Great article on types of shampoo

[katielea]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3002407/
I found this article really interesting. It breaks down all the types of shampoo and the detergents in each one. It really helps to know what kind of shampoo is good for your hair.

[mira-chan]

It give some nice chemical information on surfactants. Unfortunately it doesn't list all of them and is ceratainly showing a bias towards sulfates. I didn't really find that they stated which is best for the hair. The authors also called laureth sulfates as mild, which they are not.

The froffesional concentration of shampoo was an interesting point. Also interesting is that they called sulfoscinates, which are used in many sulfate free shampoo, a strong detergent. No mention of cocomidopropyl betaine, another very common detergent.

It's also published in the Journal of Trichology, not the highest standard journal, so the quality of this article is a bit questionable.

[katielea]

Right after i posted this I thought, "I bet most of the LHCers already know alot about the detergents in shampoos." I know very little, so I thought this was an interesting breakdown. You're take on the article is helpful, didn't know anything about the quality of the research/journal. I was interested in the information on how each detergent affects the sebum levels and the hair.

[Hootenanny]

They do briefly mention cocamidopropyl betaine in the amphoteric detergents section, but don't really say much about it other than that it is often the detergent of choice for baby shampoos. Then, down in the section on baby shampoo, they mention that the reason it doesn't sting eyes is not because it isn't damaging the eye if it gets in there, but rather because it acts an as anesthetic, so you don't feel the pain. Does anyone know if that is actually true? Maybe I just haven't had enough coffee yet today, but that seems weird to me. :confused:

[mira-chan]

Right after i posted this I thought, "I bet most of the LHCers already know alot about the detergents in shampoos." I know very little, so I thought this was an interesting breakdown. You're take on the article is helpful, didn't know anything about the quality of the research/journal. I was interested in the information on how each detergent affects the sebum levels and the hair.
It's an ok article to start with yes. Gets a bit of chemistry in there which is as far as I saw was correct. I'd take the overall message with a grain of salt and do more research after if you want to know more as there is a definitely bias in it. I'm in the sciences and use some of these in my experiment work so I probably know a bit more than average so don't consider me as having standard LHC knowledge on the topic. I'm sure about 80+ % of the people on here would find it helpful and thank you for posting it.

I find they really focused on the SLS and SLES which are most common and preferred by manufacturers since they are cheap, and trichologists as they a very strong cleansers. I would have like to see more on other detergents. They didn't really mention many of the milder ones by name.


They do briefly mention cocamidopropyl betaine in the amphoteric detergents section, but don't really say much about it other than that it is often the detergent of choice for baby shampoos. Then, down in the section on baby shampoo, they mention that the reason it doesn't sting eyes is not because it isn't damaging the eye if it gets in there, but rather because it acts an as anesthetic, so you don't feel the pain. Does anyone know if that is actually true? Maybe I just haven't had enough coffee yet today, but that seems weird to me. :confused:
Ok I missed that in the quick read, my fault. The sting of eyes thing is in pH balancing. Baby shampoo matches eye pH instead of skin pH as in most shampoo. Skin pH is more acidic and works better for hair and scalp. Baby shampoo is closer to neutral pH 7, not as good for skin an hair. There is no aesthetic in baby shampoo, at least most brands I know. Not really a great paper there too because the anesthetic mention is a bit weird to me too.

Baby shampoo most cheaper baby shampoo have sulfate detergents and more expensive ones have betaine from what I've seen. Both detergents are still there and can cause eye irritation but it's not as immediate as having something acidic in your eyes (pH 5.5 of normal shampoo).

[hanne jensen]

Thanks for posting this link. I bookmarked it. I don't have a science background, so I learned a lot from this article. I need industrial strength cleansers to cut through my sebum on the scalp, so it's nice to know what to look for in a poo. I have at least 5 full bottles of poo that are now toilet cleaners because my hair hates them. Thanks to this article, I can avoid buying stuff that I just can't use.