Ep 412 – The Rogue Pharmacist: Petrolatum – Friend or Foe?

So let's talk about petrolatum.

This has become one of the most controversial ingredients in skincare.

Some people swear by it, dermatologists recommend it, and others avoid it at all costs.

From your perspective, is it getting a fair reputation?

Well, it depends what you're looking for.

One of the major strategies historically for, um, for skincare has been to cover things up, to, like, smear goop on the surface of the skin.

And that's historical because for some weird reason, and you tell me why this is the case, when we put something on the skin and then we take our finger and we rub it along what we just put on the skin, we think we're moisturized, which is silly when you think about it, but that's just the mindset.

I mean, "Oh, I'm moisturized." No, you're not moisturized.

You're just feeling the stuff you put on the skin.

It's almost like this magic trick somehow that people... or a magic spell that people somehow fall under.

So petrolatum is the perfect ingredient for that because it's so thick, and even if you've spread a thin layer on the surface of your skin, you're gonna feel petrolatum.

It ain't going nowhere.

It doesn't go in.

It, it doesn't really go in very mo-much, and it certainly doesn't evaporate.

So it's ideal for this kind of feeling sense that people have associated with hydration or moisture.

In reality, it's the exact opposite of hydration.

It's pure oil.

In fact, what is petrolatum? If you take oil from the ground and you do something called fractionation where you break it up, break the oil from the ground into different pieces, you'll get kerosene as one piece, you'll get gasoline as one piece, you'll get naphtha as one piece, and you'll get petrolatum as one piece.

It's a sort of fraction of the stuff that comes out of the ground.

It's disgusting.

It's awful when you think about what it is, but it's got one quality that doctors love, that dermatologists love, and that's a quality that you would think, you would think would be something that would want people to avoid it or at least not use it, and that's that it's inert.

It doesn't do anything.

And doctors love things that don't do anything because then you don't have to worry about toxicity, then you don't have to worry about side effects because it's not doing anything, but it feels like it's doing something.

And by the way, mineral oil is liquid petrolatum.

So if you want a lighter form of petrolatum, and but Vaseline is the brand name for petrolatum.