Alcohol in hair products?

[fridgee]

The top two ingredients on my curl cream are both alcohols and I was wondering what affect alcohol has on hair?

I guess I would expect it to be drying, but my hair always feels so soft with the curl cream, although that's probably due to the other ingredients. Over time is it going to dry my hair out? If it helps I use Boots pink curl creme.

[jacqueline101]

I know alcohol will dry out your skin and I would think it would dry out your scalp. Hair spray has alcohol in it and it dries out your scalp.

[Kiwiwi]

There are different kinds of alcohol. The drying ones and the moisturizing ones.
I don't know much more about it but someone probably will ^_^

[Johannah]

I was asking this myself yesterday. I want to know the answer too, actually. :')

[cooklaezo13]

I'm curious to know the answer to this question because my have conditioner has cetearyl alcohol as the third ingredient. My other conditioner has cetyl alcohol as the second ingredient.

[HintOfMint]

cetearyl alcohol is a moisturizing fatty alcohol, as are other alcohols like cetyl alcohol stearyl alcohol. It's likely that, and I'm sure it's fine. I used a cream by Rusk called Wired with SD alcohol (a very drying one) as its first ingredient and my hair was certainly "wired," as in it was dry and stood out from my hair like straw.
If your hair feels good and isn't breaking, it's probably fine for your hair.

[Johannah]

Maybe this is something?

http://community.babycenter.com/post/a650595/good_vs._bad_alcohol_in_hair_products.

[sbhonda]

I'm curious to know the answer to this question because my have conditioner has cetearyl alcohol as the third ingredient. My other conditioner has cetyl alcohol as the second ingredient.

Cetyl alcohol and cetearyl alcohol are both fatty alcohols. They are good, not drying. An alcohol is simply a molecule with an –OH functional group that's attached to a carbon. Lots of different things can have this –OH attached and that means that alcohols cannot all be considered equally, it's the other properties of the molecule that matter.

If I wasn't being lazy right now I would look up more of the common fatty alcohols in hair products, but right now I'm just drawing from my existing organic chemistry knowledge.

[fridgee]

Maybe this is something?

http://community.babycenter.com/post/a650595/good_vs._bad_alcohol_in_hair_products.

Thanks Johannah! Very interesting and informative article, that has certainly helped ease my worries. They are in fact cetyl and stearyl alcohols so according to that article they should be fine :D phew! I'm so glad because I love what the curl cream does for my hair! Woohoo!

[shump76]

Oh YAY!!
I use the very same curl creme, and was wondering the very same thing...