Lash serum geekery...
...featuring a deep dive into eyelash serums, a bit of illness-related self-pity, the (discounted) bath oil you need when you're ill, and my winning combination for sleep when you've got a cold...
This week has been mostly brought to you thanks to a combination of Vick’s Vaporub, Lemsip Max Day & Night, Otrivine and a whole host of other OTC medication because getting a GP appointment is such a bloody hassle that I’m in denial about what I thought was a cold possibly turning into a chest infection and sinusitis.
It’s crap for multiple reasons, but not least because I’ve not been out and about so haven’t met interesting beauty people whose knowledge I can share with you. As a result I hope you’ll forgive me for plundering the archives for this week’s newsletter.
If there’s one thing that people ask me about time and time again, it’s eyelash serums. Back in 2021 I did a deep dive into them for my Patreon because I had had a load of questions about them. And since then I have cut and pasted that deep dive numerous times because friends, family, and friends of friends have asked about them.
As I said at the time, while I can try and test a load of mascaras for you, I don’t have enough eyes, or enough time, to try a bunch of lash growth serums, which can take months to take effect, so I’m going to try to inform you as best I can. This is the updated version of that original deep dive. Buckle up…
Eyelash serums initially came about because patients using a certain glaucoma drug found that one of the side effects was longer lashes. The drug is a drug called bimatoprost and in the US it’s available as a lash serum under the brand name Latisse, while in the UK, the same product is known as Lumigan.
It’s a prescription product so you can’t get it over the counter, and there are some pretty well-documented potential side effects which include eye irritation, but also the potential for extra hair growth around the eye (not just your lashes), darkening of the skin around the eyelid, darkening of the iris and even fat loss around the eye, leading to your eye looking sunken. These changes won’t necessarily happen to everyone, and they’re less likely to happen when you use a brush to apply the product to the roots of your lashes, rather than the eye drops that were originally used when it was a glaucoma treatment, but if they do happen, they may be permanent. It’s kind of down to you to make the call on whether the promise of longer, darker, thicker, fuller lashes is worth that sort of side effect (assuming you can find a doctor to prescribe it.)
But if you want an over the counter option, there are loads of them out there, and while you might assume that they don’t have the same side effects, they often contain ingredients that work in the same way as bimatoprost.
(I’ll try not to get too geeky but bimatoprost is known as a prostaglandin analogue. That means it works in the same way as prostaglandin, a hormone that occurs naturally in the body. Every hair follicle on your body has growth phase, a shedding phase, and a resting phase and prostaglandin’s role in hair growth seems to be that it has an ability to kick hairs out of their resting phase and into their growth phase, and keep them in the growth phase for longer, resulting in more, longer lashes.)
These ingredients might be at a lower concentration, or they might be weaker, so you should be less likely to get the sort of side effects that you’d get with the prescription drug, but it’s still a possibility — however hypothetical.
When you look at the ingredients that the leading lash serum brands talk about, there’s a lot of focus on things like panthenol and biotin (forms of vitamin B) and various peptides and oils — all of which will undoubtedly help to condition and strengthen lashes, which means they will be less likely to break — a bit like conditioning the hair on your head. But if you look at the ingredients listing and see “prost” in amongst there, that’s probably a prostaglandin analogue. In RevitaLash, it’s Dechloro Dihydroxy Difluoro Ethylcloprostenolamide, in RapidLash, Grande Lash MD and Lancer Lash Serum Intense, it’s lsopropyl Cloprostenate etc etc.
After all that, you still want a recommendation don’t you? Personally I’ve tried both RapidLash (£27) and Revitalash (from £59) in the past and found them both pretty effective, with no side effects, but that doesn’t mean you’ll find the same. As with everything, consistency counts. I used to leave them by my bed and do it last thing at night before I turned off the light.
If the scare story above put you off and you don’t want anything with “prost” in it, then @beauty_unplugged (a medic with an interest in skincare) on Instagram suggested that active ingredients that aren’t prostaglandin analogues include Swertia Japonica, Red Clover (listed as trifolium pratense), and Sympeptide (which you’ll find on the ingredients listing as myristoyl pentapeptide-17 and myristoyl hexapeptide-16).
As far as I can tell, from looking at the ingredient listing, the following products are free of prostaglandin analogs, although I haven’t tried them so can’t vouch for their efficacy: Sweed Eyelash Growth Serum (£42) and The Ordinary’s Multi-Peptide Lash and Brow Serum (£14.20) use peptides, Olaplex’s Lashbond Building Serum (£64) and Kosas GrowPotion Fluffy Lash and Brow Boosting Serum (£40) use a combination of the peptides and red clover. And in this post, from @beauty_unplugged, on the 9th slide, she recommends a number of other products that don’t contain prostaglandin analogs and are thus considered safe, as far as we know. Although as Michelle Wong points out in this video, there is less research on these ingredients so we don’t know for sure. So, whatever lash serum you’re using, it makes sense to be keeping an eye out for any unwanted changes around your eye.
If you’ve got any lash serums — or anything else — you want me to take a look at, just let me know.
That’s pretty much all for this week — although do learn from my cold-related mistakes: Otrivine (£3.74) and Lemsip Day & Night (£4.99) are wildly effective at clearing congestion because they contain decongestant ingredients such as phenylephrine and pseudoephedrine. These are vasoconstrictors ie they shrink blood vessels, but if you use them too much, they can cause something called rebound congestion where the vessels swell once you stop using them. I’ve no idea if that’s happened to me but because I didn’t have sinus pain when I started out, I just had a blocked nose, and I developed sinus pain that made the whole right hand side of my face ache, I’ve ditched them just in case. (I then tried pretty much every form of sinus drainage massage I could find on Insta and now don’t know if my face hurts because my sinuses are blocked or because I’ve bruised it with so much massage — this one was a good one though.)
BUT if you want a tried and tested combo for being able to sleep and breathe that doesn’t involve vasoconstrictors, the following worked for me: a bath with Aromatherapy Associates Support Breathe Bath Oil (currently £48.75 with 25% off at LookFantastic — it is expensive but you don’t need much and it really lasts and works. They’ve also just brought out a Shower Mist (£38) which I will be putting to the test asap) followed by Vick’s Vaporub (£5.06) on chest and back, sluicing my nose with Sterimar Hayfever & Allergy Spray (£6), a quick spritz of Beconase Nasal Spray (£11) (a steroid which doesn’t cause rebound congestion) and Breathe Right Congestion Relief Nasal Strips (£13.99) — I was really sceptical about these and the evidence base is mixed but I tried them in desperation when I was pregnant when you can’t take anything except paracetamol (TOTALLY FINE TO TAKE IN PREGNANCY) and was surprised and impressed.
I topped all that off with some Tylenol PM that I bought in the States when I was over there (it’s basically paracetamol and an antihistamine that causes drowsiness) and, for good measure, some melatonin I also bought when I was over there. It gave me a good uninterrupted 7 hours of sleep and then another couple of hours dozing. I was going to say that’s not to be sniffed at but sniffing and coughing is literally all I can do right now.
Until next time…
Note: I only write about products I really rate, but I can earn commission on products I mention here. If you hate the idea of this, please let me know, as this is very much a work in progress and nothing is set in stone.
I have found the Sweed serum to be really effective and not irritating at all.
My 17yr old daughter has been using UKLash serum for about a year and the results have been extraordinary. No-one can believe she’s not got false eyelashes on and she’s had no irritation whatsoever.