INCI: all about the ingredients Dominican Hair Alliance

Is sulfate shampoo good or bad for natural hair?

by DHA's DIY | Apr 3, 2022 | INCI: all about the ingredients, Natural Hair, Shampoo, Shampoo Alternatives, Sulfates

sulfate shampoo sulfate shampoo sulfate shampoo sulfate shampoo sulfate shampoo

Are sulfates good or bad?

What do they do to natural hair?

Does sulphate-free shampoo make hair greasy?

Sulfates are the most controversial ingredients in haircare, but most of us don’t know why we hate them so much.

Think you know all there is to know about these ingredients? Well here’s the whole truth about sulfates.

sulfate shampoo sulfate shampooSulfate Shampoo:

Why sulfates became one of the most hated ingredients

Think you know all there is to know about these ingredients? Well here’s the whole truth about sulfates.

Once upon a time, almost everyone washed their hair with shampoos powered by small, but potent cleansers. These frothy soap replacements were easy to rinse from the hair, produced tons of lather and left hair squeaky clean. They were nicknamed “sulfates” by formulators, but pretty much no one else had ever heard of them

Sulfates are often blamed for dryness in curly hair. Image by the Collab.

Until 2001, the year sulfates were officially designated Public Enemy No. 1. The alarm was raised by an influential curly hairstylist who had just dropped her first book. In it, she blamed sulfates for the frizz and dryness that many people with curly hair struggle with. And little by little, natural hair sites and beauty magazines started turning on the ingredients they had been using for years.

By the 2010s, strange words like “no poo”, “co-wash” and “CG-friendly” had crossed into mainstream beauty speak. Soon nearly everyone was asking, “Is that sulfate-free?” at the hair shop – whether they knew what sulfates were or not.

So what is sulfate?

First off, ‘sulfate’ isn’t a single ingredient. When an ingredient has sulfate in its name, it means part of that molecule contains a little group composed of a sulphur atom joined to 4 oxygen atoms. Lots and lots of very different ingredients have sulfate groups – everything from natural minerals used to make plaster, to dyes, to magnesium sulphate aka Epsom salts – which by the way, can be very good for your scalp.

On natural hair, sodium laureth sulfate is a more moderate sulfate cleanser. Image by Edgar181.

But the sulfates people are usually talking about when it comes to hair are the kind that clean your hair; the anionic surfactants. These ingredients are molecules with a water-loving head and an oil-loving tail. Their superpower is that they can make two ingredients that usually hate each other – water and oil – join together. Sulfates use this superpower to work as cleansers, the most popular type in shampoos.

Is sulfate bad for hair?

Not all ‘sulfate’ ingredients have any effect on your hair at all. Sodium sulfate is used in cosmetics to thicken the product itself, without actually acting on your strands. Others, like magnesium sulfate, are rarely included in haircare, but tend to show up in products with an emphasis on scalp care.

So even if you’re going ‘sulfate free’, don’t panic if you see the word sulfate on an ingredients list right after ‘sodium’ or ‘magnesium’. It’s not what people are talking about when they say ‘sulfate shampoo’.

What they are talking about are these ingredients:

sodium lauryl sulfate
sodium laureth sulfate
ammonium lauryl sulfate
ammonium laureth sulfate

These are the main four cleansing agents, called sulfates for short, which have become so controversial in recent years. So are they bad? Some sulfates are good to your hair, some are somewhere in the middle, and some can be pretty bad for hair. How can you tell them apart? We’ll get to that in a minute.

What does sulfate do to natural hair?

The main thing sulfates do to natural hair is cleanse it. The problem is, sometimes, they do this job a little too well. When sulfate concentration is too high in a shampoo formula, it can remove more from your hair than just the dirt, product buildup and grease you want it to remove.

At high concentrations, sulfates can strip your hair of its bound lipids – oils that are naturally stuck to your cuticle, and whose job is to sit tight on the surface and protect it. Over time, this leaves your hair dried out, brittle, frizzy and rough.

Scarily, the most overzealous sulphates actually create little holes in your strands, as they go deep to remove oil, leaving hair weaker and more porous. The sulphates that do this are the smaller, harsher sulfates, the ones with lauryl in their name – like sodium lauryl sulfate and ammonium lauryl sulfate.

Avoid using sodium lauryl sulfate on your natural hair. Image by Lucas Lenzi.

But not all sulfates do this. Laureth sulfates are chemically modified to be milder. The same goes for the lesser known myreth sulfates which are also bigger, way too large to penetrate the strand, and so way gentler, too.

If you’re planning on using a sulphate shampoo, formulas that say sodium laureth sulfate, sodium myreth sulfate or ammonium laureth sulfate on the label should be able to cleanse your hair without completely stripping it.

What’s the difference between sulfates and sulphates?

Nothing! Chemically, they’re exactly the same. Sulphate is simply the ‘British’ (Or Jamaican or Canadian or Australian…) spelling, while sulfate is the way it’s spelled in the US. We’ve used both interchangeably in this article.

What’s the best sulfate shampoo for natural hair?

The best sulfate shampoo for natural hair will contain a laureth sulfate or myreth sulphate, whether that’s sodium laureth sulfate, sodium myreth sulfate or ammonium laureth sulfate

The best sulfate shampoos contain laureth or myreth sulfate, as used in atrActiva Anti-Stress Shampoo.

Avoid lauryl sulphates if you don’t want to overcleanse or create minute cracks in your cuticle surface. While you might be able to get away with using them occasionally in a well-formulated shampoo, they shouldn’t be part of your regular natural hair regimen unless you have seriously robust hair.

A good sulfate shampoo won’t be too concentrated, either. If it’s well-formulated, the shampoo should be strong enough to remove stubborn residue, including product buildup, grease and pollution – but balanced, to avoid being too harsh on your hair.

One more thing; the ideal sulfate shampoo will also cleanse without leaving buildup. On low porosity hair in particular, which has the lowest tolerance for residue, it’s best to avoid any shampoo that dumps a ton of unnecessary ingredients on your hair that you can’t rinse away.

A residue-free cleanser will allow your conditioner the space it needs to work to maximum effect, instead of having to compete with bits of leftover shampoo. And most importantly, it means your scalp can breathe!

Shampoos we’ve tested that fit the ideal sulfate shampoo criteria include atrActiva AntiStress Shampoo, which recently won the Award For Best Clarifying Shampoo, and Capilo La Aplanadora Shampoo.

Both of these are deep cleansers, meaning they’re suited for use as clarifying shampoos to remove weeks of buildup, or as a once weekly cleanser if you use a fair amount of product.

A moderate cleanser for more frequent use is Silicon Mix Shampoo, which you can use multiple times a week without overcleansing.

Does sulfate-free shampoo makes hair greasy?

Since the backlash against sulfates began, sulfate-free formulas have become more popular. Unfortunately, some sulfate-free shampoos do leave hair feeling greasy. Sometimes, it’s because they’re based on milder cleansing agents which can struggle to remove greasy buildup already on the hair.

And because these cleansing agents are so mild, they might have to be used at a higher concentration, which can be drying to the hair and scalp – causing your scalp to overcompensate by producing more oil.

Sulfate-free shampoos can leave hair greasy as they contain weaker cleansers. Image by Barbara Asboth.

The last reason why sulfate-free cleansers can leave your hair greasy might be disturbing for anyone avoiding sulfates because of their rep as harsh cleansers: Some sulfate-free shampoos contain cleansing agents that are actually harsher than most sulfates.

To mask their effect, manufacturers often include a lot of conditioning ingredients in the formula so you can’t actually feel that your hair is drying out. These ingredients can build up on your hair, leaving it feeling greasy instead.

That said, there are sulfate-free shampoos, for example, Halka Baba de Caracol Sulphate- Free Shampoo, which don’t do any of the above. Good sulfate-free shampoos will clean hair well without overloading it with grease or overcleansing it, but in practice, it’s very tricky for formulators to get the balance right, which is why it’s so hard to find a good sulfate-free shampoo.

Are sulfates safe for your health?

There are studies out there which link sulfates to skin cell damage. However, these tend to be based on sulfates used at higher concentrations, and leaving the ingredient on your skin, which you wouldn’t ordinarily do with shampoo.

The safety of every ingredient is “dose-dependent” and even sulfate-free cleansers and conditioning agents have maximum levels above which they should not be used in products for safety reasons.

That said, the evidence for lauryl sulfates and irritation is pretty compelling. These cleansers can be pretty harsh even with normal use, because of the way they disrupt the epidermal structure. They’re often used to purposely induce contact dermatitis in scientific experiments, for example.Finally, like any other ingredient, some people can be allergic to sulfates. If you are, definitely don’t use them..

Are there naturals who use sulfate shampoo?

Despite the widespread fear of sulfates in the natural community, there are tons of naturals who use sulfate shampoo. Some of them are recent re-converts to sulfate shampoos, like Jonell Sequira, others, like NappyFu – who has a really informative video on the topic – never left.

There are a couple of major reasons why they do. Since people with natural hair tend to use a lot more styling butters, oils and custard or pudding-type stylers, they tend to need better buildup removal than people with other hair types. The ingredients in these products can be hard to remove with co-washes, hair teas, or sulfate-free shampoos.

Rich natural butters can be hard to remove from the hair.

The rich butters used by many naturals can be hard to remove with co-washes, clays and sulfate-free shampoos. Image by Crishna Simmons.

Can you use sulfates on low porosity hair?

You can definitely use sulphate shampoos on low porosity hair. Sulphates are great at removing the type of debris that other cleansers leave behind. They’ll pick up a lot of the product residue these alternatives miss, as well as more of the usual stuff like dirt, sweat, sebum and pollutants.

When you have natural low porosity hair – especially 4C hair, which tends to have super low porosity – this level of effective cleansing has especially high value.

Why? The surface of low porosity hair is less absorbent and more prone to buildup, so shampoos that don’t effectively remove surface residue can actually block the effects of conditioners, interfere with styling, and affect the way hair feels. Since they’re so good at this step, sulfates can eliminate this problem, making low porosity hair easier to condition, moisturise and handle

Sulfates: One thing you should never do

Warning: sulfates are potent cleansers. Skipping conditioner afterwards, even if the sulfate shampoo you used says “2-in-1” or “moisturising” on the label, is a no-no. Following sulfate shampoos up with a good conditioner is a must if you don’t want your hair to dry out.

And since they clean the surface so well, treatments – especially moisture treatments – usually work better after using a sulfate shampoo than other cleansers, so there’s no excuse to skip conditioner, ever.

In fact, when you’re using such powerful shampoos, it’s even more important to have a washday routine that’s super gentle and kind to your hair.

Use this washday checklist to make sure you’re treating your curls as gently as they deserve, whether your cleanser contains sulfates or not.

How To Test Your Shampoo pH Level (2 Ways)

by DHA's DIY | Mar 31, 2022 | INCI: all about the ingredients, Shampoo

If the pH of your shampoo is too high, it can make your hair frizzy, tangled and rough, even break it off.

But a shampoo’s pH doesn’t have to be listed on the label and rarely ever is.

So how do you know what pH your shampoo has? You test it, like this…

Why You Should Definitely Test Your Shampoo’s pH

Most shampoos won’t tell you what their pH is on the label.

And it’s little wonder that they don’t: studies on shampoo pHs have revealed how most shampoos have a pH that is too alkaline for hair. When a shampoo’s pH is too high, it sets off the Static-Frizz-Tangle Cycle in your hair, which ultimately leads to breakage. And when the pH is too high for your scalp, irritation and the risk of infection go way up.

A lot of your worst experiences with shampoos could come down, not to the usual suspects like sulfates but to using a shampoo with the wrong pH for your hair. The role shampoo pH plays in breakage alone gives you every reason to play detective with your shampoo – if only to keep your length retention on course.

2 Ways To Test Shampoo pH

Luckily, you don’t have to be a real chemist to find out. pH meters sell for very cheaply online (like under a tenner) and you can also pick up pH strips for even less from a lot of brick and mortar pharmacies.

Here’s how to test the pH either way. It’s easy…

How To Test Shampoo pH: The Materials You’ll Need

Most of the steps to testing pH are the same whether you use strips or a pH meter. Follow these steps then choose your test tool of choice at the end. First, here’s what you’ll need:

Materials:

Digital scale
2 glass beakers or jars, 1 with a lid
Butter knife, poon or small spatula
Shampoo
Water (preferably distilled)
pH strips OR pH meter

Step-By-Step Shampoo pH Test Method

Start with clean, dry hands.
Turn on the scale, place a beaker on it and reset it to zero.
Make sure the scale is set to grams.
Carefully pour 10g of shampoo into the beaker.
Remove the beaker with the shampoo from the scale.
Place the second beaker on the scale and reset to zero.
Pour 100g of water into the beaker, adjusting level as needed.
Empty the beaker containing the water into the shampoo beaker.
Mix gently but thoroughly with butter knife – don’t make too much lather.
Cover and leave undisturbed for 30 minutes.
Check the pH using a meter or pH strips in line with the instructions below.

Here’s an infographic that breaks down the whole process:

How to test shampoo pH with pH strips

pH strips aren’t usually as accurate as pH meters, but you can still use these to give you an idea of the pH of your shampoo.

If you use strips, make sure you get the type that give accurate enough results from 0-14. You don’t want something ultra basic that only gives ‘acid’ , ‘base’ and ‘neutral’ readings.

Your pH strips should come with a colour chart that you can compare your tester with after you’ve dipped it in the shampoo.

pH strips should come with a colour chart to compare after dipping in your shampoo.

Step-by-step: How to use pH strips to test shampoo

Here are the steps for getting a reliable pH reading with pH strips:

Prepare the solution according to steps above.
Remove the strip from its packaging.
Dip the pH strip in the soap mixture and wait for the colour to change in line with the instructions.
Compare the colour of the pH strips with the colour chart to determine the pH.

How to test shampoo pH with a pH meter

This is how to use a pH meter to test your shampoo pH:

Prepare the solution according to steps above.
Turn the meter on, calibrate it if needed, and dip it into the solution.
With the meter, the results will appear after a second or two, either on a dial or a digital interface if you decide to go for the pricier option.

How to test the pH of shampoo bars and soaps

Despite their marketing, shampoo bars are soap. You can test their pH in the same way that you test soap. Here’s what you’ll need:

Materials:
Digital scale
Knife for scraping soap
Butter knife, spoon or small spatula
Saucer
2 glass beakers or jars
Soap
Water (preferably distilled)

Step-by-step method for pH testing soaps & shampoo bars

Start with clean, dry hands.
Place the soap in the saucer.
Cut a small section of the soap with the sharp knife.
Turn on the scale and place the beaker on it.
Press ‘zero’ to reset.
Place the cut section of soap in the beaker.
Add or remove soap until you have a 5 gram sample in the beaker.
Remove the beaker with the soap from the scale.
Place the second beaker on the scale and reset to zero.
Pour 50g of water into the beaker, adjusting the level as needed.
Empty the beaker containing the water into the soap beaker.
Mix gently with butter knife – don’t create too much lather.
Cover and leave undisturbed for 24 hours to allow the soap to dissolve fully.
Follow the instructions above on how to check shampoo pH with a pH meter or how to check shampoo pH with pH strips.

What’s the right pH for a shampoo?

The pH of hair is pretty acidic: 3.67. The ideal pH for your scalp is a little higher, but still slightly acidic – around 5.5.

Since there is no established ideal shampoo pH, researchers from a recent study which looked at the pH of over 100 shampoos decided to categorise safe pH shampoos as 5.5 and under.

Unfortunately, most shampoos are a lot higher than this – that same study found a shampoo with a pH of 9, while soaps and shampoo bars tend to be in the 9-10 range. Since the pH scale runs from 1-14, with 1 being highly acidic and 14 being highly alkaline, scores as high as these take your hair and scalp way out of their comfort zone.

Like we mentioned above: a pH that’s too high for your hair can set off the Static-Frizz-Tangle Cycle for your hair, which you can make worse if you don’t know how to wash natural hair gently or haven’t got a washday routine that protects your hair from these issues.

And if the pH is too high for your scalp, you risk irritation and even infection. The effects of extreme shampoo pH on your hair and scalp can be pretty dramatic.

Wondering what you should do if your shampoo pH is too high – and you’ve already used it on your hair? Then check out the next article in this series on pH.

For a guide on how to wash delicate hair, download our Washday printable here.

Hair Growth Oils: A Scam Or Do They Really Work?

by DHA's DIY | Mar 31, 2022 | Hair Growth, INCI: all about the ingredients, Oils

It seems like every day a new hair growth oil comes out promising longer, thicker hair overnight.

But is it all too good to be true?

If you’ve invested more than you’d care to disclose in these magic hair growth oils, what we found out may surprise you.

We decided to hit the books and go deep into the databases for this one. Long story short: Some oils are a gimmick and have negligible to zero impact on your hair growth. But there are some oils that can actually help your hair grow.

The composition of every hair growth oil is different and whether it has a chance of working or not depends on its ingredients. If you haven’t seen any growth from using these oils, there are a couple of other things you need to check, too.

What ingredients grow your hair?

Girl with hair in large puff stands in front of plants. www.dominicanhairalliance.com

Several ingredients have been scientifically proven to grow hair. Image by Asa Dugger.

For all the duds and hype on the market, there are some ingredients that can actually grow hair. These are both natural and manmade substances which have been scientifically proven to stimulate hair follicles. Each of them work in different ways, so whether they are effective or not will depend on what’s causing your growth issue, and what your hair growth goals are.

Some hair growth ingredients reactivate inactive follicles so your hair grows back looking fuller. Others thicken individual strands, some speed up the growth rate, and some extend the anagen or growth phase of your hair cycle, giving your hair more time to grow before the natural resting and shedding processes take place.

So yes, in a nutshell there are ingredients that can grow your hair. In fact, there are so many with the science to back them up, that we can’t list them all. So here are just a dozen for starters:

Rosemary
Peppermint
Lavender
Onion
Garlic
Pumpkin seed
Green tea
Marine proteins
Iron
Selenium
Vitamin E
Zinc

How to check the ingredients list on hair growth oils

Image of glass bottle containing 'Magical Natural Hair Growth Oil' www.dominicanhairalliance.com

Product ingredients are listed in order of concentration. Image by Anis M and Dominican Hair Alliance.

Now that you’re familiar with some of the ingredients that grow hair, it’s time to become an ingredients detective.

So flip it around to the back of the bottle, where you’ll see the ingredients listed in INCI format. See if you spot any of the ingredients from the list above (hint: there are four of them on this bottle).

If you’ve looked at the lists and are still not sure, you can ask us any ingredients questions in the comments section below.
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Check the concentration of the hair growth ingredients

If you see any proven hair growth ingredients in there, that’s a good sign.

Now move onto phase 2: Concentration. This is hard to know for sure because brands don’t have to list the exact percentage of an ingredient on their labels.

But we can estimate how much they contain for most ingredients, at least within a range. That’s because in several countries, brands have to list ingredients in a specific order, using the correct INCI name. If they are following the system correctly, the ingredients will be listed in order of concentration.

Ingredients should be listed in descending order, so the ones the product contains the most of are towards the top of the list.

But ingredients don’t have to be at the top of the list to work.

The necessary concentration for an ingredient to be effective depends on the type of ingredient. For instance, if the ingredient is a carrier oil, it would need to be towards the top of the list to have an impact on your hair growth because carriers oils are less potent.

Image of containers of dried marigolds, then fresh marigolds, then macerated calendula oil. www.dominicanhairalliance.com

Macerated oils are less concentrated extracts, created by soaking herbs in oils. Image by Silviarita.

Essential oils or other highly concentrated extracts can be at or close to the bottom, since they only have to be present in small concentrations to work – as low as 3% has been shown to increase growth for at least one essential oil.

The problem is knowing which form of the extract you’re dealing with, as INCI doesn’t require manufacturers to specify whether they’re using an macerated extract (infused from the herb into the oil, which would need to be higher in the list to be effective) or an essential oil, or other concentrate (both of which can be low on the list).

Use these ingredients to check how concentrated it is

Luckily, you can use other ingredients on the list to tell if the product doesn’t have a high enough concentration of the hair growth ingredient in question – even for an essential oil.

For instance, if the hair growth ingredient comes after certain ingredients which have to be used at extremely low concentrations, then you can be pretty certain that the product does not contain a good amount of that star ingredient.

Preservatives are a good example; they’re usually at, or very close to, the end of the ingredients list. That’s because the amount used in products is typically very low, like 1% or under. Preservatives include ingredients like iodopropynyl butyl carbamate, phenoxyethanol, or any paraben. Antioxidants like sodium benzoate (which can be a preservative too), tend to go into the formula at low concentrations also, so they’re another good marker to use.

If you see a hair growth ingredient included after any one of these ingredients, chances are it’s not being included as an actual active ingredient, but just for claim purposes. Methylparaben for example, goes into the formula at a maximum of 0.4%. This is a percentage that very few active ingredients would be expected to work well at, so most hair growth ingredients that come after it will probably have little to no effect.

Woman with big curly hair and glasses stands in front of bush with purple flowers. www.dominicanhairalliance.com

Floral ingredients can be an infused extract or an essential oil. Image by Jhefferson Santos.

Watch out for ingredients that block hair growth

Next, you need to check the label for any ingredients that interfere with the hair growth ingredients’ work. Most commonly, this happens when the formula includes ingredients that are capable of forming a layer on your skin’s surface which stops or limits the product’s ability to penetrate into your scalp properly.

Certain silicones and petrolatum may do this. So could many natural oils and butters that provide a barrier function. On the other hand, oils which absorb easily into the skin, such as coconut or olive, could be good for improving delivery of the actives into your hair follicles.

Poor quality ingredients limit effectiveness of hair growth oils

Another common reason why many hair growth products fail is the quality of the ingredients. So while, say, rosemary oil has been proven to have hair growth properties, that doesn’t mean that a hair growth oil that contains it will definitely grow your hair.

Why? Many natural ingredients are extremely delicate and can lose their properties if not gently processed. Sometimes, ingredients are stored incorrectly or for too long, and lose their potency. And natural ingredients have very wide variance anyway: not every castor plant will yield the same quality castor seeds to make good castor oil, for example, and the quality of the crop might vary from season to season – even on the same plants.

Unfortunately, the use of low quality ingredients is not always obvious, although a suspiciously low price can be a hint (in some cases), especially when the label lists ingredients which are generally expensive.

So why isn’t this hair growth oil growing my hair?

But what if you’re pretty sure you have a product with a solid formulation, made of the finest quality ingredients, known to increase hair growth? All the ingredients are in the right place on the ingredients list, plus you’ve seen tons of people having success with the same product.

If your product has passed all these tests, then why isn’t it working for you?

Images of purple plant extracts in clear glass bottles. www.dominicanhairalliance.com

Hair growth products might not work for different reasons, including potency or usage. Image by Silviarita.

You’ve not been using the hair growth oil long enough

You might need to give it time. Especially if you’re trying to wake up inactive follicles and grow hair from scratch; these products take time to work. Remember, hair grows at 0.5 inches a month on average – and many people’s hair grows a lot slower than that. So even if you are using a product designed to speed it up, the results are not going to come in a day.

From the experiments we looked at, most products tended to show results over a 2 to 6 month period – yes that long. One ingredient did show visible results within just 2 weeks. But that was soft, vellus hair from patients that had suffered hair loss; it still took them 2 months to grow thick, normal strands.

No hair growth product will work for everyone

In all of the studies we’ve looked at, there was one thing that held true in every single one. Some methods worked for more people than others, but no hair growth method was universally effective. Unfortunately, just because it worked for almost everyone doesn’t mean it will work for you.

The most important part of hair growth most people miss

And here’s the other big factor in hair growth. The ends. We always think about the roots when we talk about growing hair longer, but good hair growth practices start at the ends, not the roots. It may sound contradictory, but here’s what we mean by that: Usually, unless you have some kind of scalp disorder or injury, hair is almost always growing.

The reason most of us don’t see the full length our hair offers is because we don’t take enough care of the hair at the ends. You can be getting a 40% increase on growth at the scalp, but because you do certain practices that compromise your ends on the daily, your hair breaks off and you never, ever see that growth.

It then becomes a vicious cycle of rubbing stuff onto your scalp waiting for growth that never seems to come – because you keep breaking the evidence off at the ends.

Image of woman with curly long hair standing in a field. www.dominicanhairalliance.com

When hair is kept intact at the ends it can grow much longer, regardless of texture. Image by Jose Danilo.

So unless you’re dealing with a scalp emergency like thinning, excess shedding or balding, before you start to focus on the latest hair growth solution, you need to master your ends care solution.

Once you figure out how to keep the ends of your hair mostly intact, you just need to kick back and let your scalp continue to do its part. After all, it is covered with hundreds of thousands of mini hair-growing machines called follicles. Get your ends care game on lock, and the natural hair factory on top of your head will keep supplying you with growth. That’s a new half inch or so every month which you can now accumulate for longer and longer hair.

When you start seeing returns from that, you can start experimenting with hair growth oils to accelerate hair growth – maybe add some thickness, too. That is the perfect time to really harness the hair-growing properties of these oils to help you hit your hair goal faster.

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For more on the hair growth ingredients that really grow your hair, you can sign up to get Growth Drops. Every week, we check the science and tell you what ingredients work and what don’t.

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Drying Oils: The Ingredients That Secretly Dry Out Your Hair

by DHA's DIY | Mar 31, 2022 | Dry Hair, INCI: all about the ingredients, Oils

Drying oils are used by paint manufacturers to make paint dry faster.

They’re key ingredients in linoleum, putty and varnishes too.

So what are they doing in your hair products?

Drying oils: The low-key ingredients that dry out your hair

By now most naturals know: oils can’t moisturise your hair on their own, but did you know there was such a thing as a ‘drying oil’?

Drying oils are added to paint to help it dry faster. And guess what? They’re in several haircare products, too. If your hair normally ‘likes’ oils but you’ve noticed your strands feeling stiffer or brittle after using a particular oil-containing product, it could be because that oil is a drying oil.

What is a drying oil?

So what oils are drying oils? Un-natural petrochemicals like mineral oil? Synthetic ‘moisture blocking’ silicones? None of the above.

Most drying oils are 100% natural, so plant-based and pure you could eat them. They’re nutritious, often brimming with Omega-3s and a ton of health benefits. But they can leave your hair feeling like straw.

Some of the most common drying oils you might recognise from the back of your leave in or oil blend: flaxseed oil, hemp oil and soybean oil. Yes, those.

Flaxseed oil is a popular drying oil and can leave hair feeling brittle. Image by alexdante.

This definitely runs counter to the way we’re supposed to think about ‘good’ and ‘bad’ ingredients in the natural hair community. That simple logic — where natural products, especially oils, are the best thing that could happen to your natural hair, and unnatural ingredients like silicones are bad — it kinda breaks down when the drying oils show up.

But could something as innocuous as cold-pressed flax seed oil really have a worse effect on your hair than the likes of Vaseline? To get why these oils can be so problematic, you need to know a little bit more about them. Here’s how they work:

Drying oils: How they dry out your hair

Drying oils don’t actively lift moisture from your hair, like a wicked short chain alcohol would. What they do instead is dry on your hair. While water dries off your hair, turning into vapour and floating away, drying oils are different. They dry by oxidising or reacting with oxygen in the air, and they stick around.

The oils have a unique chemistry that allows them to do this. They’re all high in unsaturated fatty acids with one, two, or three double bonds like oleic, linoleic and linolenic acid, all on one molecular chain.

From the top, oleic acid, linoleic acid and linoleic acid, fatty acids in drying oils. Ben Mills

As they oxidise, these unsaturated bonds crosslink, forming a tangled 3D network. The result is a hard coating that forms relatively quickly and sets on the surface.Ever notice a viscous, sticky layer around the rim of a bottle of flaxseed oil you’ve had for a while? That’s the oxidised version of the flax oil, linoxyn. Exposed to air, flax seed oil dries up. It eventually becomes a gummy solid, almost like an extra seal on the rim.

This is exactly why oils like flaxseed oil are used in painting. On its own, paint takes forever to dry, so to speed up drying time, painters mix in drying oils. Once they’re exposed to air, and spread into a thin film over a surface, the oils become hard and tough and somewhat elastic.

This tough, protective coating with limited flexibility is perfect for a painting, helping the paint to set before gravity or humidity start moving the artwork around. Drying oils also impart the firm, glossy seal that can make an oil painting last hundreds of years.

But your hair is a different story.

Even though the raw oil you might find in a natural hair product won’t have the intense drying power of the boiled flaxseed oil used in industry, that tendency to form a firm seal can leave your strands feeling stiff, brittle and unmanageable.

And hair that’s stripped of flexibility and softness is not the only problem: if the oil is drying enough, and you leave it on for long enough, it can also be harder to shift when you try to wash it out.

The tough buildup that drying oils leave naturally becomes more resistant the longer it’s exposed to oxygen. If you like to leave oils in your hair for days on end (or even longer), you’re increasing the time available for a drying oil to harden on your hair.

The more oxygen a drying oil is exposed to, the stiffer and more stubborn it becomes. Which means you might have your work cut out for you when you do get around to shampooing.

What are semi-drying oils?

Every oil has its own drying rate, depending on the ratio of different fatty acids it contains. Scientists measure this using the oil’s iodine value — the amount of iodine 100g of an oil can absorb. Drying oils like flax seed oil have a high ratio of polyunsaturated fatty acids and so have an iodine value of 130-190+. Article continues below…

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Anything under 100 is a nondrying oil, like olive oil, which has mostly monounsaturated fatty acids. Nondrying oils keep their liquid form for the most part.

Right up in between these two, are the semi-drying oils. The iodine values of semi-drying oils range from 100-130. These oils dry more slowly, and never achieve quite the same solidity that drying oils can get. Both rapeseed and sunflower oil are semi-drying oils.

How stiff or dry can drying oils make your hair?

How stiff these oils can make your hair will partly depend on your hair’s own natural elastic modulus – or stiffness factor. If your hair isn’t naturally very stiff, then drying oils won’t have as dramatic an effect. But the higher your hair’s modulus, the more likely it is that these oils will leave your hair feeling dry and stiff.

And if your hair is already low on moisture, the effects of a drying oil will be more obvious. Much of our hair’s flexibility comes from its water content. Hair that is undermoisturised is already brittle; using drying oils on it will multiply that brittleness.

Using drying oils on hair that is undermoisturised will increase dryness and stiffness. Image by Mwabonje.

Another factor that affects how stiff or dry a drying oil will make your hair feel is time. The longer you leave it in your hair, the drier your hair will feel, as the oil oxidises, creating a barrier that’s increasingly tough, and difficult to penetrate.

How can I wash oils out of my hair?

Non-drying oils like olive oil don’t harden when exposed to air; they stay much closer to their original liquid form. These oils tend to wash out easily, even with co-washing.

Depending on how often you wash your hair, semi-drying oils like sunflower oil oil may not have time to build up that strong cast that gives a lot of people stiffness and buildup.

You can remove these oils with a mild cleanser, use Baba de Caracol Sulphate-Free Shampoo. Even drying oils take a while to set on your hair, so if you’re washing frequently and only using small amounts, they may be less of a problem to remove. With low usage and frequent washing, you should be able to remove them with a gentle shampoo, just like with semidrying oils.

Now this is the worst case scenario: say you’ve used a drying oil and left it in for quite a while. Maybe your hair was in a protective style, and you didn’t really pay it any mind. Now, you notice there’s a firm residue on the surface of your hair, it feels dry and almost glued together in some places.

In this scenario, you’ll definitely need to clarify your hair — with shampoo. But first, gently prise the hair apart; it needs to be detangled before it’s washed or you could make the tangles worse and inflict breakage.

If there is major matting, use a detangling leave in with tons of slip like La Aplanadora Leave In first. That will help separate the strands which the drying oil can knit together. Work your leave in through the tangles one by one; you’ll need to make sure they are all out before you clarify.

Once you’ve detangled, use a clarifying shampoo like atrActiva Anti-Stress Shampoo to remove the drying oil build up. Be warned though: if the film has properly set, you might not be able to get all the residue out in one go.

I’m not using a drying oil. Why is my hair still dry?

Drying oils aside, one common reason why oils can cause dry hair, is using oils on dry hair. A lot of people use oil as a moisturiser, but no oil can do that job singlehandedly.

Moisture only comes from water. If you apply oils on dry hair, then even the silkiest, most softening, non-drying oil could leave your hair feeling dry. That’s because even nondrying oils create a hydrophobic film that can lock out a lot of hydration.

Using oil on dry, dehydrated hair is only going to make it greasy and drier. So unless you’re doing a pre-shampoo oil treatment, only apply oil on wet hair, damp hair or hair that has been moistened with a water-based product. Using oils this way should help you seal in moisture and get soft, hydrated results.

Is coconut oil a drying oil?

Coconut oil is not a drying oil; it doesn’t have the right chemical structure. Coconut oil is composed mostly of saturated fatty acids, while drying oils have higher percentages of unsaturated fatty acids.

Even though it’s not actually a drying oil, lots of people do notice that coconut oil dries out their hair. The reason for this is not known, but there are some clues.

The dry, brittle feeling could be related to the fact that coconut oil is one of very few oils that can actually penetrate the hair shaft, due to its high presence of straight chain fatty acids.

Once inside, it binds to your hair’s own proteins, making their bonds stronger. This should strengthen your hair — and studies show it does — hair treated with coconut oil shows less protein loss after washing.

So why does it make some hair brittle? Could it be because coconut oil makes hair more hydrophobic? Or because the presence of the oil inside the hair shaft makes individual strands feel thicker and stiffer?

Coconut oil is not a drying oil, but does leave some hair dry and brittle. Image by Jonas Ducker.

The fact that coconut oil increases hair’s tensile strength means its stiffness should increase too. For some hair though, too much stiffness can mean a loss of elasticity, which can result in breakage. We see this sometimes with protein treatments, which are designed to strengthen the hair, often by making it stiffer.

If the proteins are too effective at stiffening the hair fibre, the result is increased fragility and breakage, even though the product is supposed to make hair stronger. This over-stiffening effect might be the reason people report dry hair after using coconut oil. But that doesn’t make it a drying oil

— nor does coconut oil does contain protein, in case you were wondering.

What if all oils make my hair stiff and dry?

Oils don’t have to be drying oils to make your hair feel dry.

For some hair, especially extremely low porosity hair, most oils can stiffen strands, making them feel crunchy or rough, whether you apply them on wet hair or not. This could be because the oils can’t bind well to the resistant cuticle on low porosity hair.

On these hair types, nondrying oils can cause many of the same problems as drying oils: buildup, roughness, dehydration and even extreme breakage. If this sounds like your hair, it’s probably time to stop force-feeding your hair oils.

Water-based rather than oil-based products might be the answer if every oil might as well be a drying oil to your hair.

How do I know if an oil is a drying oil or not?

As well as the popular drying oils we’ve mentioned in this article, there are tons of other drying and semi-drying oils; too many to list here.

If you want to be able to spot drying oils that aren’t covered in this article, just download our Drying Oils guide. It breaks down dozens of popular natural oils into drying, semi-drying and nondrying so you know what you’re dealing with. You can get it here.

What are the 5 problems with sulfate-free shampoo

by DHA's DIY | Mar 30, 2022 | Dry Hair, INCI: all about the ingredients, Low Porosity, Shampoo, Shampoo Alternatives, Uncategorized

Just because you’ve given up sulfates, doesn’t mean washday becomes a haircare utopia. Sulfate-free shampoos come with their own set of problems.

Here’s how to spot the biggest ones and how to choose the best sulfate-free shampoo for your hair.

What are the problems with sulfate-free shampoo?

Since the backlash against sulfate shampoo began, sulfate-free formulas have become more and more popular. At first, they seemed like the solution in the search for gentle but effective cleansing alternatives. But one major problem reared its head almost immediately: the grease.

Does sulfate free shampoo makes hair greasy?

If you could swear your new sulfate-free shampoo made your hair greasy, seconds after you washed it, you’re not alone. A lot of sulfate-free shampoos do leave hair greasy. Why, exactly? It depends on what is in that shampoo – and what’s on the hair.

Many sulfate-free shampoos are formulated with ultra mild cleansing agents like decyl glucoside or coco glucoside. These are great for not stripping delicate scalps and hair, but their mildness is also their weakness. Since they’re so gentle, these cleansers are simply not strong enough to remove the product buildup many people have on their tresses.

Ultra mild cleansers found in some sulfate-free shampoos are not enough to remove heavy product buildup. Image by Demorris Byrd.

They also require more work in terms of lathering to remove dirt, oil and grease. If you’re accustomed to the easy sulfate cleansing experience, you might not realise you now have to put in that work. That’s one more reason why going sulfate-free can leave hair greasy.

Another reason for the oiliness is that to make up for this lack of strength, a lot of manufacturers like to up the surfactant concentration. This can defeat the purposely of using mild cleansers since higher concentrations are harsher on your hair. The overcleansing causes your oil glands to overreact, spewing tons of sebum to remoisturise your panicking scalp – hence the greasiness.

One more thing you may have noticed: many sulfate-free shampoos also contain tons of conditioning ingredients. This is to create a shampooing experience that feels less like you’re shampooing and more like you’re conditioning your hair. All too often, this leads to crazy buildup. There’s a fourth, more sinister reason, too…

Sulfate-free shampoos can be harsher than sulfate shampoos

Most people think that sulfate-free automatically = gentler for your hair, but it isn’t that simple. Lots of sulfate-free shampoos are made from milder, gentler ingredients, but many aren’t. One of the most common ingredients in sulfate-free shampoos is a cleansing agent called olefin sulfonate. Olefin sulfonate’s role is to replace the cleaning function that sulfates play in conventional shampoos – and it does a very good job of it.

Some sulfate-free cleansers are just as harsh as the strongest sulfates. Image by Pimthida.

It’s so good at what it does that olefin sulfonate actually cleanses better than the sulfate most commonly used in shampoos today, sodium laureth sulfate (SLES). But that’s not a good thing.

Sodium laureth sulfate has all but replaced sodium lauryl sulfate in sulfate shampoos.

The ‘eth’ in its name is the clue; sodium laureth sulfate is chemically modified, ‘ethoxylated’ to be milder than the harsh sodium lauryl sulfate which sparked the whole sulfate backlash.

Olefin sulfonate is every bit as harsh as the original sodium lauryl sulfate.

The level of clean delivered by both olefin sulfonate and sodium lauryl sulfate is unnecessary for cleansing hair, even if you use tons of greasy oils and butters or hard-to-remove silicones like cyclopentasiloxane.

Sodium laureth sulfate is enough to get these out without completely stripping your hair. Sodium lauryl sulfate and olefin sulfonate, on the other hand, are so eager to remove oil and grease they burrow into your strands after them, leaving holes in your hair shaft.

Sometimes, sulfate-free manufacturers load shampoos with emollients to cloak the harshness of this cleansing agent. For some hair, these emollients are enough to buffer the worst effects. But on more fragile hair types, olefin sulfonate can lead to dryness, brittleness and problems with length retention. These extra ingredients can also leave oily or waxy residue on the hair, storing up buildup problems for later.

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Many sulfate-free shampoos contain high levels conditioning ingredients. Image by Ian Dooley.

And while all the added oils and fatty alcohols can stop your hair from feeling frazzled when you’re using your olefin sulfonate-based shampoo, at a strand level, this ingredient can still do all the damage that sodium lauryl sulfate does, can since its molecules are around the same size.

Point blank: Just because a shampoo says sulfate-free doesn’t mean that it’s milder or gentler or better for your hair.

Are sulfate-free shampoos bad for your hair?

Don’t worry, it’s not all doom and gloom if you do decide to go sulfate-free. Choosing a milder cleanser makes sense if you have delicate hair and are not using products which require a strong cleanser every single time you wash your hair.

halka baba de caracol sulfate free shampoo

Baba de Caracol Sulphate Free Shampoo cleanses effectively yet gently.

There are sulfate-free shampoos out there which clean hair well without overloading it with grease or overcleansing it – Halka Baba de Caracol Sulphate Free Shampoo is one of them.

Keep this in mind: the only way to tell if a shampoo, sulfate-free or otherwise, is good for your hair is to look at the whole formulation. At the very least, that means a)making sure that key drying ingredients aren’t there, so no sodium lauryl sulfate, ammonium lauryl sulfate, olefin sulfonate, or salt (sodium chloride) on the ingredients list, and then b) trying it out and seeing what it does to your hair.

Formulations work as a whole, and the exact amount of each ingredient is not stated on the ingredients list. So don’t just rely on a lack of ‘bad ingredients’ on the back of the bottle. Trying it out will give you a feel for how concentrated or potent the shampoo actually is.

Sulfate-free shampoos are suited for which hair type?

Most sulfate-free shampoos aren’t designed for a particular hair type; they are offered as a gentler cleansing alternative to sulphate shampoos, suited for all hair types. That said, you can find specialist shampoos out there for particular needs; some sulfate-free shampoos are designed for curly hair, or damaged hair. You can even find a sulfate-free shampoo for hair loss or hair growth.

Sulfate-free shampoos work best if you do not use a lot of product on your hair. Image by Mike Fox.

Having said that, some hair types do tend to do better on sulfate-free shampoos than others. People with oily hair often find sulfate-free formulas less suited to their hair, as do many people who use a lot of styling products.

Since many sulfate-free shampoos are based on gentle cleansing agents, they might not be enough to remove buildup for some people – especially people who tend to use a lot of product, or whose product options include styling butters and creams, which tend to leave difficult residues. Few sulfate-free cleansers can remove non-water soluble silicones, either.

Additionally, the high levels of conditioning ingredients in some sulfate-free shampoos, and the kinds of conditioning ingredients used, can also be a problem for people with oily or low porosity hair. These ingredients can create a lot of residue for oily hair or low porosity hair both of which are more sensitive to buildup.

Are sulfate-free shampoos expensive?

Even when you look at sulfate vs sulfate-free shampoos in the same brand, the sulfate-free formula is often more costly. This is because the ingredients are often more expensive and the R&D required to make a sulfate-free shampoo that works, balancing effective cleansing and mildness could be very costly – all of that will show up in the price.

Sulfate-free shampoos can also work out to be expensive just for the fact that they are not as powerful. Often this means that people have to use a lot more shampoo to get the same results they would get with a sulfate shampoo.

But if you’ve found your ideal sulfate-free shampoo, and it takes your hair right to that equilibrium between cleansed and not stripped – it may well be worth it.

Just remember to make sure your washday routine is gentle enough overall; damage from rough handling can be as bad as any harsh shampoo; sulfate or sulfate-free.

Use this checklist to make sure your complete washday routine is kind to your delicate curls.