Home Cosmetic Science Talk Formulating penetrating ingridients

  • penetrating ingridients

    Posted by margi on September 21, 2019 at 8:40 am

    is there any conditioning or healing ingridients that are particulary good at penetratingthe hair shaft. conditioning agents moistureizing agents. my hair has a very closed cuticle and i have pretty dry african curly hair. so yey me haha. so i could really need something that would help my hair out.

    pharma replied 4 years, 6 months ago 4 Members · 8 Replies
  • 8 Replies
  • ngarayeva001

    Member
    September 21, 2019 at 4:57 pm

    Dimethiconol, polyquaternium 10, behentrimonium chloride. 
    Make a shampoo (as basic as SLES/CAPB) with 1% of polyquaternium 10, follow with a hair mask with behentrimonium chloride (you can add other cationics too if you wish) and finish it with a simple hair serum (dimethiconol in cyclopentasiloxane plus 5-7% of phenyl trimethicone). If that doesn’t work nothing else will.

  • pharma

    Member
    September 21, 2019 at 5:51 pm
    From what I understand, these ingredients will feel and look great but they won’t penetrate hair but stick to the outer surface.
    For example MCT, ester oils, and small molecule humectants will really penetrate. Do these make your hair look less dry or healthier: Probably yes. Does it get easier to comb: Probably no. You would have to try things out to see what you and your hair really need. You could put your hair under a microscope to determine diameter before and after some time of treatment with product X to see if it’s swelling. Swelling can be an indicator for penetration/accumulation in inner layers but it seems (I don’t really understand that part, it’s just re-chewing what I’ve read) that swelling can also be an indicator for products which weaken your hair similar to veggies “bloating” when fed too much water and fertilisers.
  • margi

    Member
    September 21, 2019 at 7:24 pm

    thanks to the both of you. ill see what i can do. :) 
    Pharma
    ngarayeva001

  • chemicalmatt

    Member
    September 24, 2019 at 7:35 pm

    Closed cuticles are a good thing, lucky you. We’ve been down this road before, so here goes: to enhance ingredient penetration into the hair cortex, for hydrophilic ingredients use ethoxydiglycol, for lipids, use dimethyl isosorbide. 

  • ngarayeva001

    Member
    September 24, 2019 at 8:06 pm

    @chemicalmatt, are there any ingredients that are beneficial when delivered to the cortex? My current understanding (please correct me if I’m wrong) is that hair is dead and the only thing you can do is applying  cationics and silicones to hide the damage.

  • margi

    Member
    September 25, 2019 at 6:26 pm

    mashallah thnak you so much :)

  • margi

    Member
    September 25, 2019 at 6:26 pm
  • pharma

    Member
    September 25, 2019 at 7:36 pm

    …My current understanding (please correct me if I’m wrong) is that hair is dead and the only thing you can do is applying  cationics and silicones to hide the damage.

    Sure it’s dead so no reviving (unless you’re a voodoo priest :smiley: ) but you can still modify dead matter much like turning hard, brittle plastic into something flexible or elastic when adding plasticisers. In cosmetics, such “plasticisers” are called emollients but basically do the same. Adding too much will however weaken inner structure. Adding cationics and silicone polymers is a different approach (from my current understanding which may as well be wrong) and more like making composite material (or taping your joints) wherein an additional layer augments stability/flexibility without actually changing hair matter like plasticisers/emollients do.

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