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hair health
what types of vitamins,minerals etc is benefical, that i can put in to a shampoo or conditioner?
what can make the hair healthier ?
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24 Replies
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For rinse-off products, about only silicones (and polyquaterniums to a much lesser degree) have good enough deposition (if properly formulated).
For leave-on products you can add silicones, coconut oil, and panthenol.
All of them have scientific studies to back up their effectiveness. -
Of course, that depends on what you mean by “healthier hair.”
Hair is dead tissue and can be no healthier than a shoelace.If you mean leave “hair in good condition” then I’d agree with @Gunther and would add cationic surfactants to the list of rinse-off products. I would disagree about panthenol however. I find the scientific support for the benefits of panthenol in hair products to be dubious. I think it’s a hyped up claims ingredient with little to no measurable effect.
What study convinces you @Gunther?
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I would say polyquats (especially polyquat 10 at a higher concentration) and amodimethicone for shampoos, silicones and cationic emulsifiers for rinse-off conditioners and silicones only for leave-in hair serums (dimethiconol in cyclopentasiloxane is great).
I didn’t notice any effect from panthenol. -
This study proves that some panthenol is absorbed by hair
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4794562/I tried a simple experiment on myself
I sprayed some panthenol dissolved in water, and compared it to some bare water (leave-on)
and hair felt a bit better with panthenol.Sure, it wasn’t a blind experiment. It was only conducted in one subject me,
but hair felt a little bit better.
I don’t know if that was only because panthenol attracts some dirt, thus making hair less squeaky clean. -
@Gunther - perhaps I’m missing something but the study you linked was a description of a chromatography method used to quantify solutions of panthenol. How is this related to hair or how does it show that hair absorbs panthenol? I didn’t see anywhere that hair was mentioned.
It wouldn’t surprise me that your study of panthenol dissolved in water showed you some effect when you tried it. What I am suggesting is that any effect you would see from panthenol in a product like a shampoo or conditioner would be completely dwarfed by the effect you would get from the surfactants, the silicones or the cationic polymers.
If you did an experiment where you had a conditioner like Pantene & you made one sample with panthenol and one without, you wouldn’t be able to tell any difference. I’ve done this experiment & couldn’t tell any difference.
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That study was only meant to demonstrate that hair absorbs some panthenol.
This paper shows the same thing
http://www.healthart.gr/images/pdf/7.AQUARECALM%20cream%20file.pdf%20D-PANTHENOL.pdf
but coming from a panthenol manufacturer it must be taken with a grain of salt.I agree that panthenol is worthless in rinse-off applications
but may have some modest benefit in leave-on ones. -
what can i do to actually improve the hairs health? saying that hair is healthy is pretty straight forward though. but what can i add so that the hair actually looks better and the hair cuticle and hair actually improves?
what does the hair need to grow (yes i know you also need to eat and so on for your hair etc) and look beautiful.
any vitamins oils anything?
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margi said:…yes i know you also need to eat and so on for your hair etc…
…any vitamins oils anything?…The most important thing is exactly what you eat. Since most vitamins (except antioxidants) are useful only for living cells and are poorly absorbed by skin, adding them to the hair instead your food is wasted money.Sure, using oils such as shea butter or fatty alcohols like cetanol makes especially dry African type hair shiny, springy and looking healthy (on the other hand, mine would look like greasy, overcooked spaghetti). Adding some of the aforementioned synthetics will further increase the effect
. Depending on hair type, the ratio of absorbed ingredients (like oils, butters, and fatty alcohols) to “masking” ingredients (such as silicone derivatives, cationics/quats, and polymers) may vary.Humectants such as glycine betaine, glycerol, or amino acids may be beneficial in leave-in products. -
Sorry, “healthy hair” is just not a straight forward term. Would you say “healthy shoelace”? Because hair is exactly as alive as a shoe lace.
But your description of what you consider healthy hair is useful
1. Hair looks better - use a conditioner. Silicones are useful for keeping hair held together and making it look more shiny and less dull.
2. Improving the hair cuticle - this is not possible. Once the cuticle is chipped off the hair, there is nothing you can do to improve the cuticle. What you can do is put a coating on the hair fiber which will flatten down the cuticle making it look, feel, and behave better. Once the coating is gone the hair will revert to its natural, damaged state. However, using silicones like Dimethicone and Cationic polymers like Polyquaternium-10 can improve the hair appearance and feel.
You cannot do anything topically to make the hair grow (except Minoxidil of course if you have hair loss). But nothing has been proven to make hair grow faster. If it did, it would be a drug. And if someone had found something that did, it would already be on the market. Nothing works topically for hair growth.
As @Pharma said, vitamins are a waste of money & will have zero effect on your hair.
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thank you for the help Pharma
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thank you perry.
though i dont really prefere silicone because my hair tends to get dry faster. and its a little harsh on my type of hair.
And i do beieve there is people who has gone from high porosity to low if it the high porosity has been self inflicted. and i have used a very desent hair line (organigrowhairco) thats helped my hair out allot and its a vegan no sulfate etc line with some comercial ingridients.
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My hair are chemically straightened many times, colored countless number of times, and treated with a straightener at the max temperature. And after all of it they look like in that silly pantene commercial from 90’s. The secret? Silicones. Just use enough silicones.
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ngarayeva001 said:The secret? Silicones. Just use enough silicones.
There is a hair care school of thought that believes that silicones prevent moisture penetration into the hair (and therefore prevents hair from being healthy). Does anyone know if there is any evidence to support (or refute) this?
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@unconditional - there is no scientific support for this position. While types of silicone can coat the hair, it’s not like it creates an impenetrable coating. There is a lot of misinformation being passed around in regards to hair & hair treatments.
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I am not suggesting that everyone should apply a thick layer of dimethicone 1000 all over their hair (although it works for some people). There are weightless phenyl trimethicone and dimethiconol and watersoluble versions of amodimethicone. Combined with volatile silicones they improve combing and make hair look very healthy. The keyword “look healthy”, because as Perry said, hair is as alive as a shoelace. “Healthy” hair is a matter of combination of mild shampoo (not necessarily sulfate-free) cationic polymers and silicones that are suitable for a particular hair type. There is a huge variety of silicones for a reason.
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Perry said:Sorry, “healthy hair” is just not a straight forward term. Would you say “healthy shoelace”? Because hair is exactly as alive as a shoe lace.
But your description of what you consider healthy hair is useful
1. Hair looks better - use a conditioner. Silicones are useful for keeping hair held together and making it look more shiny and less dull.
2. Improving the hair cuticle - this is not possible. Once the cuticle is chipped off the hair, there is nothing you can do to improve the cuticle. What you can do is put a coating on the hair fiber which will flatten down the cuticle making it look, feel, and behave better. Once the coating is gone the hair will revert to its natural, damaged state. However, using silicones like Dimethicone and Cationic polymers like Polyquaternium-10 can improve the hair appearance and feel.
You cannot do anything topically to make the hair grow (except Minoxidil of course if you have hair loss). But nothing has been proven to make hair grow faster. If it did, it would be a drug. And if someone had found something that did, it would already be on the market. Nothing works topically for hair growth.
As @Pharma said, vitamins are a waste of money & will have zero effect on your hair.
Perry is on point. I was a hair stylist for 39 years before this new adventure. I explained damaged hair to clients by telling them to think of hair cuticle like shingles on a roof. If the hair is virgin/ undamaged, the shingles lay flat and appear shiny and smooth. On the other hand, if the hair is damaged, the cuticle is lifted like aged shingles. It is not possible to repair lifted shingles; you must replace the roof. The same holds true for damaged cuticle; once damaged, they cannot be repaired. All one can do is use smoothing agents to help hold the cuticle flat and make it look repaired. Damaged hair only gets repaired when it is cut off.
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There are studies that prove that some Polyquaterniums and silicones can adhere to hair filling up the damaged spots, smoothing it out.
i.e. Google:
The Influence of Polyquaternium-7 on the hair properties
Morphological analysis of polymers on hair fibers by SEM and AFM
New Approaches for Assessing Conditioning and Quantifying Silicone Deposition on Hair
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Keratinocyte growth factor applied topically does promote hair growth. I accept Perry’s objections (if it works, then it is not a cosmetic) but it has an INCI name.
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@janele - there are two things I could ask.
1. What exactly does it mean to “promote hair growth”? Does that mean that it makes hair grow? That is to say, if I did a study where I topically applied keratinocyte growth factor and measured hair growth, would it work better than a placebo?
2. What study has convinced you that topically applied keratinocyte growth factor makes hair grow?
Usually a phrase like “promotes hair growth” is used by marketers to be vaguely saying that it makes hair grow without actually saying it makes hair grow. It’s similar to the claim “supports the immune system.”
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@Perry, if I am not mistaken I think you mentioned some ingredient for topical application (that’s a drug not cosmetics) that works for something like 70% of population on one of the recent episodes of thebeautybrains. What was it?
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Minoxidil
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Thank you very much, Perry!
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Minoxidil along with Aminexil & Finasteride topica solution for Hair growth -medicine. -
Hair is very sensitive to what you eat. Are you eating healthily? Lack of vitamins did almost ruined my hair a couple of years ago. There are plenty of sites about it, I can recommend this one https://fine-health.com/ Hope it helps! Good luck!
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