Which Vitamin C Dupe Reigns Supreme? | CC Podcast S4E18

0:00 the largest one is about eight inches that's ever recorded only eight inches so literally the size of some a big hand yes um so hard not to like laugh at that [Music] okay yes let's do this all right we are back guys welcome back this is the chemist confessions podcast a human conversation on all the skincare science we talk about I'm Victoria and I'm Gloria and Gloria today what are we talking about we are revisiting vitamin C I feel like

0:47 we've been avoiding this for some time just because there's a lot that we've already talked about but they do rant a lot about it yes but there's always more and what's really exciting is Victoria decided to take a bullet for all of y'all and got all the cult favorite vitamin C dupes out there and put them to the test so we will be sharing all of that y'all keep asking we finally heard y'all it's time um but before we get into it let's do a little bit of nice words so I wanted to keep it short and sweet with a couple of them so this is a review about Mr reliable title is perfect moisturizer and this person writes exceeded all expectations I'm completely and utterly obsessed it smells luxurious and doesn't feel too heavy the end we love Mr reliable as

1:34 well and yes there is a fragrance with it it has been dosed with a smidge of essential oils and that's because Mr reliable evolves into quite a smell nothing bad it's just the nature of the actives that we incorporate as it it decides yes I feel like sometimes like with the smells I'm like I want to point my finger to the culprit and I forget that sometimes it's just we get ambitious we put too many things in it and it's usually the combination it's kind of like how Vitamin C turns into Hot Dog Water by itself it doesn't really smell like anything but with that famous sea ferula combo it just wants a hot dog yeah and just its Essence is hot dog all right second one this is baby stuff's exfoliator the title is great great

2:20 product and non-irritating formula I think I prefer gold standards my skin can handle something a bit stronger but I like this for when I want some exfoliation that is a little bit mild yeah I wanted to share this one because I really liked that she talked about Gold's dinner as well we do really see gold standard and baby steps as foil products that gold standard is really that expert level exfoliator while baby steps is just that gentle mile I think that explains it perfectly and how people can actually use both given their skin scenario yeah I think you you use it both I use both um Victoria loves to say that I'm the asset Queen because I can use really high level glycolic acid no problem whatsoever but they're just weeks that I want to dial back to a baby step whether the two of us are testing new formula I'm a little worried my

3:05 Skin's gonna be sensitized or I just went to the beach skin is just a little bit agitated just depending on my scenario I will dial back down to a baby steps and even though gold sander is the gold standard it will get you that punchier skin texture and hyperpigmentation skin benefits but at the same time the goal is to never over exfoliate so if you want to know that just doing something good for your skin but with the last risk of over exfoliating baby steps what we recommend hell yeah okay final product um playing Slade gel cleanser the title is basically a perfect cleanser so she writes this cleanser works really well and is completely non-irritating it doesn't foam up a lot but it spreads easily and cleans without leaving my skin feeling stripped or like there's a

3:51 residue left over I also like that the bottle is clear so I can see how much is left and when I need to reorder this is my go-to cleanser now I feel like because we're not marketers we have a hard time describing our formulas and I feel like her experience pretty much sums up the blank slate experience yep it is straightforward and no frails but does the job very very well yeah totally so with that um we are just really proud of all the uh reviews we receive we don't incentivize or pay for any of them and also a lot of our lovely customers share their routines as well so we love for you to check them out and today we finally also get to share that our new website is up it is up it is up so we're running a website special so

4:37 use the code new site new me for 15 off and for podcast listeners you can also combine it with your coupon chemist coin to get additional five dollars as a thank you and also as a thank you for continuously listening to us being like our website's very close I still remember we're launching next week uh I mean the week after I think a couple episodes ago I dropped a line the new website should be up and if it's not up it's a tragedy yeah it was a tragedy but we fixed everything our lovely developer was incredibly patient through the process and held our hand through this I think we asked like some of what I feel like is the dumbest questions ever but also everything's probably dumbest execution is I just remember like you asked a bunch

5:22 of questions like what does this do we're like right right yes yes we'll get back to you yeah so anyways yeah don't forget to use your chemist coin uh promo code while you purchase your products otherwise let's get right into the meats because I think this one will be fun it'll be fun um so in the first section we'd actually like we thought about this and we're like sorbic acid is the OG the gold standard but we're not doing a review right Gloria I we thought about it because the way we break down our meat is usually part one is more biology the history the science and part two is shopping and more about products you'll find and we were like man we've done this a

6:08 lot with us gorbic I said how many times do you guys want to hear about this or break up in 2018 we did this pose and then 2019 we did a Blog and then in 2020 we did a podcast so anyway if you want to a quick reminder on all the nitty-gritty behind ascorbic acid testing why it's considered the gold sander check out our blog post check out our podcast episodes of the past blinks geared there everywhere so we're gonna dive into more of the stuff that we haven't talked about yet about ascorbic acid yeah so while we were kind of going down memory lane and reviewing any if there are any new references I think Laura and I realized that we could turn this to into a game of did you know um so we highlighted a few did you know

6:53 scenarios that we'd love to share with you guys some of you guys might know these so many wise don't um but generally should serve as a good review of ascorbic acid serums and how to use them but we'll start with one very simple is did you know that ascorbic acid research started roughly about 50 years ago with a Dr Pennell who that lab basically has pioneered and really I would say houses the most data around ascorbic acid and it was kind of a um I don't want to say pissing match but competition with other molecules so Dr panel for those of you don't know is the founder of SkinCeuticals you'll still find a history of Dr Pinella his work on skin circle's website that man

7:40 if you read his papers it had it out not just for vitamin C derivatives but also for other antioxidant molecules I think there was one way here's oh oh you think CoQ10 is hot let me show you why it's not where he he's every new like exciting quote-uncle sexy antioxidant that the industry you're trying to make happen Dr Pennell said I don't think so let me think about it not on my watch and what's fascinating is his lab is still going strong today um you'll still find that he might pop into a few papers as like a back-end author um so yeah I just still going strong that lab Yes Man still sniping new enter

8:27 ending dreams for herbs and TCMS left to right yeah but it's great for us and it's also I think the the main gripe that you always hear about is most antioxidants despite the in vitro data just terrible degradation and that is the general issue with this category so yeah so that's the first did you know all right second did you know did you know that the 20 concentration is actually a validated number and what I mean by that is that's really um the max concentration recommended um to be used topically for skin I think the reason why I wanted to share this as a review is because percentages have gone carried away Gore

9:14 and I have seen them off the rails I think I mean I understand where that came from um because when we first started the bigger offense the industry was undertaking is they're claiming the sexy active but us chemists just decoding in green unless we know they're sprinkling that stuff in and you're not really getting the benefits they're off Gloria coined the term cat sneeze worth and I think that's pretty accurate yeah and I think after after a couple years the industry has taken a sharp left turn where they're like percentages matter great let me let's turn it into a pissing match of like 15. I got 18. you got 20. I got 25. but when I stopped there why not 28 yeah and honestly more is not always more when it comes to actives of course there's a threshold

9:59 where below which you're not really getting any of the benefits but there's also upper limit to hey man like if you're rubbing 50 vitamin C you're not really getting that benefit yes and so the Dr Penelope lab did a percutaneous absorption study and the reason why I want to share this because it's also a reminder of that pH of 3.5 is actually quite important to the absorption as well and then on they looked at varying concentrations of vitamin C to see how skin is generally absorbing that and they found that 20 was the cutoff and anything more than that didn't do anything so Oh by that um we all mean it doesn't work anymore but it just doesn't give you more benefits yes it's Cactus exactly so there are I did look there

10:46 are serums out there touting even 30 vitamin C this is just a reminder that you don't have to keep punching up past 20 percent there's there's even and one of the serums will go over and Me part two they tout 23 percent of ascorbic acid which I don't know why but anyway so if that's a determining factor in your shopping experience it shouldn't have to be yeah we always say between 10 to 20 anything in that range that doesn't irritate your skin is a go and you want to add that the caveat here is these are water-based formulas so you sometimes you'll find suspensions are really high levels could help efficacy but my personal take is at that level in that kind of format it's on me it's very irritating as well yes starting to feel that stinging feel yeah yeah and that should not tell you

11:32 it's working definitely not especially if there's an indicator but I love that yeah my my husband loves popping his pimples I know us acne people we we understand yeah and when he gotta go we use his product on his kind of fresh wound and he said it burns almost like it's okay yeah the burning means it's working although oh God [Laughter] whoever flows his boat okay awesome so next one did you know ascorbic acid actually helps with both collagen production and collagen degradation and those are two separate mechanisms and I think that's

12:19 something that people um kind of forget they just think collagen ascorbic acid Bueno keep going yeah and this is why we love talking about skin mechanisms where there's a lot of data to show kind of the journey the vitamin C goes through or not if I'm missing any molecule because this is an area where it's kind of lacking in skincare but the reason being it's just really tough to kind of funnel it down to the specific Pathways because skin is so complex just like a German collagen is not just about what you hear about like oh I should either put it on my skin or I should do something where it promotes collagen production as we age part of the reason why we develop some of the you know skin texture topography and density changes is not just from the um lacking the production side of things

13:06 it's when you the breakdown also speeds up and that kind kind of balance very important yeah and just like a mini review and we'll have to share the cartoon that we sketched a long time ago but um one of the issues with college and degradation is sometimes when you're collagen degrades the structure is poor and those sites are kind of compromised in a way and when those sites become compromised the fibroblasts who are they are meant to come in and to help with all that replacement and production they have less and less sites to build than replenish that collagen and that's why this process over time becomes a lot more inefficient and it's that's why it's like both matters on the production side and the degradation side so this is

13:53 why you know ascorbic acid you always hear gets touted I think it's whispered into the marketing realm but it's because they can't talk about it it's a drug claim I feel like there's not a really good understanding of why vitamin C is linked to collagen anyways there you go and actually I kind of want to Circle back to the people we just talked about because I realized that we were so honing on on concentration we didn't really go into the pH part let's do it so we know we usually take the stands of you know pH is just one of the factors when it comes to ascorbic acid it's a pretty important factor and it's it has to do with how at a lower pH the formula is more stable but it actually also affects how your skin takes out vitamin C yeah totally so yeah it's a good point

14:39 where just to remind everyone so when they looked at the percutaneous absorption one of the things they looked at was one of the things they found was that daily application of 15 ascorbic acid at a pH of 3.2 having to increase l-serbic acid levels 20-fold and tissue levels were saturated after three days that means that they found that the ascorbic acid levels had basically with um continued to remain in skin for three days after and so this is why we want to emphasize if you're ever wondering why not vitamin C pH level is so low there's not only is it a characteristic of ascorbic acid but it's also really important to these water-based serums for it to have that low level pH and that's why we're we

15:27 kind of say you know concentration matters pH matters in the actual efficacy of the product for ascorbic acid yeah yeah awesome yeah good reminder all right finally let's talk about its free radical benefits so I think everyone knows that this portion probably the most in comparison to all the other aspects um but yeah let's let's dig in a little bit Yeah so everyone I feel like people read for antioxidants or vitamin C for this purpose is as we all know when you're exposed to elements like the sun pollution your skin produces free radical and that in turn attack your skin cells and causes premature aging and usually in the form of photo damage and antioxidant is supposed to quench

16:14 these free radicals thereby protecting your skin cells your mitochondria your DNA but this is where we have a hard time with other non-ascorbic acid antioxidants a lot of other antioxidants is not proven to work topically on skin even though they are free radical crunchers in a test tube in a Petri dish that doesn't always mean it translate directly to in skin cells vitamin C is proven in that capacity but what's also interesting is a lot of people are like oh so that means it's like kind of like a post-on treatment if I go out and I get sunburned I can apply Vitamin C and cure my skin right yeah and so Dr Pennell also did that he thought of everything but basically they wanted to understand like um when

17:00 vitamin C should be applied and they noted that if you apply Vitamin C post UV exposure they found that even apply 30 minutes one hour or two hours after there was no photo protective effects yeah so this is a reminder that if you've been using your vitamin C serum prior to your guest big sun moment helpful if you get sunburn and think you should douse yourself environment c yeah yeah I I think it's a good reminder that preventative work it's a long-term game you know stay consistent it's doing the work behind the scenes right once the damage is there and I want all too late yeah I think that's so interesting

17:45 because a lot of people will almost think about it as a as a treatment being um like an actively corrective treatment yeah like oh I must have vitamin C today I got a lot of sun yesterday yeah and I still think that's such a great um scholarly paper because one of the OG studies that Dr Pennell also did was you know you apply a blank formula you apply Vitamin C and then you irradiate skin with UV and you calculate the damage and you see that vitamin C is preventative I also think that most people stop there and be like okay it works ta-da like the application order post damage is definitely something that not a lot of people look into so yeah and finally one thing I did want to add was if you're ever wondering why tocopherol is in vitamin E is in these formulas

18:32 just a reminder that it's actually because they did find a synergistic effect with vitamin C specifically for its antioxidant effect they actually looked at Vitamin E and vitamin C with UVB and UVA and they did find that that combination together is the best for both um and so that's kind of a did you know vitamin E actually does something yeah it's not that just with arrive for the story it's good yeah exactly and I also we can tell you as formulators Vitamin E ends up in a lot of products because of its functionality in in helping to basically improve you know the formula shelf life but for us it's kind of just like an airdrop like whatever move on and I just feel like for a chemist too we would hear this and be like right it

19:18 can actually do something sometimes yeah I think for me sometimes it's basically the Vitamin World glycerin so yeah everything yeah you think it might turn a color push mine yeah a lip product you need a claiman e yeah exactly cool and then I did want to share one thing which I thought was kind of cool was did you know that vitamin C ascorbic acid has been tested to treat melasma which I think is a pretty difficult realm and not one that I personally hear about you usually hear about it with General hyperpigmentation in that it does have brightening benefits as a tyrossinase inhibitor but I was surprised to know that they have done a clinical with

20:04 melasma and I did want to share that they used a 25 concentration Which is higher than 20. I know what we just said it will still work at a lower percentage but this one was done at 25. so 25 concentration for melasma for 16 weeks they actually have the participants use it twice daily whereas typically you're using it once a day and they did find significant Improvement but what I did want to call out here is the only before and afters that they shared are in black and white which just makes it a little difficult to seize the thing with melasma is topically you're never going to be able to fully erase it yeah exactly but if you see in these born Afters there is a reduction but

20:51 it's not completely gone I think that will be the case for even if let's say you use this serum for three years I don't believe that you're gonna see complete removal of melasma yeah I still think even in black and white I think the pictures are pretty impressive it's very obvious that there is Improvement totally and I always suspect that vitamin C's role and efficacy hyperpigmentation is part of why it's so it's so popular yeah because if you're using a really good antioxidant and its purpose is to prevent damage what you're using is something that when it works you see no changes let me [Laughter] see my vitamin C if you're prone to hyperpigmentation like me you kind of

21:38 notice that like brightening effect overall and that definitely incentivizes people too keep going your auntie something good but just know that it's a slightly different mechanism it's an additional benefit to use antioxidant pathway yeah it doesn't feel like it's kind of like that trustful where you're like you're like okay you got me yeah [Laughter] I didn't see a difference in eight weeks boy no says no one ever so this category is definitely really tough but yeah it's kind of a genius like business model right because you're kind of in a way selling them yeah that's 100 but and I do want to bring up that in the study what's interesting is it doesn't matter what percentage of vitamin C you're using if you're like if hyperpigmentation is one of your core

22:24 skin concerns consider dialing up to using it twice a day that's totally fine and if your skin is I will say of all the top actives like retinols high levels of glycolic acid vitamin C is less likely to irritate your skin with that elevated usage level totally and I didn't put this in detail for this episode but I did also want to call out that there is a clinical out there that actually topically used five percent vitamin C for six months and they also saw a benefit but this wasn't for melasmas for simple like anti-aging wrinkle and I guess they're looking at surface and general firmness of skin and they did see benefits as well so you know for those of you who let's say maybe have super sensitive skin ascorbic acid a five percent Serum is also possible it's just general time length

23:10 we'll probably take longer yeah yep awesome cool so that's me part one and did you no I I hope this was fun guys this was fun for me mom's fun yes yeah yeah well it's time to break it up yes all right let's break break it up break break it up break break it up you know I am pleasantly surprised this animal Corner state with us through the entire Journey over the podcast recently we got a comment that was like really enjoyed your podcast but also love to learn about the peacock spider and I'm like that's this is never leaving no it's really fun for us yeah it's we always think it's very self-serving but I'm talking about our listeners yes

23:55 um so today this week is my turn and I'm gonna throw my husband under the bus a little bit here we uh we went to a Monterey Aquarium recently and everyone's looking at the Crown Jewel of the monitoring um aquarium which is the sea otter exhibit very very adorable check out their YouTube channel yep yeah super cute and others are really curious very active and very inquisitive creatures so they're a ton of fun their toys are basically like dog toys they're little puzzles and things like that but anyway while we're there at the otter exhibit everyone there are a lot of um there are a lot of kids there everyone's like oh my God my favorite animals to honor me too so just like you know for funsies I'll say hey Chris what's your favorite um aquatic animal and this man goes are we talking fresh water or salt water it's like uh how you know he fishes yeah

24:43 I was like I don't know I don't care are they not the same well fresh water clearly the alligator and saltwater it's a shark I was like well okay between shark and alligator if you had to pick one he's like well I don't really know because they will never fight each other oh let me get this thing your definition of how much you like an animal is it's the MMA of the ocean yeah I I want a pig the McGregor of the animal kingdom and also dude that is such a dude thinking that goes yeah like if if they getting a fight who will win that's how I know I was like Wow and then I feel like YouTube heard our conversation or something of course after that for a whole week I keep getting served the ass came next on too and it's all these like

25:28 giant sharks and you know a movie you thought would never make another one yeah fascinating now prehistoric I guess because they don't have piranha anymore that's right they need a shark movie sharknado's over all right so now it's the Meg yeah the Meg the Meg yeah and I look at the look at the trailer I'm like man that looks really dumb and Chris is like sick laughs so in honor of my husband's fascination with really just hugic monk ocean monsters that are F you up I'm gonna look at no I was gonna just I didn't mean to interrupt I was just saying because I think I saw a recent ad for meg2 and one of the craziest things was no explanation T-Rex walking along the

26:13 beach yes and then shark comes and eats T-Rex that's just like strolling it makes no sense but Chris is like rocked up yeah whoa so yeah sick laughs so sounds like a fun day Gloria that you're gonna go on soon yeah guys we haven't seen a movie in months and we're probably gonna go see the Meg of all things okay yes so today I'm going to take a left turn from his fascination with giant OSHA monsters and talk about the world's smallest shark because when he said he loves sharks I was like well are we talking Hammerhead tiger like there's a lot of shark who's like the big one oh okay a nurse shark's pretty big yeah but they don't eat me no he's

26:58 like great white okay fine but I'm gonna go the left hura and talk about the world's smallest shark all right let's do it so today we're talking about the dwarf lantern Shard oh okay it's super tiny it is the size of your palm but it's got all the Sharky features like it's got rolls of teeth I think it's got like three rules of keys and everything else it's a carnivore it lives deep deep deep in the ocean it only comes up to feed once in a while and because it's Unique nature actually in general deep sea creatures we just don't know a lot about because you know the humans aren't even outfit that you explore the deep ocean until relatively recently and and you just you're at a whim the ocean is so vast when you go that deep you kind of find what you find and you it's hard to even cite a second one yeah so we

27:45 don't know a lot about this creature except the females are generally speaking larger than the males they tend to be seven to eight inches the largest one is about eight inches that's ever recorded only eight inches so literally the size of some a big hand yes um [Laughter] generally smaller they on average clock in at around six inches so you know no we haven't talked about gaming they're pretty petite they're really adorable they are only found not just in the deep ocean but a very specific part of the deep ocean they're off the coast northern coast of South America usually only cited off the coast of Venezuela

28:30 and Colombia that's very specific yeah very very specific and that's why we don't really know a lot about this guy uh Lantern sharks in general are is actually pretty vast category of sharks uh lanternshark is just one of many but why they're called the lantern shark is that they glow in the dark they have these they have these like Photo fours where it basically produces light and biologists think that this is to attract prey sure and when you get up to the top of the ocean that extra light reflection kind of help you blend into the waves too so it's hard to spot um it might be similar to like the angler fish yeah no actually that's exactly it because um look better than in English yes the light source is not hanging off like here yeah it's the shark is kind of cute but they have

29:16 these because they're deep in the ocean their eyes are like big bulgy and they when you fish them out there like gloss over white so it looks kind of creepy but for far away it's really cute because they're they're shaped like a shark but just tiny so cartoon shark yeah glow in the dark cartoon shark speaking of cartoon sharks I when I was doing research for this I was like well there's not a lot people know about this this particular species of shark but it didn't take me long before I landed on this kid's YouTube page called The Octonauts which I don't even know what it is but they literally had a YouTube episode it's like a two like a 20 minute episode kids cartoon that teaches the kids about ocean stuff and they specifically talk about the dwarf lantern sharp and I don't post a clip here I really know this is a pretty good

30:03 name yeah and it's these I mean I don't have kids so I don't really know the show at all but if you go to seven minutes they literally meet a shark and they decided to give the dwarf lantern sharp a British accent for whatever reason [Music] a tiny shark oh thank goodness you saw my flashing I'm glad it helped you find me we land on sharks use our lights to find each other fascinating well I've never seen a shark as small as you everybody says that oh and they're like oh my God even though it's next to Venezuela correct they're like oh my God that is a small shark I've ever seen and the door feels like hello

30:52 awesome I do find deepsea fascinating oh yeah just like the things that you see it looks so alien it totally makes you believe that there is an alien species out there because like they're just not of they're just like three three steps removed from the actual shark you used to seeing that's such a good point so if any of you have the chance to visit Monterey don't go to aquarium in addition to the adorable otters they actually have a section dedicated to deep sea exploration and they catch they have I think it's one of the few deep sea exhibits in the world and there's all these weird glowy stuff yeah when it's deep in there there's a lot of jellies and those jellies are weird as hell this is funny the same way deep in

31:38 there today is about avoiding slips I guess so uh yeah yeah that's a jelly no for sure I I find it so fascinating so yeah awesome all right let's get into what you guys are all here for now for the lanternship yeah uh let's get into all the vitamin C dupes finally we're taking a look at this uh it's been years people ask us oh like which tube should I buy you know should I pay for skinceutical so we're gonna try to answer all of that before we get into it just really quick for those of you really new to vitamin C landscape skinceutical C for rule look is considered the OG Z vitamin C serum thanks to Dr Pennell yep it's a Dr panel creative formula it's a synergistic

32:23 combo that is really famous now not Patton Hudson's expired so that's a bunch of dupes yep so now when you search receive Relic you have a gazillion choices Victoria tested them all maybe not all no but a good chunk of them yeah so we obviously we weren't gonna test 50 of them but we took what we think are generally the most popular or probably you'll come across the most often and yeah I'll go through them right now so we looked at may loves we looked at cos RX uh Paula choice Dr Brenner which you purchase on Amazon Timeless which is one that Gloria and I often recommend uh and for fun we decided to do the ordinaries eight

33:09 percent ascorbic acid serum but that is not a true water-based serum that's actually anhydrous strictly in propane dial so it's really more kind of just like a fun let's just see what happens when we test it and then finally we decided why not just make a crude lab sample fresh batch so that we kind of have this like almost like control of like if you made it fresh like kind of just seeing that how it degrades yeah that time point so going through this the general price range is anywhere between 20 bucks to I think the most examples 55 yeah and most expensive is polished choice at 55. and the formulas can vary some are pretty simple or just like straight up knockoffs of see through

33:55 like others do try to add a couple actives Frills I would say yeah yeah I think one of the most notable one to one that kind of made me go is definitely the COS RX formula they tried to squeeze a lot of things in there and they have pretty much the highest ascorbic acid level of the formulas we tested 23 we don't know why yeah so on top of that may add a caffeine which I mean doesn't really do anything anyway that glute Theory which is another really famous um antioxidant adenosine which is for anti-aging Lantern which is for soothing um extract but all of this is at pretty low levels this comes after the preservatives so you're just not really expecting like major percentages here

34:42 yeah especially when ascorbic acid takes up a quarter of the formula you're not left with a lot of room to do other stuff no no uh not at all so what we decided to do was go ahead and let's just bake them bake them all so and well we bake them and the reason why we bake them is because this is essentially accelerated stability testing we just want to see what the outcome is over roughly three weeks when we check in every week um so if you look at the initial starting point um you'll see for the most part everything looks good but one thing to know is coaster X right out of the gate starts out pretty yellow and Gore and I can confirm comes with a scent already you know what's really weird is like we with the AC for like formulas obviously

35:28 the the classic one of the most notable things about this formula is it smells a little bit like hot dog water so we're expecting it from most of these formulas but I was not expecting Smoky hot dog right out the case yeah usually that's something that you evolve into um because we can save for all these other ones there's not really a strong Sun like a faint doggy dog like hot dog water now you're chomping into a hot dog yeah it's like you know it just kind of has that yeah something like that but it's it's faint and then this one is very strong yeah so that's how it all started then we go to week one then we start to see something interesting happen so in the picture you'll see there's like a kind of a Gunk spec in the Timeless

36:14 product and we would ignore that because that's just um kind of this build up that happens in the pump um it's just kind of the gunk so we wouldn't consider that a bad thing but we should definitely talk about the Airless pump because that is one of the issues of using putting vitamin C in an airless so part of the degradation process for ascorbic acid is that it releases gas so in a dropper bottle the right ones if the gas will just leave through the bulb and you're fine but for the pumps it kind of builds up in it and this is part of the reason why you don't really see vitamin C products being put in pumps so when you click on it it sputters and that gas builds up pressure in it and whatever formula that's might be still stuck in that gasket just has a really

37:00 really as time exactly so if you notice if you I think drunk elephants one is also yeah if you notice any sort of sputtering or jets out that's what's happening um and it's kind of why we don't really love the Airless pump format but it's one of the phenomenal phenomenons that happens speaking to that gas buildup I should say both polished voice and cosrx upon opening did the whole Sprite thing where it's like yeah and cosrx more alarmingly their dropper had ballooned and so we would say these are General signs where we started like hmm all right we need to keep looking yeah something might not be

37:47 quite right yeah and so that's week ones take away but for the most part everything else was we would say is pretty standard um we are starting to see just a little bit more of that faint yellow coming in for May love even Dr Brunner even our own fresh Solutions so yeah that's really the takeaway for week one week two yeah oh all right so week two is when we start seeing some bigger difference yeah and the biggest difference really comes with the coaster X I will say Paula's Choice after the first week of opening it stopped with the I would say that gas releases but cosrx continues its bulbous dropper

38:32 form definitely bigger now yeah every time we get it out of the oven it just like comes out and it's like hello and the other issue is that we're starting to see something funky happen with the formula itself where I basically dropped like three drops of each to give everyone like a good visual but you're starting to see the formula almost like not want to stay together and this is like really funky yeah and we can see it on the droppers too they're just like parts that's clinging parts that's not it just doesn't look like it's happy with the bottle with itself with life also we can confirm the smell has ever

39:18 evolved oh that's such a good point I think Victoria was taking the picture and I was sitting yeah ways away like doing my work and I just went oh oh my God like aged splippy soup yeah and like Laura will walk in and like into the office and then she'd be like what is that smell like it's not me I promise excuse you yeah so really funky all around that would probably be the biggest learning and then I would say one thing other the other kind of interesting to note that I've kind of point out to Gloria is like we do see timeless's formula like color pretty quickly yeah and that was something that it's compared to the others is just I don't know what it is but it's a lot more rapid and then we'll see in the final

40:06 um the final third week that transformation to all right so in the final third week um boy oh boy you can see that really I would say tea color really come in that's a nice way of putting a tea color yeah that's very flattering flying aged vitamin C yeah so that yellowing really comes in a lot more saturated now Timeless definitely has the darkest one of them all and what is not very clear in this picture is there is almost like um I would say there's like deepened color aspects to the drop so that was one thing um but really the issue is just Coast RX

40:52 again just taking just all the red flags so still very bulbous when we pulled it out smells even more age smells not great but now we're actually getting like true separation and and I try to do a close-up of the droplet but you can actually see there's like a clear liquid kind of pulling out and then the dropper itself has got really weird clinging of specks happening yep you can see and the orange orange specks on the uh in the picture yeah so yeah and so I would say that's probably the most surprising out of all is we would say in conclusion we would definitely not pass cosrs yeah we feel like this formula maybe got too ambitious on the

41:37 bashing fitting in as many active as possible realm they tried a lot with this formula but the reality is I think vitamin C products should let vitamin C shine there's something in there that is not not compatible the pro the packaging selection probably could have been better to you from the bulbas but like if you have a vitamin C serum and you're like that dropper getting bigger it's not your imagination it happens when it releases gas but it shouldn't look like that it shouldn't be twice the size of your original dropper we actually have an old picture of when you left like vitamin C uh see through look skin Circle sit around for like two years yeah and ignore what happens it literally want to explode on you yeah but at three weeks in uh even on

42:22 accelerated accelerated testing we'll see this is way too fast also I think the fact that it just kept happening over and over again yeah is also a really bad sign yeah so that was just alarming all around and so we would say that coaster X is probably the best example of when to throw out your product and you know if you are seeing kind of like all of these things happening in your formula um we would say it's probably a strong pass and there are other ones that you're like totally okay to use that are better um shelf life that have much better shelf life than this one so that would be one thing the second thing is I definitely felt like the Timeless as much as we say Timeless is a great um performance that we recommend

43:08 don't love this packaging at the end of it I have noticed that like and I should say this was purchased through Amazon but this plastic I don't know it's just not ideal I feel like the way that it ages over time is just so much more rapid yeah and the original time was wasn't a dropper bottle and they replaced it with this Airless pump and something that we noticed is one of course air builds up and it sputters out and two is if you hold it against the light it's not actually as opaque as it looks so I expect a light um going through it doesn't help it age well either yeah so word on the street is timeless is actually they are changing that packaging um you can actually buy what is now their glass Airless pump on their website which should be a much better

43:54 replacement than the one on Amazon so our recommendation would be if you love your Timeless try buying it on their website their new packaging versus this one because I'd say this is not great yeah the other thing I think we should talk about is price point yeah the original skin circles I'm choking on my words I say it is because it's more expensive Holy Spirit I feel like 10 years ago when I joined the industry I think it was at like 140 a bottle and now it's like what 160 or something like that it's very very pricey so and this is why it kind of opened the door for all these dudes to come come on the market and even within the tubes we see it getting more expensive because I think when we first started recommending people maybe turn to a Timeless it's like 20 bucks but now you're looking at

44:39 more in the 30 dollar range and then of course you have your Apollo's Choice which is in a 50 range and drunk elephant which is in like the 80 90 range we would say just based on this test price is not determining factor to Quality yeah totally I think we should say if you love the OG SkinCeuticals formula and you can afford it like by all means this is not to say that you know um there I think it's really more like it's what is working for you you should stick to but the other aspect is like you know do you need to pay X more for let's say a formula that comes with more actives also not necessarily the case either like I think you know one thing we want

45:25 to emphasize is vitamin C is as you can tell already difficult enough to stabilize but by adding a bunch of these other things can really uh create a lot of chaos yeah for sure and a lot of times it will never be in there at enough just because there is already so much vitamin C in the formula so there's a case for that too is you know it's not really necessarily about price this is really about what's working for your skin and also generally what has the best shelf life yeah for sure and I do want to remind everyone that this is again baked in an oven yeah for three weeks and this is there's no like Direct it depends on your storage condition I should say this probably equates to it sitting your cabinet for probably about

46:11 six months to um six to eight months in your in your shelf and we would say this is probably what you would expect to see but this is definitely not the type of product what all what all of these brands do pretty well is when we receive it it's obvious I just at a pretty fresh level this is not something you want to hoard even if there's a cell and you want to stock up yeah don't just buy it use it and just be done with it such a good point and we should also summarize you know so to kind of recap the formulas we like you know glow maker May loves glow maker Dr Brenner's even that's Timeless you know vitamin and Polish Choice these are all perfectly fine to use um that kind of coloring change will happen that's normal it's when you have to add on a bunch of these other things

46:57 that might happen to the formula like cosrx is when you start feeling like yeah the shelf life really is not great in the long run yeah for sure yeah and last but not least we have to we haven't talked mentioned this at all we have to talk about the ordinary yeah you might have noticed that the color hasn't changed at all perfectly clear perfectly clear no yellow tint whatsoever what's happening there so this is actually not like the rest of the formulas it's a completely anhydrous or waterless formula it's a very very simple true to the ordinary's ethos it's a very simple formula where ascorbic acid is just dissolved in propane dial which is one of the solvents that you can use and it also even has arbutin without water water water airline are the three cobras too your um your active degrading this

47:44 is why we always tell you to store it in Vampire conditions right cool dark sealed yep and it's coffin if you want to add garlic you do uh but you might look at this and be like this is great right and hydrous formulas means it's completely stable this is a clear winner in our books but we would say this is maybe not 100 the case here yeah so when you put something in like 99 of something well obviously not this is 92 you know so this um when you use a solvent at such a high level there is always going to be a trade-off so the trade-off is going to be texture which to be fair this category doesn't really have the best texture but the other thing is irritation yeah we love propane

48:32 dial it's kind of like a cousin to propylene glycol it's a very nice solvent it adds a lot um it's very useful all around we use it in our products but a 90 some odd person when you put on your skin neat not everyone will have this reaction but I started scratching my hand on the ride home it's just too much solvent means that it's a little irritating and to give people contact usually in a more standard formula you might use it anywhere between like five to maybe ten percent and 90 you definitely will notice of irritation on top of you know you have an anhydrous formula of a vitamin of vitamin C so you know it's definitely not going to be a great alternative for everyone um but I could see someone want to use this if let's say I don't know Skin's

49:19 robust you're also not great with your shelf life your bathroom gets really hot my brother leaves the cap off of everything if you if you go to his bathroom caps open everywhere it's like a danger zone so maybe he would be a good one brother food anyways all right so that was our study let's sum up some of the findings for you guys and so you know what to shop for what to look for when you're using your vitamin C so first things first color change isn't necessarily a bad thing that's just the nature of vitamin C yeah there's a there's a degree to where we would say Beyond this point it's time to go so when it gets you that pretty deep orange

50:06 coffee yeah yeah but when you're in that light Amber Zone we'll say it's normal it is what it is the mother of all vitamin C skin circles have done studies of it at various stages and prove that it still works so that's where we'll say yeah second thing is if this color change happens but other things are starting to happen maybe it's time to start looking at it more closely so the first thing would be if you find that your droppers are starting to balloon or your airless pumps are sputtering that's the next like yeah yeah and if you open I I had a really old C4 look for me laying around before and when you open it obviously I haven't touched it sometimes you open it it goes

50:51 and the next day you open it goes and you're like wow it's very like rapid exorcism I hear you I understand that you're not happy with me yeah it's probably not a good sign yeah if your vitamin C hisses at you maybe no um and then the second thing is this sorry the final thing is if your formula doesn't look uniform you see floaties doesn't really like being like the glass dropper a lot of times when you pull out a glass dropper it should look like very beautifully uniform right it's just like water right so everything's smooth but then you start seeing there's clumping happen texture on the dropper that is

51:38 not a good sign so that's a red flag yeah so we would say a culmination of these things it's probably time to let this go and move on to a more fresh vitamin C serum but if you guys have questions definitely send us in your pictures we get a lot of them actually in the past where people are like uh this is what my vitamin C serum looks like uh is that right yeah um send them all in uh we're happy to let you guys know whether or not it's time to finally let it go yeah so of all the ones we just tested which one would you use and which one would you 100 not use well I think [Laughter] um actually I you know I will say Dr Brunner totally fine yeah it's a good price uh the may love is

52:25 fine too but also because you know Prime day anybody yeah Dr Brunner 27 bucks not bad similar price to Timeless yeah yeah uh I would say those two are my go-to too I think Timeless used to be a little bit more reliable with the freshness of their batch and I think the dropper bottle was better but for now I do think those two are um the winners from this badge Paul store is not bad but it's twice the price point and I want to add that it um price point aside there is slight texture differences with these formulas um vitamin C the OG it's kind of it's watery and but it ends on this like kind of sticky note and off yeah and all of these has varying degrees of that texture yeah that's a good point so I

53:10 would say it kind of comes down to personal preference at the end of it other than price point yeah I know and I think that was one of the reasons why we did um like the Timeless format because that one in terms of texture wise it just sometimes you just you'll spread it and it absorbs and also you just hear a stick yeah you're rubbing boom Oh yeah oh my God yeah no that's such a good point so yeah I totally agree yeah and I would surprisingly the ordinary I think that formula is just like oh it makes you itchy so I hope not yeah the solvent heavy formula is not my jam so that's me I think I would agree with that and I would feel the need to like mix it into something which is not ideal yeah it's at eight percent which is not that high

53:56 but it's still effective but if you're diluting it further then you're really not getting all that much benefit yeah so that's it that wraps up our vitamin C dupe test yeah I hope this was helpful yeah I hope so yeah we were thinking about adding a little bit more on vitamin C derivatives in care but look at that it's an hour we're all types uh yeah so to wrap up Gloria where can they find us you can find us our brand Spanky new website chemistcompassions.com you can contact us there you can tell us if the website looks beautiful we'll take any compliments oh no seriously we'll take any compliments chemistcompassions.com or DMS on Instagram at chemist.confessions you can post your questions here and that's it

54:41 yeah sounds good all right guys thank you so much we'll see you next time foreign [Music] [Music]