hi it's Michele from lab muffin beauty science chemistry PhD skincare nerd and
battle rapper wannabe today I thought it would be interesting to review a
celebrity skincare routine I'm going to have a look at the products they use and
discuss if it's a good routine from a scientific point of view if you want me
to review more skincare routines leave me a comment telling me whose skincare
routine you want me to look at next if you like this sort of sciencey take on
Beauty give this video a thumbs up subscribe to my channel and make sure
you click the notification button so you don't miss out on any of my videos the
first victim is Pharrell Pharrell Williams is part of the music production
super team The Neptunes who are pretty much responsible for the soundtrack to
my undergrad uni years. The Neptunes have also released a few albums as
NERD and Pharrell's also gone on to release solo music he recently also told
Donald Trump to stop using his song happy at events which might actually be
a good thing since if you're like me you can probably go another 20 years
without hearing that damn song again apart from being a musical genius
Pharrell's also known for never aging
he somehow still looks mostly like he is in his late 20s or early 30s even though
he's 45 his skin is just really good I feel kind of creepy looking at his skin
I feel like I'm a lizard person window-shopping and I like what I see
obviously there's the saying that black don't crack dark skin has melanin
pigment which acts like a sort of natural sunscreen so it's a lot more
resistant to sun damage which is one of the biggest reasons that skin starts
looking old but even for a black dude Pharrell looks really young let's have a
look at his skincare routine and see what the science says now before we
really get into it here's a few things that you should keep in mind when we
talk about celebrity skin care routines we're just going off what he says his
routine is celebrities can usually afford to go to dermatologists all the
time and get regular facials and procedures and in fact they probably
do since looking good is part of their job
Pharrell has a net worth of 150 million so he can afford this celebrities also
often have undisclosed partnerships so they might get paid to mention a product
even though they don't use it at all there's also genetics different people
have different skin and some people can do anything to their skin and it'll
still be fine as I've mentioned before on my video on skincare myths there
could also be other things contributing to how good their skin is so things like
diet routine whether they meditate a lot whether they exercise a lot and usually
people don't really associate this with giving them good skin because of all
these factors that can also influence your skin these so-called confounding
factors that's why we need to use science to work out what actually has a
good chance of making a difference for most people all right let's get into
pharrell's skincare routine
obviously he's been asked a lot of times about his skincare routine in
interviews everyone wants to know what he's doing he uses glytone products
that were recommended by his dermatologist first in his routine
there's the glytone acne self-foaming cleanser this has 0.5% salicylic
acid salicylic acid is a beta hydroxy acid chemical exfoliant it's good for
clearing out your pores and preventing acne even though the glytone cleanser
is a wash off product there's some evidence that wash off products can put
salicylic acid on your skin so other notable ingredients in this cleanser
apart from the salicylic acid there's some fluorinated ethers and fluorinated
hexane these ingredients are really good for trapping oxygen into the product
this is what gives that bubbling self foaming effect when it's inside the
container the oxygen bubbles are trapped inside the product it's dissolved but
when you put it on your skin and rub it around then it starts fizzing and
bubbling and so that's what gives you that foaming effect which looks a little
bit like you're a sheep or a cloud there's also some gentle surfactants
which won't disrupt your skin too much so there's cocamidopropyl betaine
and sodium laureth sulfate there's also a few humectants in the product like
butylene glycol and sorbitol which can attract and hold water into the top
layers of your skin to keep it hydrated despite the cleansing so overall it
looks like it's a pretty nice cleanser pharrell also uses the glytone acne
clearing toner which has 2% salicylic acid so it's got a bit more salicylic
acid and it stays on your skin it looks like it's a pretty straightforward
salicylic acid product Pharrell's also mention what products he requests in his
rider one of them is the Cetaphil cleansing wipes I'm not really liking
the look of these wipes there's a whole bunch of humectants which I don't think
will be all that cleansing but then again Pharrell doesn't really look like
he wears that much makeup if any but these wipes do contain sodium lauryl
sulfate or SLS this is a really irritating surfactant and I wouldn't use
it in a leave-on product it's really small which means it's good at borrowing into
your skin and causing prolonged irritation and these effects have been
observed even when it's used in a cleanser that's washed off afterwards
unlike this product there's a cream called aqueous cream BP this cream is
leave on and it contains SLS and they found that
it caused irritation inflammation and peeling when it's used in a leave-on
product especially in people who have sensitive skin so with this wipe which
has the SLS in it I would recommend rinsing it with water after using it but
then it sort of defeats the purpose of having a wipe
there's also Cetaphil lotion in his rider it's got glycerin near the top of
the ingredients list which is really hydrating it's really good at holding
water close to your skin so that the top layers stay moist the texture of this
lotion wasn't my favorite it felt like there was a sort of film over my skin
that didn't quite sink in but this is more of a personal preference Pharrell's
also mentioned that he exfoliates a lot a lot a lot I quote to me the key is
just exfoliating like a monster there's a lot of dead skin all the time like a
narcissistic madman I am a big fan of exfoliation I wrote a free guide on it
that you can download I also made a video all about it Pharrell uses a lot
of salicylic acid in his products already so I'm assuming that with this
exfoliation stuff he's talking about physical exfoliation this is when you
use products that buff off the surface of your skin so it helps loosen skin
flakes if you go a bit too hard then maybe it's not really loose skin there
actually isn't that much dead skin that's ready to come off so maybe he's
using a peeling gel which makes it look like there's more skin coming off the
issue I can sort of see with his description is the possibility of over
exfoliating this is when you go too hard and your skin loses the important dead
layers that it needs so on my handy skin model the dead layers of skin the
stratum corneum is this top layer and you need it to protect all of these
under layers so I recommend that you build up to Pharrell like levels really
slowly in terms of drinking a lot of water drinking water hasn't really been
shown to help your skin doctors usually think that people are too obsessed with
drinking more water there's been lots of papers about the myths of how much water
you need to drink so for example the idea that if you're thirsty you're
already dehydrated is a myth for people who have found benefits to drinking more
water it might not actually be the extra water that's doing the good it might be
what's leaving your diet when you drink more water so for example if you're not
drinking soda anymore if you're a bit fuller so you end up eating less junk
food if it's just a habit that makes you more conscious of
doing better things for your health like exercising he also mentions that he
washes with cold water to close his pores cold water is good because hot
water strips your natural moisturizing factors and lipids from your skin but
opening and closing your pores using hot and cold water is a myth
the obvious thing that's missing from Pharrell's routine is sunscreen
sunscreen is a fantastic anti-aging and anti-cancer product a lot of people with
darker skin don't burn so a lot of the time they skip sunscreen but black
people do get skin cancer and when they do it usually isn't detected until later
because it's harder to see he does do outdoor festivals quite a bit and I feel
like his dermatologist isn't going to let him not use the sunscreen so maybe
he just doesn't mention it it's possible that if you're Undead
then maybe your DNA doesn't work the same way you might have infinite
telomeres for example or you might have better DNA repair mechanisms so you
don't get cancer so you don't need to worry about sunscreen your cells might
not actually replicate at all you might just keep the same skin the whole time I
couldn't find any studies on this but the fact that he exfoliate so much does
suggest that his cells are still replicating so sunscreen is probably
still a good option for him another product that I would recommend for older
skin is a retinoid like tretinoin which is really good as an anti-aging product
but whatever he is doing is obviously working well firm so overall Pharrell
has a pretty solid routine it sounds like a good routine for oily skin it
doesn't recommend anything really stupid so I'm going to give Pharrell's routine
an A another thing I should mention is that Pharrell's dermatologist is Dr.
Elena Jones she's actually written a chapter in a book about Botox so Botox
might also possibly be part of the secret to Pharrell's great skin you can
do Botox really subtly so you don't have that frozen look that might be what's
keeping his wrinkles at bay I hope you enjoyed this video if you
liked it please give me a thumbs up subscribe for more videos like this you
can also follow me on Instagram and check out my blog for more beauty
science and see you next time for more beauty science
you