

Trina Renea  13:12  

Well actually I have a cleanser that I love that is a foaming cleanser that doesn't have sulfates in it, but it's like in a foamer. So, they put cleansers and very thin liquidity inside the bottle and it lasts forever. And it foams out. And if you can still get that foaming feeling from it. It's so nice.

Rebecca Gadberry  13:32  

Yeah, and that one slips down even around clogged pores, yeah. Because I know I developed that one.

Trina Renea  13:40  

But I'm saying yes, I love that product. But you can find good cleansers out there that feel foaming because they're in a foaming container that makes them foam and it feels good.

Rebecca Gadberry  13:53  

And to thin liquid that then foams up so you get a denser foam. So, it feels like it's foamer, but it's the foam has nothing to do with the cleansing. 

Trina Renea  14:05  

So, it doesn't have the sulfates in it. 

Rebecca Gadberry  14:07  

That's right. So, we're looking for ingredients that are is for either sulfate free products. We're looking for products that have sulfates lower down in the ingredient list, and we're looking for them only for super oily or sebum rich skin. And that's our tip for the day or for our takeaway. Now I think we have a question. 

Trina Renea  14:31  

So, our question from a listener was – How soon should I start to see results from a skincare product? So, how soon should I start seeing results from a skincare product? Rebecca, do you want to hear the formulator over there?

Rebecca Gadberry  14:50  

Yes, I think that it depends upon the product. So, if you're using a cleanser, you should see results right away. If you are and it should not leave your skin feeling tight or dry, your skin should feel comfortable when you rinse it off. You should not have any residue leftover from it.

Trina Renea  15:11  

It should feel greasy, you should feel and clean. But you shouldn't have that weird like it doesn't feel like the cleanser quite came off. You don't want that feeling.

Rebecca Gadberry  15:19  

And then a physical exfoliant with grains in it, you should have results right away. Moisturizers, you should feel results right away. If you're using something with performance ingredients like peptides, antioxidants, calming ingredients, anything like that, it can be a matter of several days to even 3, 4, 6 months. When I formulate a product, I will layer in the results. So, if it is a performance product, like a serum, I'll make sure that you feel something immediately, your experience is immediate. That keeps you using it until you can start to see or feel a result within 24 to 48 hours. And then two weeks later, you're going to see even more results. And a month later, you'll see more results than three months later, you'll see more results in six months later, you'll see more results. And then you continue to use the product. But I would say the very longest would be six months, the very shortest would be a day.

Trina Renea  16:21  

So, I agree with that. I mean, that is 100% correct, obviously.

Rebecca Gadberry  16:27  

I'm glad you agreed.

Trina Renea  16:29  

But what I tell clients as well as you know, selling a product line to people is that you need to use a product for six to eight weeks. And that's usually how long a product will last. And usually when I'm talking about that I'm talking about serums and active ingredient, creams and things like that. But you're right about the cleanser, it's immediate or granule exfoliation is immediate, sunscreen immediate. A mask is immediate. Moisturizer should feel moisturizing right away. If they have active ingredients in it that are supposed to change a skin or do something, always give it a good six to eight weeks. And same with the serum. 

Rebecca Gadberry  17:13  

And a lot of these performance ingredients are tested in a clinical setting by the suppliers or the creators of the ingredient. And they're tested usually on a twice a day application for a certain amount applied during each application over a period of 28 to 72 days. And so, depends upon what your brand is promising you. But remember, these are ingredients that are what we call dose dependent, you need to use the amount that is recommended to see the results and you need to use them twice a day normally, if you don't use enough and you don't use them twice a day, then you're not going to see results. So, a lot of the results you see is up to what you're doing.

Trina Renea  18:00  

Right. And usually, they will say it on the directions.

Rebecca Gadberry  18:05  

Or your professional esthetician or doctor will tell you yes. So, and that we want to say here this is Facially Conscious, you can look us up at www.faciallyconscious.com. We also have our Instagram account which is very active now. And if you have a comment, we'd love to hear your comments, you have a question, go to our website www.faciallyconscious.com. Give us a review. And please share with your friends because we would love to help spread the word on what we're talking about here at Facially Conscious.

Trina Renea  18:39  

Yes. And thank you for listening today, guys. We’ll see you next time. Bye. 

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