Questionable ingredient list???

[macyann]

So, I'm a little new to hair care, and I'm finding it VERY hard to shop around for myself considering all the "bad" ingredients hair care products seem to be soaked with.
So far I've found that cetearyl alcohol can dry out the hair, and that it's good to use a clarifying wash if I'm using products with alcohol in them. I'm learning a bit more about the good, bad, and ugly aspects of sulphate. Are there any other ingredients I should "look out for"?/ what have you found damages your hair and why?

[-Fern]

Your mileage may vary, but I find the products I use to be the smallest part of the equation. Choose something that your scalp likes and that aligns with your lifestyle (vegan/low-waste/etc.), and otherwise don't worry too much. If you have buildup, clarify. If your hair is dry, do a moisture treatment. If your hair is breaking easily, do a protein treatment.

Healthy scalp tends to lead to good growth. Some folks are more sensitive than others to certain ingredients, but I don't think it's worth avoiding things unless you know from experience your hair doesn't like that ingredient.

[SleepyTangles]

Cetearyl Alchohol is actually a greasy waxy substance, it´s used to combine water-soluble components and oil-soluble components in products (it´s a fatty alcohol, technically speaking). I mean, everything can be drying depending on your hair individual needs, even oils, butters and waxes when they are layered over dehydrated hair.
I personally won´t avoid cetearyl alchohol, or stearyl alcohol in beauty products. I do avoid aggressive non-fatty alcohols, like ethanol and menthol, but I occasionally like a beer rinse over my hair, especially for clarifying

Just start slowly, you will soon get familiar with all those names. I think the priority is understanding what ingredients are and do, and how they react with your hair and scalp, not whose are considered bad. Some people love cones and sulphates, some people hate them: my hair looks esthetically bad with polyquats and cones, and my scalp get dehydrated with strong sulphates (tough, it has more to do on the combination of sulphates that single ones: a combination of sulphates and glucosides may be awesome, the next one terrible)

Usually a shampoo is made by:
water - diluites everything else, as a carrier
surfactants (sulphates, glucosides, betaine, etc: they lock to dirt and grease and allow rinsing to actually take the grime out)
a fatty, conditioning part (made either by synthetic filming agents like silicones/polyquats, or natural oils)
detangling agents (natural derived or not)
texture-enhancing ingredients (to keep the formula together)
preservatives (to keep bacteria out of shampoo)
fragrance and dyes (allergenic but often required, as the smell of raw materials is rarely compelling)

Just experiment and find the perfect combination for your needs :flower:. My advice is to start avoiding preservatives that can degrade themselves into formaldehyde with heath, and molecules that your body may mistake for hormones (like parabens and large amounts of tea tree and lavender essential oils) and find your way through the rest of ingredients.
Keep also in mind that ingredients interact with each other, so a bad ingredient does not equal bad formula.

[lapushka]

So, I'm a little new to hair care, and I'm finding it VERY hard to shop around for myself considering all the "bad" ingredients hair care products seem to be soaked with.
So far I've found that cetearyl alcohol can dry out the hair, and that it's good to use a clarifying wash if I'm using products with alcohol in them. I'm learning a bit more about the good, bad, and ugly aspects of sulphate. Are there any other ingredients I should "look out for"?/ what have you found damages your hair and why?

There are no bad ingredients, just different ingredients work for different people around here. As we say, YMMV, your mileage may vary.

There are moisturizing alcohols and drying alcohols in products. There is a difference. Moisturizing alcohols are actually good for the hair and for hair products. Cetearyl alcohol is actually a moisturizing alcohol. So no worries there.

[MusicalSpoons]

Damages my hair? The closest thing I've experienced to that is shampoo making my hair feel dry (usually sulphates, but I haven't used 'moisturising' sulphate shampoos so those kinds of ones may have been fine) but honestly that can usually be counteracted with conditioner. My scalp dislikes sulphates and finds many shampoos too harsh :rolleyes: but my hair seems fairly laid-back. I use water-soluble silicones so I don't need to wash with sulphates or worry about build-up, and although most of my conditioner stash is silicone-free, I like how the addition of water-soluble ones makes my hair feel :)

There are some controversial ingredients, but none that I know of are inherently 'bad'. [EDIT: actually maybe straight alcohol *almost* counts, though I have seen at least one member here who likes scalp products containing it.] Certainly educate yourself about such ingredients and then you can make your own informed decision whether there are any you personally want to avoid.

[Joules]

I agree with everyone else. There are no good and bad ingredients, there are formulas (aka the combination of ingredients) that your hair and scalp likes or dislikes. You might be allergic to something and it's a good idea to ditch those ingredients then, but don't throw anything away just because someone said it's bad.

As for straight alcohol: I know it does dry out my hair, but it's ok on my scalp. It's surprisingly common in scalp lotions, I guess it has its purpose (to stop those lotions from making the scalp too oily), so it's an ok ingredient in this sense.

[Kalamazoo]

I read someplace or other that alcohol mixed in with other ingredients makes oils & proteins able to penetrate the hair shaft. I believe emu oil also does that. But I don't like the way emu oil smells, so ... It's funny how I can tolerate some bad smells & not others!

I have a lot of allergies to synthetic ingredients. The problem may be neither my scalp nor my hair reacting badly to a product, but rather, my sinusitus or an out-&-out asthma attack.

I've also noticed that putting blueberries in a deep conditioning treatment (to dye over the henna that was giving me a color I didn't like) made my eyes function MUCH better than usual! It was an even bigger effect than eating them.

[renia22]

macyann- are you familiar with Science-y Hair Blog? She has some really good info over there:


http://science-yhairblog.blogspot.com/2014/07/moisturizing-low-porosity-hair.html?m=1

[macyann]

macyann- are you familiar with Science-y Hair Blog? She has some really good info over there:


http://science-yhairblog.blogspot.com/2014/07/moisturizing-low-porosity-hair.html?m=1
Thanks! Going to check it out right now :)

[AutobotsAttack]

Cetearyl Alchohol is actually a greasy waxy substance, it´s used to combine water-soluble components and oil-soluble components in products (it´s a fatty alcohol, technically speaking). I mean, everything can be drying depending on your hair individual needs, even oils, butters and waxes when they are layered over dehydrated hair.
I personally won´t avoid cetearyl alchohol, or stearyl alcohol in beauty products. I do avoid aggressive non-fatty alcohols, like ethanol and menthol, but I occasionally like a beer rinse over my hair, especially for clarifying

Just start slowly, you will soon get familiar with all those names. I think the priority is understanding what ingredients are and do, and how they react with your hair and scalp, not whose are considered bad. Some people love cones and sulphates, some people hate them: my hair looks esthetically bad with polyquats and cones, and my scalp get dehydrated with strong sulphates (tough, it has more to do on the combination of sulphates that single ones: a combination of sulphates and glucosides may be awesome, the next one terrible)

Usually a shampoo is made by:
water - diluites everything else, as a carrier
surfactants (sulphates, glucosides, betaine, etc: they lock to dirt and grease and allow rinsing to actually take the grime out)
a fatty, conditioning part (made either by synthetic filming agents like silicones/polyquats, or natural oils)
detangling agents (natural derived or not)
texture-enhancing ingredients (to keep the formula together)
preservatives (to keep bacteria out of shampoo)
fragrance and dyes (allergenic but often required, as the smell of raw materials is rarely compelling)

Just experiment and find the perfect combination for your needs :flower:. My advice is to start avoiding preservatives that can degrade themselves into formaldehyde with heath, and molecules that your body may mistake for hormones (like parabens and large amounts of tea tree and lavender essential oils) and find your way through the rest of ingredients.
Keep also in mind that ingredients interact with each other, so a bad ingredient does not equal bad formula.


This is spot on everyone!!

There’s plenty of articles and websites that’ll say the same thing, but this is hitting the nail directly on the head

Fatty alcohols are what give conditioners their coating abilities, when they’re mostly sulphate free, and give shampoos a mild of a milder cleansing ability.