Here’s a good example of beauty and brains coming together: a gadget that allows you to attach lip balm to your watch, your cell phone, your pager, or other portable electronic device. It even works on sunglasses!

It’s called “Care4lipz” and you can read about it here. The manufacturer, First Dutch Europe B.V., offers this tiny techy tub with lip balm or lip gloss and with UV sunscreen in a variety of flavors.

It makes us wonder what opportunities there are for other miniature marvels. How about small packs of breath mints? Maybe a tiny tube of mascara?

It’s not exactly nanotechnology, but it is pretty cool! Of course, it would be cooler if they made it in pink.

Note: I just found out that  Care4Lipz went out of business and that the the original US inventor Erik Nordskog, Promo Lip Balm has re-branded the original Zebug for the North American retail market.  The product now sells under the brand name Lip Pods. Details can be found at http://www.lippods.com.

Terry’s concern…I read about a new lip gloss that tells if your drink is spiked with date rape drugs. Is it true?

The Right Brain’s reply:

This product you’re referring to is 2LoveMyLips Lip Gloss. The product itself doesn’t detect drugs, but it comes with a test kit that lets you check your drink to make sure it’s not contaminated with Gamma-hydroxybutyrate (GHB), a common date rape drug. The idea, according to 2LoveMyLips, is to show that just because women want to look sexy doesn’t mean that they want men to attack them.  They offer 5 different colors and flavors, each coming a drink testing kit. But is this just a gimmick or do these kits really work?

Do date rape drug test kits really work?

According to the the Canadian Society of Forensic Science, GHB test kits are effective but the results vary depending on the type of drink.  In pure water and many alcoholic beverages, the kits work extremely well. But testing of Cosmopolitan and Margarita samples, for example, gave false negatives.  The best way to use the kits, according to this report, is to test your drink along side a control drink that you know if not spiked with the drug. That way the color changing test strips can more effectively discriminate between spiked and unspiked samples. (That may be a bit impractical since you’ll have to buy another drink yourself to tell for sure whether or not the other drink is drugged.) Another issue, according to Jezebel.com, is that while it does work GHB, it’s not effective at detecting other drugs like Rohypnol.

The Beauty Brains bottom line

GHB detection kits do work, when used properly. And cheap, effective drug detection kits could be a great way to protect yourself from date rape. But companies using safety to market their products may be walking a very fine line.

What do you think? Is 2LoveMyLips offering protection or exploitation? Would you buy a product that would help keep you safe like this? Leave a comment and share your thoughts with the rest of the Beauty Brains community.

Source: Can. Soc. Forensic Sci. J. Vol. 40. No 3 (2007) pp. 131–141

Mid Brain reports:

Beautypress.com has an interesting article about trends in lipstick over the last 9 decades.  Apparently there’s a connection between socioeconomic conditions and the color and shape of women’s lips. The author tracks these trends starting with the 1920s and shows how lipsticks have been influenced by social conditions of the times. Very interesting stuff and it got us thinking how lipstick chemistry has changed over time.

Pigments of the past

Earliest references to lip color can be traced back about 5000 years to ancient Babylon. At that time women crushed semi-precious stones and smeared them on as lipstick. Ancient Egyptian women used iodine and bromine to give their lips a purple-red color. Cleopatra supposedly mixed crushed carmine beetles and ant’s eggs to create her lip look. Henna and fish scales (for shimmer) were other common ingredients were added over the centuries. In the 1500’s lipsticks made of beeswax and plant oils became popular in England. This basic concoction of natural waxes and plant oils remained the lipstick base of choice for the next several hundred years.

Current colors

The “modern” era of lipstick really began with the invention of the pushup stick 1915. Then, in the late 1940s, long lasting lip color was pioneered by Hazel Bishop. While today’s lipsticks still employ natural waxes (like beeswax and candellila) and natural oils (like castor oil), cosmetic chemists have a much wider range of ingredients to formulate with. New emollients, thickeners and pigments have resulted in lipsticks that are vastly superior in texture, spreadability, and color longevity compared to those from even a few decades ago.  With the addition of moisturizers and sunscreens lipsticks can not only color your lips but actually keep them soft, moist, and protected from the elements. And of course lets not forget advances in packaging which have helped create different product forms like lip glosses.  What’s the best lipstick of all time? The kind that you can buy right now!

(Despite these advances, no product is perfect and you’ll still find that lipstick traces left on a glass or other places. Here’s a lipstick fun fact: According to a 1996 survey by Shisedo Cosmetics, Tokyo, 87% of American women admit to having left traces of lipstick in unwanted places!)

The Beauty Brains bottom line

Leave a comment and let the Beauty Brains community know if you’ve ever left a trace of lipstick in an “unwanted place.” (Trust me, your answer can’t be as embarrassing as Sarah Bellum’s!)

Sources:

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/524929/lipstick_the_evolution_history_of_this.html?cat=69

http://pubs.acs.org/cen/whatstuff/stuff/7728scit2.html

Skylighthope asks… I recently came upon this product and was very curious about whether or not it works. The product is called Huge Lips Skinny Hips Lip Gloss and serves two purposes…a lip plumper, and also as an appetite suppressant through the ingredient hoodia. Does this product actually work, and is it safe? =)

Left Brain gets lippy…
Some people think I’m a little too cynical but that is just wrong. I love the idea of products like this! It’s a novel and creative idea that could really change the face of cosmetics if it actually worked. Imagine a lipstick that looked good and helped you lose weight. But sigh, it looks like they’ve put out the marketing hype before all the science was worked out.

Will “Huge Lips Skinny Hips” plump lips?

As we saw in this previous Beauty Brains about lip plumpers, there are only two kinds that actually work.

Type A: A moisturizing lipstick that smoothes out wrinkles and makes lips look moist (pretty much any lipstick).

Type B: A product containing an irritant like menthoxypropanediol that actually irritates lips and causes a inflammation response.

Neither will be permanent but your lips will look more plump.

The Huge Lips Skinny Hips product is more like a Type A product relying on a moisturizing ingredient like Meadowfoam emollient. But it also contains Lemonpeel oil that can be irritating like menthoxypropanediol products.

Will Hoodia suppress your appetite?

The makers of Huge Lips Skinny Hips have included some Hoodia extract in the formula implying that it will have an appetite suppressing effect. While there have been some preliminary studies that showed Hoodia has this effect, the conclusion is tenuous at best. Hoodia has never been proven to help people lose weight. Plus, the amount of hoodia you’ll get from this product is so minimal, it’s negligible.

A better idea would’ve been to consult the folks over at the Smell and Taste Institute and incorporate some of their tastant crystals. That’s not to say it would work either but at least there would be some science to back up the claims.

To Purplelab’s credit they admit that the Hoodia probably isn’t going to get you to stop eating. They just figure it can’t hurt. And the truth is, they are probably right. The small amount you might ingest will not have an effect one way or another.

How much lipstick do you eat?

There was one interesting claim at their website that said “women ingest up to 9 lbs of lipstick in their lifetime.” I tried to track down the source of this number, but couldn’t find anything definitive. This seems rather high to me. If that were true, that means you would use about 288 tubes of lipstick. Another common claim is 4 to 6 lbs which still means you would eat at least 128 tubes in your lifetime.

I looked up some ingestion data on Pubmed and found that on average women use 10 mg of lipstick per application.

So…

Assuming 4 applications per day
Every day of her life
For 70 years

That means she will ingest 2.2 lbs of lipstick in a lifetime. (This also assumes that everything applied gets ingested which we know is not true based on the amount of lipstick left on wine glasses).

2.2 lbs of lipstick in a lifetime

Beauty Brains bottom line

Since Huge Lips Skinny Hips uses ingredients that are listed in the INCI dictionary (the cosmetic industry standard book) it’s safe to say that this product is safe. It is also probably effective for producing plump lips for a short time anyway. But don’t expect you hips to get any skinnier. The weight loss claims are dubious at best.

How many tubes of lipstick or lip gloss do you use in a year? Leave a comment and let the other Beauty Brains community members know.

John User says: How come lip gloss needs preservatives though it’s a water-less product?

The Left Brain’s lippy reply:

Hi John, thanks for your question. It’s always nice to hear from our male members. (That sounds strange but you know what I mean.)

Lickable lips

It’s true that microbes need water to grow and that the level of water activity is one of the factors that determines how hospitable an environment is for microbial growth. But if you’re presuming that preservatives are only needed in aqueous products then you’re sadly mistaken. Even for anhydrous formulas, you have to consider if the product is likely to be pick up moisture that could support bacterial growth. In the case of lip glosses, this is pretty likely because of the moist environment the lips provide.

Lip gloss ingredients

How can you find the preservative in a lip gloss? I’ll show you a typical product Neutrogena MoistureShine Gloss:

Bis Diglyceryl Polyacyladipate 2, Petrolatum, Lanolin Oil, Microcrystalline Wax, Maleated Soybean Oil, Isopropyl Palmitate, Quaternium 18 Hectorite, Beeswax, Ascorbyl Palmitate, Propylene Carbonate, Jojoba Seed Oil (Simmondsia Chinensis), Tocopherol, Evening Primrose Oil (Oenothera Biennis), Safflower Seed Oil (Carthamus Tinctorius), Aloe Barbadensis Leaf Extract, Rosa Canina Seed Extract, Tangerine Oil (Citrus Tangerine), Rose Flower Oil, Dipropylene Glycol, Flavor, Propylparaben, Mica, Iron Oxides, Titanium Dioxide, Red 7 Lake, Red 6, Blue 1 Lake, Yellow 6 Lake, Red 6 Lake, Yellow 5 Lake

As you can see, the formula is primarily composed of non-water, oily materials. And hidden toward the end of all those ingredients, you’ll find that “propylparaben.” This is a common oil soluble preservative. While it’s not really necessary to protect the formula during manufacture or while it sits on the shelf, it does provide protection from bacteria that the product might come in contact with once you start to use it.

By the way since I’m talking lip gloss ingredients, I should tell you that my all time favorite lip gloss is Almay Ideal Lipgloss because it contains the best sounding ingredient ever: “Synthetic Fluorphlogopite.” (Which should never be confused with natural Fluorphlogopite.)

The Beauty Brains bottom line

A good cosmetic scientists thinks about how to protect her product through its entire life cycle – which includes before and after the consumer buys it. And that means you might have to add a preservative you didn’t even know you needed.

What’s YOUR favorite lip gloss? Leave a comment for the rest of the Beauty Brains community.