Do you ever wonder why wax is used in lip balms and other personal care products? And why do some products contain more than one type of wax? After all, aren’t all waxes pretty similar at the end of the day? Turns out that waxes are more nuanced than we think.

Ever since I started blogging about skin care, I’ve grown accustomed to seeing the same ingredients pop up over and over again. One of them is glycerin. A few months ago, a reader contacted me with an intriguing question: What’s the typical concentration of glycerin that would be included in a rich facial moisturizer? In this post, we’ll ask my dad that very question and give this ingredient some overdue attention.

I received a question from a reader the other day, and it got me thinking about when it makes sense to save or splurge on skincare products. Sara left a comment on the Neutrogena vs. Trader Joe’s Sunscreen Stick Comparison blog post, saying that she had tried Trader Joe’s sunscreen stick as a less expensive alternative to her normal go-to sunscreen stick from ThinkBaby—but unfortunately, the TJ’s version wasn’t able to protect her daughter from sunburn. For reference,…